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Dialog's Blankson-Hemans Elected to SLA Board of Directors

Active SLA member will be Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect

October 19, 2009 (Morrisville, North Carolina) — Liz Blankson-Hemans, director of Market Development at Dialog, has been elected to the 2010 Board of Directors of the Special Libraries Association (SLA). Ms. Blankson-Hemans will be Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect, moving to Chapter Cabinet Chair in 2011. The SLA Board is elected by the membership and is the primary governing body of the organization.

"I believe it is imperative that SLA as an association and we as members take forward a vision that throws into sharp focus the value of information professionals as critical assets within their organizations," said Ms. Blankson-Hemans. "I aim to bring messaging about that vision to the chapter level, so that members can distill it to their organizations and convey their relevance to the decision-making process."

Ms. Blankson-Hemans is an information industry specialist, with a long track-record of engagement and activity with SLA. She joined the association in 1997 and attended her first conference in 1998. Since then she has served SLA at various levels, both local and international. She has performed in several capacities on the SLA Europe board, including Membership Secretary, Diversity Chair and Early Careers Committee, and was President of the Chapter in 2004-2005. Additionally she has sat as a member on a number of committees, has been Inclusion Caucus convenor, and is currently a committee member of the Public Relations Advisory Council. She is also a member of the Australia & New Zealand Chapter and of several divisions. For several years, she contributed the "International Column" of the Legal Division Quarterly.

At Dialog, Ms. Blankson-Hemans' role includes oversight for strategic planning and implementation of marketing outside North America. This includes responsibility for driving customer-facing market relationships such as the Dialog Advisory Board, conference and professional association sponsorship and event planning. She also oversees external customer events and information professional market programs and promotions including the Quantum² Leadership Development and the Graduate Education Programs. She regularly presents workshops and seminars at a variety of industry conferences.

Prior to Dialog, Ms. Blankson-Hemans was manager of the Central Information Services at Clifford Chance, an international law firm, where she was responsible for providing a wide range of resources and services, including managing vendor supply relationships and contract negotiation, research and reference services as well as resource and systems management.

"We're deeply proud of Liz and know she'll be a great asset to the board," said Suzanne BeDell, Dialog General Manager. "We're happy to share her talents with an organization with whom Dialog has had a long history of commitment and sponsorship."

About Dialog
Dialog (www.dialog.com), a pioneer of online searching in advance of the internet, is the global leader in providing mission-critical information that drives research in science, engineering, business and intellectual property. The online services provided by Dialog — offered through the Dialog^® and DataStar^® brands — give users the ability to search through more than 1.5 billion unique records from the world's most authoritative publishers. Sources include in-depth, deep web repositories of scientific, technical and biomedical data, patents and trademarks, and thousands of industry, news and company information sources. Librarians, researchers and information users from corporate, professional and government organizations in more than 100 countries prize Dialog for depth of content, precision searching and the ability to provide complete solutions.

Dialog, LLC, part of the ProQuest (www.proquest.com) family of brands, is headquartered in Morrisville, North Carolina, with offices in Sunnyvale, California, and London.

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