At Sail, but Not Adrift

During the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Annual Conference in San Antonio, June 9–14, outgoing SLA President Donna Scheeder invoked Oliver Wendell Holmes to sum up the state of the organization. When heading off to new ports, Holmes said, it is important to sail and not drift. Scheeder, speaking at the annual meeting, said that the association, in meeting her "change is our tradition" theme, had fulfilled Holmes's mandate.

If change is indeed SLA's tradition, then that tradition is being upheld as SLA welcomes in September its first new executive director in 22 years, Roberta Shaffer, dean, GSLIS, Univ. of Texas at Austin. Later in the year, members will be presented with the results of a branding study, giving them the opportunity to vote on a new name and image for the organization. The association is also proposing changes to the status quo based on the recommendations of five task forces that have been looking at membership, conferences, governance simplification, partnerships, as well as branding.

Membership in SLA and participation in its activities have both decreased, sure to trigger more organizational introspection. External factors, especially the increasingly rapid evolution in technology combined with a downturn in the economy, will continue to change both special librarians' day-to-day lives and the role their information centers play in companies and institutions.

Final attendance for the San Antonio conference was 5,217, considerably lower than the 7,391 who attended the 2000 conference in Philadelphia, the 6000 in Minneapolis in 1999, and the 5,516 in Indianapolis in 1998. The exhibit hall in San Antonio, renamed the "Info Expo: SLA Information Partners," featured 345 companies in 480 booths, slightly more that the 322 companies represented in Philadelphia, but fewer than last year's 528 booths.

SLA's conference could safely dub itself "the learning conference." A remarkable 1400 attendees, over 30 percent of the total registrants, took at least one continuing education (CE) course. In all, over 40 classes were offered, either through SLA's Strategic Learning and Development Program or through specific divisions. While six CE classes were cancelled, several were closed out. Topics ranged from copyright law to knowledge mapping to taxonomies. Not surprisingly, the most popular sessions were those on web-based technologies and "proving your worth." Tech Zone—"a hands-on learning lab" that offered a series of short workshops on web-page design, XML, managing multimedia, and integrating databases into web sites—was completely sold out.

Jeff De Cagna, SLA's managing director for strategic learning and development, said that at next year's conference in Los Angeles the association will present its CE courses differently. There will be half-day sessions, meant to be "hard-hitting and practical"; whole-day courses, which will combine the practical with the theoretical; and two-day academies."

Programs on search engines, the web and competitive intelligence, portals, managing intranets, and creating digital collections were all big draws. Conferencegoers were looking for pragmatic tips that could be immediately integrated into their jobs, models that they could emulate, and benchmarks for evaluation.

E-book programs drew lively audiences. Len Liptak, director of marketing for ebrary, framed his SLA talk by discussing a survey released at BookExpo America in June. While 69 percent of online buyers had heard of e-books, the survey found, only three percent are very likely to buy an e-book. Despite this, SLA members believe there is a great deal that e-books can do for them. Topping the list is the ability to provide users in multisite organizations with up-to-date titles, and to be able to do so 24/7.

David Bender, in his final executive director's report before retiring, quoted from his first membership address in 1980. "We are faced with a decade of crisis management, within the association and within our libraries," he said. The association, in many ways, has come full circle in 22 years. Nevertheless, it has benefited from Bender's stabilization of finances. When he arrived, for example, there were no endowment funds. SLA's endowments now exceed $6 million.

While the situation has improved significantly since 1980, SLA in 2001 is still grappling with financial and membership issues. The past year has seen extraordinary expenditures, including both fees for the executive director search and fees for the branding study. At the same time, dues revenues have decreased. Corporate libraries seem to be entering into another period of downsizing and closings. Many conference discussions centered on how to grow membership and how to convince executives that information centers are integral to the success of their operations and not just an expendable overhead expense.

Hope Tillman, SLA president for 2001–02, began her inaugural address with a retrospective look at communications technology. Ten years ago, people asked, "What is the Internet?" Now technology enhances our abilities and enables change, Tillman said. But it also demands flexibility. Communication is key. Two-way communication implies a shared responsibility to listen, ask, speak up, and solicit feedback. Continuing the theme of communication, Tillman talked of building alliances with other associations to the benefit of all, holding dialogs, mentoring, and storytelling. She identified her role for the coming year as "conduit, listener, and spokesperson."

The SLA board took a number of actions in San Antonio. In response to member complaints, the board rescinded an earlier action to close all SLA discussion lists to nonmembers. It was announced that Joanne Marshall, dean of the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will chair a committee to review the "Competencies for Special Librarians of the 21st Century." Marshall chaired the original committee whose work resulted in a competencies document published in 1996. The board also approved the creation of the SLA Sub-Saharan Africa Provisional Chapter. The boundaries of the chapter encompass 37 countries. Salt Lake City was approved as the location of the annual conference in 2010.

The board agreed to allow planning for Global 2002 to proceed. This conference, which is geared to international issues and encourages international attendance, will be a companion to the annual conference in Los Angeles.

It was easy, in moving among the programs, to find oneself in a room with a vendor discussing his/her product, joined only by a moderator who happened to be from the same company. Or perhaps an e-book distributor accompanied by several of the firm's happy customers. These programs are part of SLA's "Strategic Technology Alliance" series. Certainly the series fulfills an important function. Information managers and vendors need opportunities to discuss where the industry is going, share wants and expectations, look at new products, and learn new tools.

But these sessions, lacking the mix of vendors, consultants, and users typical of other programs, produced none of the critical dialog expected from a professional organization. Scheduling this series at the same time and in the same place as other programs, with the same "look and feel," can be misleading and blurs uncomfortably the line between SLA and its "corporate partners."

At the well-attended opening general session, Bill Pardue, CEO of LexisNexis, introduced political columnist and humorist Molly Ivins of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "There are no unspecial librarians," Ivins said. "You are all freedom fighters." She delighted the crowd with stories about battling censorship and other attacks on intellectual freedom in Texas, an activity that "takes a certain mindset," she said. "You have to have a good time doing so because you so seldom win."

Ivins wasn't able to keep away from one of her favorite topics, the presidency of George W. Bush. "He's not bilingual; he's bi-stupid," she said about Bush's speaking Spanish on a recent trip to Europe. Bush on libraries revealed the sort of "cognitive dissonance" that was typical of his presidency. "He took $37 million out of the federal budget for libraries," she said. "At the same time, [his wife] Laura [Bush] was speaking out for libraries."

Ivins urged SLA members to "stay on this." There could be some real damage done to knowledge in the four years ahead. Instead of cutting money for research—both hard and soft science—we should "respect knowledge and enlarge it." Ivins did offer the library community one tip. "Take full advantage of your entrée with Laura. She's a solid human."

No doubt the promise of hearing author and humorist Dave Barry drew a significantly larger crowd than normal to the closing session. "I sit at home in my underwear and make things up—like a consultant, really," Barry said in explaining his job as syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald.

Even humorous columnists need information, Barry said, because "if I'm wrong, I hear about it." He introduced Liz Donovan, his librarian from the Miami Herald, and his assistant Judy Smith, a "librarian by training," he said. "I'm wasting time faster than ever," Barry said about using the Internet as a research tool. "Information—we have way too much!" No one in the auditorium seemed to disagree.