This was a posting to the SF Bay Region Chapter mailing list, from a member with some relevant corporate experience:
>>>>from Chris Orr:>>>>>>>>>>>>
Naming can be fun. It can also be a gigantic blunder. The marketplace is littered with horrible trade names (remember a computer app called iSmell?). But there are brilliant ones, too (Google is one, imho). I believe SLA is committed to a better process than what we went through years ago when we abandoned the quest for lack of imagination and courage (again, my humble opinion).
People who write names for a living are professional wordsmiths and are generally witty and opinionated. There are several blogs on the practice of naming that are great reads with educational purpose. Just a sample:
http://www.businessnamingbasics.com/
http://www.snarkhunting.com/
http://eatmywords.typepad.com/eat_my_words_the_dish/head_scratchers/
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I personally am not opposed to a name change per se, but share my friend's concern about the difficulty of the task. I am also very worried that the name change debate takes away from the significant work done in the Allignment Project. What we do is varied, and difficult to define. So difficult that in 100 years, we have not been able to come up with a "better" name for our organization. If we get distracted from the Allignment Project with yet another name change debate, we could very well end up losing both an opportunity to make our organization more visible, and the benefit of 100 years of branding. I'd much prefer to see a name change discussion delayed until much later in the Allignment Project, when we have more concrete results. However, the cat is out of the bag. I urge the leadership to tread carefully and ensure that the Allignement Project does not dissapear under the weight of the naming debate. -Mimi Calter
Comments (8)
Jul 07, 2009
Gloria Zamora says:
I want to thank Mimi for her comments and the links she supplied. Also tha...I want to thank Mimi for her comments and the links she supplied. Also thanks to Chris Orr about her comments about distraction from the Alignment Project. The Board and staff have not entered into this decision to pursue a name change lightly. There has been much discussion and review of the research as well as comments from our members who have asked when we planned to move forward on a name change. I believe we are aware of the possible pitfalls and therefore we are going through the same rigorous review of words and concepts that we went through in the initial phases of the alignment project. Names will be tested internally among information professionals and externally among CEO's and others who use the services that information professionals provide. We believe that with the help of our members as alignment ambassadors we will have members talking to members and reviewing the research with them. In this way we hope to reach as many people as possible to communicate the message of what are positive messages that could be conveyed with a new name. I personally do not believe this will be a distraction from moving ahead with the alignment project, it is only one aspect, albeit a highly visible one, of the overall project. We are going where the research has led us. The alignment project will help us set the strategic direction of the association whether we change the name or not. I appreciate these comments and hope this discussion will continue.
Jul 15, 2009
Alison Verbeck says:
I hope when the names are tested with information professionals, you decide to a...I hope when the names are tested with information professionals, you decide to also test the name in academia and with special librarians. I'm already feeling like I'm somehow an embarrassment to SLA by actually BEING a librarian within a library organization. In my prior job (as a Technical Librarian in a corporation - Yes, I was a Librarian there, too), the CEO would have been clueless about what the group should be. Realistically, he would ask his secretary to get him some information and she would call the Library for help. Perhaps you could include the CEO's secretaries in your testing.
Jul 15, 2009
Judith Siess says:
Alison,\\ I, too, am feeling like a dinosaur. I am very proud that I'm a librari...Alison,
I, too, am feeling like a dinosaur. I am very proud that I'm a librarian (even tho retired) and don't want to be an information specialist/professional, whatever. In fact, if librarian doesn't appear in the new name of SLA I will probably drop my nearly 30-year membership in protest.
Jul 15, 2009
Jerry Baldwin says:
Alison and Judith bear witness to a phenomonon that I have observed within SLA f...Alison and Judith bear witness to a phenomonon that I have observed within SLA for quite sometime. I have no data to back up my assertion but I believe the organization's increasing fascination with business-apeak, including buzzword position titles and disconfort with the "L" wprd has driven away more law, medical, academic and public librarians than it can ever hope to gain from possibly attracting allied "information professionals," most of whom already have their own professional associations. If anything, recent history has shown that people are more attracted to increasingly specialized groups such as AALL, MLA, ASIST, ARMA, NMA, etc. than to generic, less focused groups.
Jul 15, 2009
Judith Siess says:
AMEN\!AMEN!
Jul 16, 2009
Gloria Zamora says:
Jerry raises an interesting point. I have a somewhat different observation...Jerry raises an interesting point. I have a somewhat different observation based specifically on two of our newer divisions, legal and academic. We have seen increasing membership from people in AALL and ALA because we created these two divisions. We have attracted people whose professional needs were not necessarily addressed by these two organizations. Our primary attraction is our diversity as demonstrated through our divisions. Information professionals in these two areas could get their specific subject area needs met through their division affiliation and programming at the conference, but then they could also participate in a wider variety of interests due to the diverse programming available because of our other subject and career divisions. So rather than referring to a possibility of becoming "generic" or "less focused" our experience shows that this is a huge opportunity for us in terms of attracting new members to our association.
Jul 17, 2009
Kadri Kallikorm-Rhodes says:
I think Mimi makes an excellent point maybe getting further along the Alignment ...I think Mimi makes an excellent point - maybe getting further along the Alignment route will give us a better insight into the name issue?
Jul 20, 2009
chris vestal says:
Gloria brings up a good point. My job title is actually "searcher" and even thou...Gloria brings up a good point. My job title is actually "searcher" and even though my employer prefers librarians for this position there are several searchers with backgrounds in other fields. They do the same work I do, use the same databases I do and face the same challenges as I do. They could greatly benefit from being a member of SLA, and the association could be enriched by their point of view. But with the association having such a specialized name my colleagues don't think of it as being relevant to them. There's more than one kind of information professional, we could benefit by adopting a name that's welcoming to everyone.