lauren's library blog

Leslie Burger

• If you don’t remember anything else: Remember that all of you have the power within you, and as a collective group, have the power to change this organization. No one else is going to do this for you. It is a very membership-driven association.
• A little less than 10% of membership is involved enough to be listed in the organization handbook. 6000ish.
• Very diverse organization: type of library, type of job, age, professional background before librarianship, interests (tech, reading, reference, etc)
• Important to help focus the discussion. We’re at a critical juncture right now. People question the usefulness of libraries. We have to be ready to answer those challenges.
• One comment: ALA is about proactivity. You have to seek out opportunities to get involved. Is there a way to bring people into the fold that aren’t so proactive?
• Someone pointed out how expensive ALA is. This conversation went on for a while. Some discussion about how to get involved you have to pay division dues and go to conferences.
• Discussion of how many librarians are involved because of promotion or tenure, and a lot of those drop off when hit career milestone.
• Pointed out how many people fly to midwinter for one meeting. Very expensive. We’re looking at as of 2010 shortening ALA by one day.
• Summary of our wishlist: some kind of dues structure that would let people pay over time, truth in advertising for how to get involved, pushing more content to members so it’s not all about the conference (use social networking, etc), creating more opportunities for people to be encouraged to be involved with or without traditional committee structure.

Then they had a graduation for us:

Related posts:

1. home sick…
2. ALA/LITA Elections
3. wanna understand ala?
4. Why Professor Johnny Can’t Read
5. Hope for ALA pt 2/3 (or: Why I love ALA Connect)