As Conference Approaches, SLA Seeks Leadership, Stability

Members heading to Los Angeles next month for the Special Libraries Association's (SLA) annual conference (see preview, p. 58–59) have many questions about their organization's future. The February resignation of SLA's new executive director, Roberta Shaffer (see News, LJ 3/15/02, p. 17), was one of several recent shocks. Shaffer seemingly had a mandate to transform an organization that had been debating change for several years.

The resignation came after a much-watched and costly branding initiative stalled, a series of aggressive bylaw revisions hit resistance, and changes to the annual conference were scuttled. In the last two cases, SLA's membership resisted proposals to shift power to the board. Poor communication widened the gulf between the board and membership.

"This past year has taken us all by surprise," said Jill Hurst, president of Hurst Associates and a faculty member at Syracuse's School of Information Studies, NY. Hurst, who sees the need for SLA to change while retaining many of its present values, hopes that Los Angeles provides "an opportunity for us to be in one place, chase down people, and get some answers."

The branding initiative began in 2000 with a presidentially appointed task force. Most members seem to view branding—the development of a new image—as the association's most important initiative. Through branding, SLA hopes to retain its members while attracting nontraditional new ones.

At the heart of the discussion has been an ambivalence toward the "L" word. While many members happily describe themselves as librarians, "other members are...in areas like strategic planning…but they still find value in SLA, but not the SLA verbiage," said Mary "Dottie" Moon, herself a manager of competitive analysis at engineering firm Pratt & Whitney. "More importantly, members are having difficulty convincing management of SLA's value."

"Branding will be a first step…in a way to possibly grow our numbers," said President-elect Bill Fisher. During the last five years, membership in SLA has declined more than 15 percent, from nearly 14,400 to 12,000. During the same period, the American Library Association saw growth of over 12 percent and the American Association of Law Libraries and the Medical Library Association both kept their membership constant at about 5000.

In June 2001, the board signed a $350,000 contract with a branding consultant, expecting to review new names, tag lines, and logos by the fall. In early March, President Hope Tillman reported a "disconnect between what we had hoped for and what our consultant delivered." While some claim the board couldn't clarify its vision, others indicate that a member survey produced such divergent results that the consultants were unable to move forward.

In March, the board announced that it broke the contract—paying only $80,000—and were embarking on an imaging project, the creation of "a vivid representation, opinion, mental image, or concept of something that is held by the public, " according to Tillman. But the switch in focus only confused matters more.

Last month, SLA returned to branding, hiring another consultant. "We've clarified what we want to do," said Pratt & Whitney's Moon, an SLA board member and liaison to the branding task force. The task force has already reviewed over 60 different names, logos, and tag lines. At the SLA conference, members will discuss branding at a town hall meeting. Some possible brands may drop the "L" word for a more encompassing term.

Shaffer, who began in September, succeeded David Bender, who had been in the job for 22 years. "We all had high hopes for her," said Syracuse's Hurst. Five months later, Shaffer was gone.

Shaffer, formerly dean, University of Texas at Austin's Graduate School of Library & Information Science, told LJ she thought "SLA is going through an adolescence, or an identity crisis."

She said she had wanted SLA to define the profession, to articulate the competencies and skills needed to succeed in it, and to "be the spokesperson to the outside world about the profession." However, she found the association split in its support of change. "There are many who believe in the status quo, and some who support change. The association needs to resolve this. It cannot be in both places at once." Shaffer attributed SLA's problems with its branding to the organization's "inability to define where it wants to go."

Shaffer described her rapid exit as "a selfish decision." She has had very specific career goals in every job she has taken, and when it became apparent that SLA "would not be able to achieve what I wanted, in the time frame I created," she chose to leave. To stay "would have provided no career enhancements for me. In fact, it would have been detrimental."

To avoid having an outgoing board hire the executive director, SLA won't begin the search process until the new board is in place in June. "I would hope we would delve more into candidates' personal agendas and their expectations of the job," said Lynn Smith, SLA's acting executive director.

In an effort to streamline the organization, the SLA board proposed a series of bylaw revisions at the winter meeting. One major change would have given the board sole power to elect the president from among its own members. Also, member categories and dues structures would be removed from the bylaws and placed into a guidance document, allowing the board flexibility to create new categories and set dues.

The proposed changes, notably regarding the president, created an uproar. Participants at the winter meeting found the presentation abrupt, and most members couldn't see what problems the proposed changes were meant to fix.

After a special meeting in March, the board revised the changes; gone was the proposed election process. The guidelines document had been eliminated, and membership categories had been placed in a "board policy document." This would still allow the board to create new categories, such as a virtual membership for members outside the United States and Canada. This latest set of changes has met with a calmer reception.

At the winter meeting, the board also presented a document on conference planning that would have removed responsibilities from the individual divisions and placed them in the hands of an Annual Conference Planning Council. The proposal was withdrawn after complaints from membership.

Poor communication has exacerbated, and in some instances created, several of the problems of the past year. "Roberta's quitting created a black hole," said Hurst. "The board should have overcommunicated. We needed to know more than just 'Everything is OK.' We needed to know what the issues were."

Many board initiatives, while seeming to come from the board, were actually the products of longtime committees. By spring, SLA's board realized it faced a crisis and created BOARD.COMmunicate, an electronic newsletter. From March 3–26, its three issues addressed branding, bylaws, and the executive director search. The board also created a threaded discussion list for members to share ideas about the second bylaw document.

Despite a difficult year, SLA rank and file and leadership remain fiercely optimistic. "We're just going through growing pains, as we try to move forward and respond to the changes around us," said Boodie Newsom-McGinnis, assistant director, Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations library.