Strength in diversity – or numbers?
Jinfo Blog

21st February 2010

By Tim Buckley Owen

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It’s part of the charm of Sue Hill Recruitment’s Friday Breakfasts (http://digbig.com/5bbcrk) that at the last one I attended we never quite got round to discussing the topic on which Sue and her colleagues had prepared notes. Instead a fascinating conversation roamed over how to monitor blogs, whether the pretty picture brigade or usability specialists control your website, and the virtues of ‘sitting by Nellie’. At one point one guest commented – surprisingly perhaps – that there was no such thing as a web professional: no-one overseeing qualifications, nothing you could join. Yet everyone knows what to expect of a web designer and what track record you need to look for. Had the conversation not almost immediately flowed into other interesting channels, this remark might have provided the entrée for the prepared topic: should there be just one large body for the information profession, offering economies of scale, greater lobbying power and global scope? The question is timely, as yet another niche association closes down. Last year alone, the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals merged protectively with the Frost & Sullivan Institute (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e20095) and the City Information Group ceased trading (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e21391). Now the Association of UK Media Librarians (AUKML) is planning to invite as many former members as it can to its own farewell party in May (details from chair@aukml.org.uk). AUKML’s membership had been declining over recent years. Maybe that was inevitable given that media organisations on both sides of the Atlantic have been steadily dispensing with their in-house information services (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e14595 and http://www.vivavip.com/go/e16351 for example). Now data collected by Michele Quigley, a researcher at the Palm Beach Post, shows that at least 250 news librarians in the United States lost their jobs since 2007 (http://digbig.com/5bbcrm). And with the Columbia Journalism Review dubbing news librarians both an ‘endangered species’ and a ‘dying breed’ (http://digbig.com/5bbcrn), it’s small wonder that, in the UK, AUKML is the latest victim. Writing in AUKML’s Deadline newsletter a year ago, Charles Oppenheim suggested that it might benefit from becoming part of the Special Libraries Association. There were issues involved in being subject to the larger body’s rules and procedures, he acknowledged – but he still felt that AUKML was strong enough to retain its unique style and relationship with suppliers of news services (still accessible at http://www.aukml.org.uk/ – follow links to Deadline > February 2009). So with consolidation seemingly the order of the day, the issue comes full circle and returns to the topic we might have discussed at Sue Hill’s breakfast. As CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals) embarks on its own Big Conversation on where it should be going next (http://digbig.com/5bbcrp), should we have just one central focal point, and which should it be?

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