Address by Incoming President Leigh Hallingby

SLA-NY Annual Meeting

Thursday, October 15, 2009
6:30 – 7:30 PM
Skadden Arps

First, I want to thank the one person Michelle has not yet thanked, which is Michelle --
for being our President for 2009. We have had a very busy and highly productive year
under her leadership. And I also want to second Michelle’s thanks to all the members of
the Board and Advisory Committee and all others who have given back to the chapter in
2009. SLA-NY is an organization run totally by volunteers, and so all generous
contributions of energy and time are greatly appreciated.

Each incoming Chapter President typically selects a theme for the year, as do the
Association Presidents. Michelle’s for 2009 has been “Exceeding Expectations.” Mine
for 2010 will be “Forging a New Identity.” I was actually first inspired to choose this
theme by our Centennial Year program meetings, so capably planned by Carol Ginsberg.
I hope you were all able to get to one or more of them. As you may or may not
remember, we had our January program on the future of SLA and then, in honor of our
100th birthday, the next four programs went beyond the information profession arena to
focus on various aspects of New York:
• Opportunities of NY in February on maintaining
diversity in a challenging job environment
• Psyche of NY in March on managing change.
• The Legal of NY in April on prosecuting the Gottis.
• And finally Economics of NY in May on layoffs and
their consequences

As varied as these programs were, there is actually a theme that I thought emerged. If
you were at the February program where Professor Michael Tushman spoke about change
and resistance to change by corporations, you may remember the wonderful example he
gave of how the Swiss watch manufacturers resisted the introduction of quartz crystal
watch technology when it arrived in the 1960’s even though it was fantastically accurate
and amazingly inexpensive. Why did they resist it? Because Omega and other Swiss
companies made elegant gold watches for high end customers. In other words, low-
priced quartz crystal watches did not fit in with their Identity.

For the May program the speaker was Louis Uchitelle of the NY Times, who shared
insights from his 2006 book "The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their
Consequences." One of his main points is that layoffs can be devastating for many
workers because people’s Identity is so tied up in their jobs and careers. So there was the
all-important word Identity again, this time in reference to individuals, rather than to
corporations.
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So the theme of Identity seems to me to fit perfectly with where we have just been. It
also fits perfectly with where our profession in general and SLA in particular are going –
in 3 ways.

First, on a contextual level, with so many information professionals laid off and so many
libraries closed down, I think it is safe to say that our profession is undergoing an IDEN
Identity TITY crisis and transformation. This has of course been caused in large part by
the technological revolution and then exacerbated significantly by the Great Recession.
Employment opportunities that have existed for us librarians and information
professionals for decades have now often vanished. Fortunately new ones have emerged
in areas such as information architecture and content management, but not necessarily as
many and quickly as needed and we are not necessarily all prepared to transition into
these kinds of positions.

Second, on the Association level, we know from the presentation that we just heard from
Michelle about the Alignment Project that SLA is building a new Identity, including a
new name, for the 21st Century.

Finally on the local level, a major way New York Chapter of SLA is rethinking its
Identity is by developing a new Strategic Plan for SLA New York for the next 3 years
which is one of the first tools that we have fashioned for the Chapter’s role in 2010. A
major objective is to make valuable experiences and tools available to all of our members
as we all think about our careers and interests next year. Pam will talk about the Strategic
Plan in a minute, and, most important, about how our members will involved in the next
stage of strategic planning. Another way the NY Chapter is exploring our Identity is by
convening the Information and Intelligence Forum on November 19th, at which we hope
you will all join us for an examination of the challenges of 2009 and the opportunities of
2010.

And of course, as we forge a new Identity by creating a new Strategic Plan at the local
level and supporting the Alignment Project at the global level, SLA-NY will also
continue to offer our membership the same kinds of terrific Professional Development
programs and Employment Task Force programs that have been so useful and successful
this year. It is crucial to help all our members hone their skills and to assist our members
who are in transition to be as well positioned as possible to get back into the workforce.

So as SLA is “Forging a New Identity” on multiple levels in 2010, I hope many Chapter
members who are here tonight and many who are not will continue to join us in this
exciting effort to reposition ourselves as the most competitive information professionals
in the industry.