Special Librarians Put Knowledge to Work
in Los Angeles
Los Angeles played host June 8–13 to some 4,600 corporate, sci-tech, law, museum, and other information professionals at the 93rd annual conference of the Special Libraries Association.
The conference theme, “Putting Knowledge to Work,” was keynoted by 92-year-old author and guru of modern management Peter Drucker, who told attendees that the first indications of new trends in a given industry often turn up first in information requests to company libraries. He credited the success of one leading multinational consumer-goods corporation to analyzing all of its library queries worldwide every three months to gain an edge over its competitors.
SLA is putting its own resources to work to reinvent itself in the wake of an approximate 15% drop in membership over the past five years. One significant step took place at the closing business meeting when a quorum of voting members approved a completely revamped set of bylaws. SLA President Hope Tillman told American Libraries that the changes were needed in order to be “more flexible in creating new member categories—for library vendors, information-technology staff, and many other nontraditional groups.”
Also in the planning stages are a new association logo and possibly even a new name—one that, Tillman said, “can convince employers that what we do is relevant to their info-center staffs, yet at the same time lets traditional institutions know that this is the place for them.”
Now that it has installed a new set of board members at the closing meeting, SLA will also move quickly to find a new executive director to replace Roberta Shaffer, who stepped down in February.
A full report on the conference is scheduled for the August American Libraries.
Posted June 17, 2002.
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