Comments on: ALA through my eyes: One year later

By: jenn graham

jenn graham — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:35:09 +0000

Meredith, as always, well said. This post resonates with me immensely. Leslie Burger recently spoke at my university and I have to say she may have reigned me back in to ALA with her 10 Tips for librarians, which can in many ways be read as 10 Tips for library directors.

As a new librarian with lots of loans to pay, making below average starting salary, my ALA dues take a bite. It hurts even more when I feel like I am subscribing to an organization that’s stagnating. No more. Thanks for articulating so eloquently how and why ALA might just be getting some of us next gen-ers back….

Finally, my favorite Leslie Burger quotation from the recent talk? Paraphrasing: “Change is the only constant”.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:49:16 +0000

I’m still in library school. I recently joined ALA, but I haven’t seen any advantages to it yet. And I was a little put off by the fees. There were several sub-groups I was interested in, but I’m not going to pay an additional fee to be a member of a sub-group until I’ve seen some advantage to being a part of the larger group.

In general, I’ve noticed this about the library world. There are so many groups, and so many sub-groups of those groups, and so many local groups and consortia….it’s just overwhelming to know where to start – and where to spend your money.

By: Tina Bartholoma

Tina Bartholoma — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 17:04:53 +0000

I would love a new memeber orientation. I too was a distance learning student and I’ve now had a positon as a professional for six months. In all of that time I’ve maintained membership in several ALA organizations but the only “live” contact I’ve had is with NMRT list service, everything else is just advertisements and magazines via the mail box. I want to do more but have no idea how.

By: Bruce Alan Wilson

Bruce Alan Wilson — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:11:10 +0000

The biggest thing that ALA can do is to stop getting itself involved in social causes that are unrelated to (or are related to only peripherally to) Librarianship and focus upon its core responsibilities. Back in library school, my Social Foundations of Librarianship professor would often, when our discussions took off on social and political issues, would ask the question, “Although this is interesting and no doubt important, what has it to do with libraries?”

Related to this, we should remember that ALA is not an auxiliary to the liberal wing of the Democratic party. There are conservative Democrats, Republicans, and even Libertarians in the profession, and their voices need to be heard also.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:39:00 +0000

Meredith,
This really resonated with me. Especially the point about being new and not knowing how to get involved, or being thwarted by requirements. I am a recent grad and a newly appointed Library director at a small academic library. As such, I was hoping for some mentoring through CLS, but it requires not only to go to the Midwinter conference, but also to go 3 days early for a preconference. Definitely not affordable…

I really hope that ALA works on this…
I appreciate the online courses through ACRL which are not too expensive and are a help to me, but more needs to be done.

Thanks for keeping up the dialog and encouraging the use of blogs and wikis!

Cheers!

By: Julian

Julian — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:14:53 +0000

About two months ago, the ALA’s Washington DC office invited members of my state’s library association to come in for a tour and a discussion of library issues handled by their office (government relations and information technology policy). I went mostly for the brief tour, but I found the discussion to be far more interesting. That was my first direct contact with ALA, after a few years of being adamant about not wanting to involve myself with ALA. Despite being in a room with relatively more important people, it wasn’t scary at all.

I plan on going to the ALA annual conference in June. I will admit that the number one reason why I’m going is because it’s a short walk away from work, and that I likely wouldn’t travel for it every year. (Additionally, I hope to not have as much time for conferences by this time next year.) However, I think I really owe ALA a chance. I gave my state library association a chance, despite initially thinking, like with ALA, that it could not serve me — someone who is not yet a librarian, and not working in a public/municipal or general academic library. Instead of refusing to be a part of an organization where I did not represent the majority, I decided to bring something a little different to the table. I’m putting in as much as I can with the state association, instead of just being a card-carrying member. I had to seek out my own involvement, because the opportunities to get involved were not screaming out directly at me. That is EXACTLY what happened on a much larger scale over the past year with ALA — people started putting into the association what they wanted to get out of it, and now the masses can benefit.

I am sure that my library would much more prefer to pay for me to be a member of AALL (and attend its annual conference) and the local law librarians’ association than any other library association, regardless of cost differential. If I were to join those at this stage, I wouldn’t get as much out of it, nor would I have much to contribute. My mindset with library association membership is that it’s not AN association, or THEIR association; it’s MY association.

By: Alison

Alison — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:12:45 +0000

I’m still in library school as well, and this year I let my ALA membership lapse (all $40 of it, or whatever it is). My school has some really great student chapters (disclaimer: I’m the vice-chair of our ASIS&T chapter). Sadly, the ALA chapter is not one of them. I got a couple of emails from them this semester – I think they had one meeting, and that was it.

The more active student chapters do a much better job of catching the interest of all us very busy students, and ALA is not doing anything to harness that. I know it’d be “just another thing” for ALA national to do, but I think they might see some great results if they do more to support and encourage the student chapters. There is something to be said for reeling us in early, both in terms of finding future leadership and membeship funds.

By: Kate

Kate — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:47:16 +0000

As a current LIS student, I can definitely respond to your questions about LIS education that it is still (at least at my school), if not in crisis, only responding in fits and starts to the need to update LIS curriculum. The majority of what I’ve learned about Web/Library 2.0 I’ve learned, not surprisingly, from actually finding out about on my own and playing with all of the different technologies.

Despite this, I’m heartened (and hope that you will be) by the fact that the president-elect for 2006-2007, Loriene Roy, is teaching faculty at UT Austin, and, according to her platform (http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~loriene/prez_elect/platform/index.html), is passionately committed to improving LIS education….she’s even listed an “Improving LIS Education through Practice” task force as an integral part of her platform.

Granted, as I’m graduating from my program in May 2007, I will likely not benefit from her efforts, but it’s nice to see that someone is picking up the torch from where Gorman left off….minus the blog-bashing.

(http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~loriene/prez_elect/blogs/index.html)

By: Jim Rettig

Jim Rettig — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:46:03 +0000

Meredith, I don’t think that I am reading your mind nor anyone else’s. I have simply become increasingly concerned about ALA’s long-term viability and vitality, the ways in which its future leadership can interact with and through ALA for the benefit of the profession, and ways in which technology can facilitate and accelerate needed change. I want ALA to identify the best ideas, test them, see what works and what doesn’t, try anew, and eventually get it right. I’m just trying to do my part.
Thank you for your very thoughtful post on ALA as it is and as it can be!