Cindy posed 3 questions to the group:
1. What are you doing now that you will not be doing in 3 years?
2. What will you still be doing in 3 years?
3. How can SLA help?
What followed was a discussion rich with ideas that spanned the whole range of the profession, from IT issues to taxonomies, from managing-up to serving our patrons. So what are we doing that might not be a part of our lives in 3 years? Perhaps we'll hardly ever pick up the telephone to make a good old-fashioned phone call. Maybe we won't own so many dual resources. The electronic version might be the only version. Maybe we'll be dealing with fewer physical items in general. We might have less privacy as social networking grows, and maybe we'll be sleeping less as we all check our work email from our blackberries at 2am.
What will we still be doing in 3 years? We will still be connecting our patrons with our resources. We will still be providing reference service and instruction. We will probably still have frustrating IT issues, like ten thousand passwords and interoperability issues, but technology will certainly be prevalent in all aspects of our work.
How can SLA help? We see our friends on facebook, chat with our co-workers in the next cubicle via instant message, send emails to our families, and attend webinars at our desks. Anyone else feel a need for some human contact these days? SLA can help us stay connected, both virtually and in-person. SLA can provide training and programming for mid-career professionals. We can leverage our diverse membership to learn from and network with our peers.
Cindy asks us to think about our core values. What do we want to conserve? What is precious to our profession? These are questions worth some thought and discussion, especially at SLA networking events. Core Value Happy Hour anyone?
-Robin Dodge
SLA-SCC President-Elect
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