SLA President Hildy Dworkin Reflects on the Association’s Dissolution, Future, and Legacy

In early 2025, the Special Libraries Association (SLA), a 116-year-old cornerstone of the information profession, announced it would begin the process of dissolving. Amid this turning point, SLA President Hildy Dworkin continues to champion the organization’s mission, support its members, and lead efforts to preserve its legacy. 

I had the opportunity to speak with Hildy about the current state of SLA, her own involvement and observations about its role in the lives of special librarians, and its unique professional value. She also shared how this year’s conference—aptly themed Creative Transformation: Shaping the Future of the Information Profession—will celebrate the enduring value of SLA and the strength of its community. 

Meet SLA President Hildy Dworkin

Lauren Hays: Please introduce yourself to our readers. 

Hildy Dworkin: I am Hildy Dworkin, the president of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) for 2025. I have been working for a New York City agency for the last 25 years as their librarian, and in other capacities over 30 years for the city. 

The Status of SLA: “We Are Still Active”

LH: How would you describe the status of SLA? 

Hildy: Well, we are definitely at a crossroads. Although it was announced that SLA is dissolving, we are currently still active. We are still supporting all member benefits and will likely continue to do so for several months. There is no exact time or date when that will stop.

Because SLA members have a very strong relationship with SLA, we are exploring all options to keep the SLA legacy alive. This includes discussing mergers with other associations. 

I know for myself, SLA was the association that helped me the most in my career. I would not be at the top of my career today without the support of SLA members. The association offered a chance to practice leadership, which helped raise my visibility in my agency, and as a result, I was able to do many more creative and important things.

We do not have many answers to questions about moving forward. The status is staying the same, giving members all their benefits. In fact, we had over 50 new members join after the announcement, so that says a lot about what SLA has meant and still means in the information community.

Industry Shifts and Challenges Facing Special Librarians

LH: In the press release, you mentioned that shifting industry dynamics and changing professional needs were part of what led to the dissolution of SLA. Will you speak to what industry dynamics have shifted? 

Hildy: The two big issues are technological changes and outside forces. Many librarians, who are members of various associations, often have their dues paid by employers—and these are often first to be cut when employers reduce their budgets. 

I can speak to years ago, when I first started, when the World Wide Web was just bursting onto the scene. There was not a lot of helpful information on the Internet. As the web grew, the sentiment in the corporate world about librarians was, “Why do we need them if everything is on the internet?” Then, organizations found out that they did not know how to find anything on the Internet. Today, with so much more content available on the internet, librarians are needed more than ever.

Librarians remain actively engaged in various professions as information or data specialists, and rely particularly on the Special Libraries Association for career connections. 

Librarians have always been able to adapt to changes in information and society. In fact, that is why SLA was founded in 1909.

Our founding President, John Cotton Dana, recognized the need for an association due to changes in the profession. People were no longer only public or academic librarians; they were moving into different roles within for-profit organizations. 

That has been the way of the world and the profession ever since. It is part of our foundational history to say we are always ready for change. For example, IT may be responsible for hosting databases, but the librarians are the ones teaching the staff how to search for information and are responsible for providing in-depth research as applied technologists. Technology is one of the biggest influences on the changes within the SLA. 

We have always had to battle stereotypes and attitudes about librarians. I have had people say things to me, such as, “Oh, libraries have books,” or in a questioning way, “You need a Master’s degree for that?” As if anybody could just sit down and decide what user needs are, what an organization’s needs are, and what would best help enrich that organization’s knowledge and competitive intelligence. 

Adapting to Changing Professional Needs

LH: What are the changing professional needs of special librarians? 

Hildy: I think staying current with technology is one of the biggest things. We need to ensure that we have continuous training and are prepared to embrace emerging technologies. Librarians need to be very flexible and able to switch gears. Many of us are adept at sitting down at a database without formal training and figuring it out; it is really about being flexible. 

Wherever we need to get the education required to thrive in our work, it usually comes from other librarians, fellow SLA members, for example. Our annual conference is the place where I learn so many of my basic skills or how to apply them, and I bring what I learn back to my organization. 

Mentoring and guidance certainly comes from SLA members, and early in my career was based on the knowledge of people who were in the profession longer than I. I started out as a solo librarian, not even knowing what that term meant. I had never had an internship, and there were no other staff. I had never run a library, and I had to recreate a special library after it had been closed for a few years. At that time, technology was becoming instrumental to library jobs. One of the first implementations I did was the first web-based catalog for my organization. 

That is how I found SLA in 2000. I was looking for help, and I had heard about SLA somewhere in the back of my head—I think perhaps through school. 

Just on a listserv, I would say, “Hey, I have this. Which direction do I go in? Do I need to request this type of equipment? What do I need to do this, or what are samples of approaches I can take to be able to satisfy this request that I got?” 

What to Expect from the SLA 2025 Conference

LH: Please discuss the upcoming conference. I know it is happening June 7th through 10th at the University of Pittsburgh. What can attendees expect? 

Hildy: Attendees can expect the same high quality of educational sessions. We have over 40 sessions with a mix of core topics like standards, copyright, budgeting, building leadership skills, innovation, and transformations, which is what we just talked about. One of them, of course, is the usage of AI in different library settings. Some of those concepts did not exist 25 years ago, but SLA has always been on the cutting edge of offering educational programs to reflect what the professional and information world looks like at the time. 

There will also be roundtables and special topics focusing on AI tools and usage, leadership and management, and government information. Obviously, government information professionals are going through some difficult times, no matter their level in terms of federal, state, or local agencies, as different funding streams may dry up. 

A roundtable would definitely open up a conversation, whether you just need to share what’s going on with yourself, or somebody can offer advice on something, or as a way to see how many people are going through the same thing. It is easier to experience and get through difficult times when you know there are other people experiencing the same thing, and who understand what you are facing. 

To me, the core of SLA has always been the members, and that is what the conference is all about— meeting and learning from one another and exchanging ideas. 

The name itself this year is “Creative Transformation: Shaping the Future of the Information Profession.” There are many programs geared towards this theme. 

One of the advantages of SLA is that we do have a great community strength. Being there for one another, being friends, and having fun. I used to tell my friends who were not information professionals that I am going to my happy place now, and for me, the conference was my happiest place on earth. 

You can try and explain to somebody that yes, these are some of my best friends, but yes, I do only see them once a year, pre-Zoom and other virtual tools. Nevertheless, I do have lifelong friends whom I met through SLA. I have mentors who then became friends. I had a mentor from 25 years ago who helped me with my leadership path, and when I became President-elect, before I became President, I called on that original mentor. They allowed me to just talk, and helped shape what I was saying, and ended with, “You’ve got this.” That support is the thing about SLA relationships that really comes alive in person at the conference. 

We had an amazing conference committee who worked so hard to plan everything and to find speakers. A good number of SLA members are the speakers, again reflecting how SLA members learn from other members. 

Celebrating the SLA Legacy

LH: Is there anything else you would like to share? 

Hildy: I want to thank all of our sponsors for this conference. First, Lucidea, and we also have Clarivate, S&P Global, and quite a few others you can find on our website. 

This conference promises to be the biggest celebration of the association we have ever had.

We are creating some committees to organize legacy and history activities and I am looking for a collection of memories.

I am also going to be open to any member who wants to talk to me. I had said that from the start that they could contact me for a one-on-one talk, whether they had a suggestion for SLA’s future, or just wanted to talk about their feelings about the moment in time. I am finding that those conversations are always uplifting. 

Throughout the years, I would return from conferences super energized. I would have so much enthusiasm and so many ideas, and I would pick out a few that I thought I could get my organization to support. 

One of the greatest things that came out of what I have learned from SLA was an agency anniversary event I planned. This is really right out of SLA conference planning—I created a moderated discussion on leadership with former leaders of the agency along with the current one. 

It really was quite amazing. I thought I should have retired the day after. I was behind the scenes, prepping an extremely high-level person, not in the agency, but in the city itself. I said in my head at the time, “Wow, this is great.” If somebody told me I would be doing this when I graduated with my degree, I would have told them they were insane. But this is what SLA did for me, and I really think we have as many stories like that as there are members. 

I truly want the conference to be a celebration. We want to celebrate the 116-year legacy of SLA, going back to its creation in 1909, in a variety of different ways. One thing that is very exciting this year is that we are going to have our awards presentations in person, because we had not been able to do that since before the COVID shutdowns. That is very, very exciting. We have quite a number of people who are so deserving that I’m sure our Awards Committee had a difficult time choosing. Our members tend to be very active, even if they just started as students. 

We also offered student scholarships that covered registration and other conference expenses, making it accessible to anyone just starting out. We are offering scholarships for people to attend at the beginning of their career so that they can have a whole bunch of knowledge to take home with them. 

LH: Wonderful. 

Hildy: Yeah, this is my favorite. I have to say, SLA is a part of my heart. When I say I love the organization, the first thing that pops into my mind is a big auditorium full of all members, and that is what it is to me. The core of it is the member relationships, and that is something that, regardless of the status and the future, we want to continue.