Following Natalie Ceeney's presentation, Gloria Zamora (President Elect, SLA, USA) examined the alternate careers on offer for the intrepid info pro. With a similar position to Ceeney she added "We are our own worse enemy, we need to blow our own horns more than we do", Zamora believes that sometimes the profession attracts the kind of people who want to help everyone but don't have a tendency to promote themselves.
One of the things the SLA have taken on to deal with this issue is the Alignment project which has concerned itself with finding out what the senior decision makers think the librarians, record keepers and specialists in the organisation are doing.
The perceptions seemed to be that while people understand what a Librarian is and does there is also a lack of appreciation of the specialisation that comes with the territory. Similarly there was uncertainty into what an information professional is. Sound familiar when you are trying to describe what you do to the layperson?
For Zamora, so long as the info profession get out there and bang their drums, there is a positive future, so much so that she believes we should start by bringing in people from other disciplines such as IT. Of course that doesn't mean making way with influencing the decision making process. The fight to make yourself heard will be an ongoing one.
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