The name was never the problem, really. It’s always been members’ stubborn clinging to the past and outmoded methods of process, measurement and function. I’m proud to be a Librarian, but I’m also proud to be an Information Professional who uses current information tools, not just ones I was taught 25 years ago.

If you’d like to argue with me, I’ll be on Twitter. Feel free to find me there.

Sincerely,

Erica Friedman
SLA member since 1990
http://twitter.com/Yuricon

Dear Leaders/Ambassadors,

The Board has received a lot of feedback from leadership and alignment ambassadors, and we have heard the membership on the issue of the acronym.

We have decided that we will use the full name, Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals, at every opportunity to introduce the association. There is discussion on alternative abbreviations whose URLs were purchased just for this kind of situation. HQ Staff and the Board of Directors have not used the acronym since the end of the first week of discussion and I believe we will seek alternatives to use should the name pass. The vote is on the full name of the association and there is no acronym on the ballot.

Please inform your members and please remember to vote.

Thanks so much for this and all your work.

Sincerely,
Gloria

Furthermore, I agree with Jessica about discontinuing membership. I have found SLA to be a very valuable resource, but I fear that there is a push by certain elements to take the association in an entirely different direction which I cannot support. ASKPro does not represent me now as an academic or in the previous six years as a corporate pharmaceutical librarian. I spent the majority of those six years shifting from a small department library in Drug Safety to the corporate library which supported all divisions in all countries. I know, that is a big “Yeah Me” moment, but it can be done. If anyone thinks for a single moment that changing to ASKPro and becoming “strategic knowledge professionals” will change anything, they have simply had too much of the Kool-Aid the board is pushing.

In the long run, I think that ALA has done a far better job of inclusion and has room for many different subgroupings of information professionals. Now, if SLA were for corporate librarians, then I would think that ASKPro might be more acceptable. However, there are many librarians out there who choose to build on our past and present to produce a secure future. I believe that it is far easier to educate someone about what librarians do and what librarians can do (or information professionals) because they at least have some idea about what a librarian is and they can easily conceive of information professional. However, I do not believe that they will have a clue about what a strategic knowledge professional is or does or knows. It smacks of corporate level post-modernism.

I firmly believe that if this change goes through, then we will be addressing this (assuming I stick around) again in the next 10 years or less when these same executives fail to understand what an “SKP” is or does. In a phone conversation with Gloria Zamora, she pointed out that this type of name change was attempted in the 1950s (Documentalist Association). I do not see the current situation as anything different. If there is to be change, it should come from the membership not the board. They are certainly welcome to pursue information, but I feel like this whole alignment ambassador thing is leading us down a pre-determined path, and I for one am not going along for the ride.

You can cite whatever research you wish, but until you look at that research with some level of time-depth (e.g. what would someone have said about the same thing 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, etc.) I will not buy into what the current crop of executives are saying. They will change their minds, their terminology, and their opinions just like they change their socks. Anyone with any depth in the corporate world will see how terminological fads come and go, yet the librarians and information professionals are still there like we have been for 100 years. If it was not important enough to change the name in the boom of the 1950s, then I hardly see how a change in the current bust will make any difference.

Unfortunately, we just had a board meeting Friday, so it just missed being discussed. One thing that has been emphasized in the discussion about the SLA name change is that there is no expectation that position titles change – if you’re a librarian now, you’ll still be a librarian Dec. 17.

But it is a good question. At this point, it’s probably best to wait until after the vote. If the name change passes, it does merit consideration of if/how it all impacts us going forward, and the previous position profiles project.

Cheers,
Alex

Thank you for agreeing with me!

OK what do we call ourselves (jobs and titles) after the current name change? Are we ready to revisit this website, or is this initiative sort of obsolete now?

http://sla-divisions.typepad.com/dpht_position_profile_pro/

Alex,

Would the DP&HT Board members have any thoughts on revisiting?

Regards,

John Chu
Manager, Literature Resources
Medical Services
Gilead Sciences, Inc.

I think you put it well – it’s one thread that is coming out of both the Twitter and HQ discussions – we all do have different titles and no one is suggesting we change them at all by this name.

The idea is to give us as a group / cohort a name that better communicates our value, especially to the executives (remember this was tested with execs, HR, and marketing folks) than “Special Libraries”.