No to ASKPro
Late yesterday, I found out that my professional organization’s membership – the Special Library Association – voted down it’s name change proposal. The reasons were fairly obvious. While a most members think that we need to branch out to other disciplines (which we do) the alternative name, well, sucked. The Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals just didn’t strike a chord. Neither did it’s acronym of ASKPro.
You would think, then, that the leadership would tread more carefully when posting news to the internet on the topic but this hasn’t been the case. An already oft-quoted blurb from the SLA website reads, “voting in record numbers, SLA members failed to approve a proposal to change the organization’s name to the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals.” Note the word failed. While I will admit that I did vote for the name change I’m a little relieved that it didn’t go through. Most importantly, it’s also worth pointing out that the real failure here wasn’t on the part of SLA’s membership. It was on the part of name change proponents to find an adequate replacement.
