A to-do list for September.

It's truly saddening to see the images transmitted from the southern United States in recent weeks, as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have wreaked havoc and brought absolute devastation to cities like New Orleans. While the people living in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas experienced loss of life and property, people around the world are left to wonder just what happened to the response of government in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The increased focus on more coordinated preparedness and response to emergencies by government officials after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 yielded one critical learning point: information sharing among local, regional, and national governments must improve. It seems that we still have some work to do.

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To be sure, the disastrous floods in New Orleans after Katrina passed the area exposed short-term and long-term weaknesses in the ability of government to protect citizens from disaster AND to help them in their greatest time of need. The latter is certainly the more egregious failing, since responsibility can be placed on all levels of government for a variety of reasons. But once things went from bad to worse, the ability of local, state, and federal emergency management agencies to get things done was shown to be atrocious. It is not possible to compare this disaster with the great tsunami that hit southern Asia last year. Save a dramatic investment in early warning systems for the region--which now are being considered--years of planning would have still resulted in a dramatic loss of life. New Orleans residents could have benefited greatly from a coordinated information sharing program, with governments and private sector organizations partnering to combine talents and generating awareness at strategic points in the evacuation and recovery processes.

Was the knowledge of the potential for a devastating flood something that was not shared effectively? Was that knowledge distributed widely enough or deeply enough throughout government circles? What must happen now to ensure that similar disasters do not occur elsewhere in the world?

In the wake of these natural disasters, there are lots of questions we must answer.

But we in the SLA community need only to look back to Don Tapscott's remarks at SLA 2005 in Toronto to glean some insight: Don told the capacity crowd that, in an age when access to information is unprecedented, we stand uniquely positioned to help deliver what people need to know, when they need to know it. Could we be on the verge of a new and more strategic value proposition for the information profession?

When we think about the current role played by info pros in society, we mostly think of the public or academic libraries in our communities. On a local or even regional level, however, the need for coordination of information sharing is now seen as an absolute necessity. This could be the dawning of a new place in the societal value chain for this profession. In fact, SLA is exploring this very possibility in partnering with the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science and the U.S. Government Printing Office to make an application for a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The grant would be used to develop a training system to prepare librarians and information professionals to serve as information collectors and disseminators in local emergency preparedness programs, but also in the aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster. We'll hear about the success of that grant request very soon.

As the people of Louisiana and Mississippi were beginning to realize the impact of Hurricane Katrina, SLA members began to respond with queries on the safety and health of fellow members and offers of help. SLA's volunteers, the Information Professionals Alliance on Natural Disasters and Accidents (IPANDA) engaged Louisiana and Southern Mississippi Chapter President Lisl Zach to determine first steps. The IPANDA Blog was activated as a hub for sharing news and information, and SLA staff helped Zach to deliver a message to all info pros in our community--member and non-member alike--asking for news on their personal safety, status of their collections, and offering assistance where needed. Several members from offered temporary room and board, and talk began of ways SLA could help libraries and information centers recover from the disaster.

In this issue of Information Outlook, Dav Robertson, chair of the SLA Task Force on Natural Disasters, tells us more about the SLA response strategy for natural disasters worldwide. And Forrest Spencer reports on the actions of many information professionals to help their employers and one another during these horrible experiences.

Moving forward, I encourage you to help us improve our response to future catastrophic events over time by getting involved in IPANDA. Together, we can make the SLA experience more valuable and go beyond member benefits. More important, let's all consider the value proposition of the profession to society, as this will ultimately help us to redefine our role in the global community.

SLA Votes

By now, you have no doubt seen the announcements regarding SLA's first-ever online balloting experience. If you haven't reviewed the details, you may do so at the SLA Bylaws Information Center (www.sla.org/bylaws). We will be announcing the results of the vote on 19 October. Look for a special edition of SLA Connections in your electronic mail that will report on the outcome and its impact.