Posted June 23, 2003.

SLA Keeps Its Name, Hires Director

After three years of spirited debate, members of the Special Libraries Association failed to win enough support to change or initialize the organization’s name at its 94th annual conference in New York City the second week in June. An initial vote to make the SLA acronym the official name was defeated 867 to 87, while a proposed title, Information Professionals International, was favored by most members present (521 to 369) but fell 73 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for a bylaws change.

“Everyone now knows pretty much what we need to do,” SLA Branding Task Force Chair Stephen Abram said in the June 16 Information Today. “We need to go international, reposition ourselves as an association for information professionals—a little broader based—and promote the role of specialized librarianship as opposed to libraries.” He added that the association is developing a “new logo, new tag line, an aggressive new website, and an aggressive new marketing plan.”

Just before its New York conference, SLA announced it had appointed Janice R. Lachance to fill the executive director position vacated by Roberta Shaffer in February 2002. Lachance has been a strategic-planning consultant for the past two years and held various positions with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1997 to 2001.

Posted June 23, 2003.