The
more I talk with other SLA members, the more I am convinced that the new name, the
Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals, is an important and
- I believe - necessary step in SLA's evolution. Here are my thoughts,
in no particular order:
- "Special Libraries Association" is the name of an organization of entities, in this case, "special libraries." Many of us are not in a special library per se, and in any event, membership in SLA is individual, not institutional. We aren't libraries, we're librarians and information professionals.
- The vote on the name change is not a vote on what any of us calls ourselves. I never refer to myself as a "special librarian" outside of SLA itself. Should the name change pass, I probably won't ever refer to myself as a "strategic knowledge professional" either. That's fine -- given the wide variety of job titles within SLA, it is both impossible and foolish to try to come up with a name that would serve as a job title. The name of the association is intended to describe what all of us have in common. Except for the organizational members of SLA, none of us is a "special library".
- The name SLA doesn't tell anyone what I really do and it certainly doesn't convey the strategic value I provide my clients. Explaining what "special" means usually involves explaining that (1) it's not the colloquial meaning of "special" as in developmentally challenged, (2) it refers to specialized libraries and (3) I have the skills and background from having worked in specialized libraries and I am using those skills outside the institution of a "library".
- For our profession to thrive, we have to continue to evolve to adjust to new situations. Our professional has, as a whole, successfully navigated the shoals of the explosion of content on the web (unlike some professions and businesses that may never recover from this, such as travel agents and, sadly, many independent book stores). Twenty years ago, we provided strategic value to our organizations by our use of fee-based online services and online catalogs. This no longer sets us apart as the clear value proposition we offer to our organizations; now, we have moved beyond "merely" offering high-quality information services to providing strategic support to facilitate the goals of our organizations. As we expand the perception and understanding of the value we provide, we must use a fresh vocabulary to reflect that change. Most of us do (and, IMO must) see ourselves as strategic assets to our organization. The new name reflects that larger, more strategic role we play.
- Over the past five years, I have seen a number of what we used to call "library schools" eschewing the L word in their very name. We now receive our graduate degrees from (and I'm reading from the list of ALA-accredited schools) the School of Information, School of Education and Information Studies, School of Information Management, School of Information Studies, Graduate School of Science and Information Technology, Faculty of Information, and so on. When the institutions that build tomorrow's info pros aren't using the word Library in their names, it becomes clear that the word Library is not a part of the name of our key organizations. I am proud to be a librarian, but I do not believe that it is a necessary part of my association's name any more than it is a necessary part of the name of the school that I got my graduate degree from.
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