When the U.S. historian and Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin wrote The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America back in 1961, he was driven by a discomfort with the increasing role that illusions, contrivance, and fabrications played in organizing our sense of each other. His impulse situated him far ahead of his time, for nearly 50 years later, while few academics seem bothered by the dissemination of information about their research agendas, still the very mention of the words "image management" generates shudders and groans. Because "image management" suggests that somehow we are being too managerial, calculated, packaged, scripted, staged, even strategic in our presentation of selves, we like to avoid making conscious decisions - or admitting that we do so - about how we look to others.

The information environment, though, has changed dramatically in the half-century since Boorstin wrote his scathing attack on image management. Consider the U.S. context from which he launched his criticism: The image analysis of the early '60s centered on Richard Nixon's five o'clock shadow during the first Kennedy-Nixon presidential debate; President Kennedy was acclaimed for opening his news conferences to live broadcast; U.S. TV network news ran a mere 15 minutes a day; and only 88% of U.S. households owned a television set. Today in the majority of locations around the globe, securing knowledge from a multiplicity of mediated sources is a far more complicated, continuous, and necessary part of how we engage with the world, and it takes on a similarly sophisticated shape in the various venues that comprise the global information environment.

We increasingly experience an "on demand" relationship with a slew of information devices that we multitask assertively: China alone houses upwards of 330 million Internet users, nearly 100 million more than navigate online in North America and more than the entire U.S. population, according to the China Internet Network Information Center; and Pyramid Research anticipates that Latin America may be the next Internet hotspot. Europeans use the Internet extensively: Microsoft estimates an average nearing 14.2 hours per week, nearly 3 hours more per week than they watch television, but, according to Arbor Networks, they do so less in the evenings. Finland just made 1MB broadband access a legal right.

Mobile telephones, which sport an increasing repertoire of interactive and video capabilities, drew some 4.1 billion mobile subscriptions last year, up four times from 2002, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Six in ten of the world's population now sport mobile phones, with developing countries accounting for about two-thirds of the phones in use and with Africa - exhibiting national penetration rates of 30% to 100% - comprising the fastest-growing mobile phone market in the world, according to Africa Telecom News. In the United States, Americans watch cable rather than broadcast media, personalizing niche delivery platforms during the 141 monthly hours that they watch TV, by the latest Nielsen estimates; they embrace mobile technologies and migrate to the internet at an accelerated pace, where they spend hours - again, according to Nielsen, upwards of 68 per month -- searching actively, continuously and energetically.

In other words, the information environment, in the words of Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism's 2009 Report on the State of the Media, is bursting with potential, as users "hunt and gather what they want when they want it, use search to comb among destinations and share what they find through a growing network of social media." In multiple locations, we discover others online with like interests and employ search engines for information on topics as wide-ranging as recipes and religion; Google recently issued tips to individuals wanting to manage their personal and professional reputations on the internet. Though these numbers differ by country and region, the broad message across geographic locations remains the same: The global information environment houses frenetic activity, and not taking steps to manage what others know about us may create a distinct disadvantage in how we manage ourselves.

When I tendered my bid for ICA president, one of the goals I articulated was making ourselves more visible to those outside of ICA. As a journalist-turned-academic, I speak both for those who gather the news and those who seek to break into the news when I say that newswork is all about strategies of self presentation. How we present ourselves, how we make our scholarship accessible to the public, how we present our work so that journalists can pick up on it, how we get on the radar of those who don't know about us - these are all issues residing at the core of image management.

For that reason, this past summer I set up a task force to investigate the viability of appointing a press officer for the association. I believe that having someone to help us manage ourselves by managing our image might help bring ICA members' insights and research into the international conversation on matters of social importance. As I write this, the news is filled with stories about aid workers being freed in Darfur, battles in Pakistan, health care reform in the United States, and a fraudulent "balloon boy." On each count, I can think of ICA members who would have much to contribute to the public understanding of these news items. And then there are member-generated stories that could also easily fill the news hole. Boorstin warned that image management would bring "the programming of our experiences [with] no peaks and valleys, no surprises." Our research is happily filled with multiple peaks and valleys, and its often surprising findings deserve to animate and illuminate the public sphere. We need to continue doing what we already do best but in a way that helps others see us in action.

In that a press officer would serve as our point-person with the news media, though exactly in what fashion the task force has yet to propose, I'd like to delineate what some of this role might accomplish: In essence, an ICA press officer would be involved in helping us establish and maintain an engaged voice in the public sphere, and in this regard image management - of the association, writ large, and of its members - is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Promoting our image will hopefully drive not only the recognizability of ICA and its members but secure a legitimate space for communication as a field with much to say about the events, issues and topics occupying the public's attention. From a press officer's viewpoint, image management might include liaising with the news media and conducting media outreach; handling media queries; monitoring news coverage so as to pitch members' research in response; writing press releases, op-eds, and news articles; arranging news briefings, conferences, media interviews, and public events; and maintaining and updating information on ICA's website.

Performing these tasks, however, depends on member support for the idea. How to invigorate that connection - how to ensure that ICA members are actively disseminating information about themselves, members of their Divisions and Interest Groups, colleagues - will be the task at hand. In particular, the hope to establish a truly global press officer - who can attend not just to the news media in his or her surrounding location but develop a system for sustaining ties with the multiple media systems in the various regions that comprise ICA membership is a critical part of making this work.

And so I ask: As ICA members, what do you want from a press officer? What do you expect? How do you feel that you can best get involved? What problems do you foresee? What strengths would you want a press officer to target? As our conversation on establishing a press officer is in its early stages, please consider this an invitation to get involved.

While serving as the Librarian of Congress, Boorstin celebrated the Library by turning it into a space for concerts, intellectual activity, and cultural events, and adding picnic tables and a reading center. Ordering the Library's majestic but sealed bronze doors to be kept open, he famously declared, "They said it would create a draft, and I said that's just what we need." Perhaps a draft is what ICA needs too.