ALA Marginalia

I can no longer contain my happy mutant self – I can finally announce a new ALA member interest group called Library Boing Boing. It’s a new group full of awesome and win and triple rainbows (yeah, we’re one-upping everything). But what exactly is LBB, you ask?

On the one hand, Library Boing Boing is a collaboration between ALA and the fabulously amazing Boing Boing folks to highlight all of the great new things libraries are doing. The most visible result will be regular posts about those great new things on the Boing Boing site itself.

On the other hand, Library Boing Boing: The Group has its own goals to help happy mutants in local communities connect with their happy mutant librarians to do good, work together on our shared interests, and make the world more better. Here’s the official mission and goals for the group, as noted on the petition that LBB co-convener Jason Griffey submitted to ALA today.

Mission:

To bring librarians and Boing Boing readers (aka, Happy Mutants) together to generate support for and raise interest in libraries via projects at local libraries.

Goals:

• Help find and propose content about libraries that could be posted to Boing Boing.
• Provide active ways for Happy Mutants to support and get involved with their local libraries (eg, toolkits, best practices, ideas for local projects).
• Create dynamic programming at library conferences that Library Boing Boingers can then take outside of the library community to promote libraries (eg, SxSW, local community events, etc.).
• Work together to help Happy Mutants advance our shared interests (eg, copyright reform, net neutrality, game culture, digital divide issues, open government, etc.).
• Coordinate an international community of librarians working with their own Happy Mutant groups.

So how do we make this happen? Right now there’s a petition that any ALA member can sign to formally establish the Library Boing Boing Member Interest Group at the 2012 ALA Midwinter Meeting. Go sign now, because we need 100 signatures to #makeithappen. In Dallas, the ALA Committee on Organization (COO) will review the request and if they endorse it, it will go to ALA Council for final approval.

Then go join the Library Boing Boing community in ALA Connect where we’ll discuss all of the great things the group can do and start planning how to implement them when the group is officially official.

Start dreaming big. What could a dedicated, motivated, inspired group of librarians do with both Boing Boing and their own local happy mutants? How can we spread Library Boing Boing goodness throughout the profession? I’m thinking of things like LBB Kickstarter and getting the first librarian speaker at TED (hopefully just the first of many). LBBers could also host local Boing Boing meetups at their libraries, and the LBB group could create a toolkit interested libraries can use to get started holding their own meetups.

And if you’re coming to Midwinter, save your Sunday evening for the Library Boing Boing #alamw12 Meetup (details TBD soon).

Needless to say I’m pretty excited about this project. The co-conveners for the Library Boing Boing member interest group are Andrea Davis, Jason Griffey, and Patrick Sweeney. I’ll be a staff liaison, along with Tina Coleman. All that’s missing is you. We’ll be posting more details in the community, but we need your help to get the ball rolling. Sign the petition, join the community, and roll up your sleeves, because we have a lot of great work to do together.

I got a first-hand glance at some of the inner workings of ALA policy and procedure during the past six months as I helped shepherd GameRT to round table-hood, so I thought I’d share that experience here to help illustrate one way in which groups form within the Association.

Back in 2007, ALA member Scott Nicholson noticed that the new wave of more social board games and video games were allowing libraries to expand the gaming programming so many of them had already been offering for decades, if not longer (think chess, SCRABBLE, summer reading programs, etc.). To help librarians share knowledge to grow their programs, he formed the original ALA Games and Gaming Member Interest Group (GGMIG), a community that crossed all types of libraries and all types of games.

To start an ALA-wide member interest group (a MIG) only takes signatures from 100 current ALA members and a mission statement/charge. The request then goes to “COO,” ALA’s Committee on Organization. While it’s true that anyone can create an informal community using ALA Connect, but if you want a more official informal group, you start with a MIG.

I used to be one of those people who jokes that only ALA would need a “Committee on Organization,” but we are, after all, librarians, and we do need a group to manage the organization of new, official groups. After sitting in on a couple of COO meetings, I now realize the group is very necessary if we want to avoid duplication of effort and resources (an important function in an association that will turn 135 next week).

Finding no existing groups with conflicting charges or goals, COO recommended to ALA Council that the GGMIG be approved. Council did exactly that in 2008, and the MIG popped into existence. Dr. Nicholson was the MIG’s first chair, and it was able to start presenting programming at ALA conferences. You can find their session at both Midwinter and Annual on Saturday mornings, from 10:30 a.m. to noon.

As the group’s activities expanded, though (helping with National Gaming Day @ your library, running the popular Open Gaming Night social at Annual, etc.), it became clear the MIG needed to become a Round Table in order to better meet its goals.
So in 2011, then GGMIG chair Chris Harris and incoming GGMIG chair JP Porcaro submitted the required 100 member signatures requesting that the MIG become the Games and Gaming Round Table (informally known as GameRT). They also had to come up with a starter mission statement, bylaws, and how much the dues would be. The request went through the same cycle as the MIG, so it started at COO and was recommended to Council, which approved it at the 2011 Annual Conference.

Round Tables are the next step up in the ladder of official ALA groups. Whereas members don’t have to pay dues to join a MIG, round tables are something you formally pay a small amount of money to join. This gives the round table a budget it can use to implement its activities. Other differences between the MIG and GameRT are that the round table can make formal recommendations to ALA, issue publications, give awards, and partner with other organizations. In addition, if GameRT’s membership reaches 1% of ALA’s total membership, it gets representation on ALA Council.

GameRT on my ALA membership form

Because ALA’s fiscal year runs September 1 through August 31, new groups get added to the membership form and into our member database in September. That work was completed this week, which means GameRT is truly official now and ALA members can now log in to ala.org and join the Round Table for $10 (my cost was pro-rated because I’m halfway through my current membership year).

GameRT on my member profile

There’s also a new GameRT group in ALA Connect where members can share ideas, ask questions, etc., and the Steering Committee will begin setting up a committee structure for the Round Table’s various projects (National Gaming Day, ALAPlay at Annual, an award the group will sponsor, updating the Library Gaming Toolkit, and more).

In addition, the Steering Committee needs to put together a slate of candidates to run for office within GameRT in the spring 2012 election. The group will need a president, vice-president (incoming president), and a treasurer to handle the money now that they have a budget. Want to volunteer for office or a committee? Contact current chair JP Porcaro.

I was always the GGMIG’s staff liaison, so I’m now the GameRT liaison since the MIG no longer exists. I submit the group’s meeting requests, keep the committee rosters up-to-date in our member database, and generally help however I can. I’m their tie into the behind-the-scenes side of ALA, so I help its various groups navigate the ALA cloud to accomplish their goals.

I’m really looking forward to working with GameRT members to expand ALA’s gaming initiatives. I hope you’ll join us if gaming is one of your interests. From time to time I’ll post here how the Round Table is progressing, just to share how this stuff happens.

I think GameRT is a great example of a dedicated group of members coming together within ALA to advance a part of libraries and librarianship they feel has a lot of value. Consider this the official announcement that you can go join GameRT!

Jenny Levine: Conference planning is a BHD (Big Hairy Deal) at ALA, with an emphasis on Big. Last year, I literally diagrammed out the whole process to try to get a handle on it in order to create a new conference scheduler in ALA Connect. Every time I think I understand the full scope of it, I find another piece I didn’t know about or fully comprehend. I’m not convinced any one person within ALA truly knows every detail of every step of every process, although a few folks know a lot more than me.

And yet I’m still going to try to explain this behemoth, so here goes. There are exceptions to every rule, but here’s my take on how it works in general, most of the time.

Right now it’s May 2011, and we’re about a month away from the 2011 Annual Conference. If you want to submit a program for Annual 2012, you may have already missed the deadline.

Wait, what?

Yes, you read that correctly – the deadline may have passed. How can that be?

If you read my previous post that takes a snapshot look at Annual, you know there are more than 1,600 sessions this year. Granted, most of those are committee meetings that already have traditional time slots they use year after year, but that still leaves almost 350 presentations/sessions and almost 200 discussion group get-togethers. How do you schedule more than 500 new sessions over a three-day period in a way that makes any sense at all?

You plan carefully, and each session goes through an approval and placement process. By an overwhelming margin, most sessions are scheduled by the 11 divisions and 18 round tables. The others come from ALA committees, ALA affiliates (like CALA or REFORMA), and ALA exhibitors. In order to mesh their own sessions together so that the unit’s Big Name Speaker or Big Session doesn’t conflict with the unit’s board meeting, membership meeting, etc., many divisions cut off their program submission process just over a year in advance of a conference. The unit’s “program planning committee” also tries to make sure sessions on similar topics aren’t in the same time slot. They usually do this work at Annual, where they spend their meeting planning for the next Annual.

Mary Ghikas: But, you say, isn’t that too far in advance? In some cases, yes. Some divisions, like LITA, tend to work on a tighter schedule. Some, like ALCTS, may set up “placeholders” for a day/time but decide on content much closer to the actual event. Most “president’s programs” – both for the ALA and for the divisions – are initially entered as “placeholders,” with final content determined much later. So this isn’t really as rigid as it may seem at first.

Jenny: Diving back into the planning process, the unit program planning committee comes out of Annual 2011 with a plan for 2012, and a representative takes that plan to the Conference Program Coordinating Team (CPCT) meeting in the Fall (a meeting that will become virtual starting this year). This is where representatives of the ALA Conference Committee, the divisions and the round tables try to mesh all of their sessions together to come up with the basic program. They negotiate time slots, look for patterns in like sessions, etc. And even though it seems like every session you want to go to is at the same time on the same day, the CPCT does try to keep similar sessions from being scheduled against each other. Remember, though, that there are really only three days and 4-5 time slots per day in which to pack in those 500+ sessions, in addition to the committee meetings, big name speakers (a.k.a., the Auditorium Series), and other happenings.

After the CPCT has finished its work in the Fall for Annual 2012, around 75% of the program is now set. The ALA units now enter all of their sessions into a form for ALA’s Conference Services staff so that they can start all of the preliminary work. Don’t forget that these staff members are also negotiating with the big name speakers, implementing the details of the contracts with the venues, helping prepare catering orders, finalizing the opening of registration, and more. It’s amazing how much behind-the-scenes action there is to pull together a conference the size of ALA Annual.

Then in March 2012, the program submission form closes so that ALA staff can begin placing those 1600+ sessions. Because as you might imagine, that takes a little while since we have to take into account the unit’s request for A/V, internet access, location, room size, and other options for every single meeting request. Once all of the sessions are placed, a draft schedule goes out to ALA units for proofreading, and after any requested changes are made, the preliminary program is formalized. In May 2012, the online Scheduler becomes available, and now all of the groundwork has been laid for Annual 2012. Don’t forget that by June 2012, the process for Annual 2013 is already in full swing.

Recognizing that this laborious process presents some issues to having timely content at Annual, and also that many members and other potential speakers or presenters do not have an existing “route” through a division, round table or committee, Jim Rettig instituted the “Grassroots Program” during his presidential year in 2008-2009. This program let anyone submit a session proposal outside of the above-outlined steps without having to go through a division or committee approval process.  Until that point, it had never been possible to submit a program proposal directly to ALA itself.

The response to this was so positive that we kept the grassroots program and it runs every year. For Annual 2011, the grassroots submission form didn’t close until February 2011.

Mary: In addition to the formal program proposal process, there are other, perhaps less well-known ways for members to propose more current content for the upcoming conference.

1. Most of the division discussion groups submit placeholder programs and then call for presenters in the spring. We’re still adding speaker names and descriptions to discussion group meetings at Annual 2011 when we receive them. Look for the discussion groups in your division that match your interests to see if you can get on a panel or submit an idea to them.
2. The deadline for submitting a poster is much later in the process, usually at the beginning of January. See http://www.lib.jmu.edu/org/ala/ for more information about poster sessions.
3. ALA provides the “Networking Uncommons” at both Midwinter and Annual. This open space can be used for impromptu programs and discussions that don’t have to go through any submission or approval process at all. Any attendee can reserve a projector by adding their name to the schedule, even during the conference itself.
4. Members can submit a program for the Annual Virtual Conference as late as February for the upcoming event.

Jenny: So there are more ways than most folks realize to get on a conference program, although we probably don’t market them all as well as we could. The question is, are there other things we can do to mitigate the need for a long planning process? Are there other ways we can help you submit more timely programs later in the process? Is there a different way to do some of this?

What do you think? Do you have other questions about the conference planning process?

There are many members who try to help with the ALA Civics concept on their own, so I’m also going to try to highlight their work, too. Recently, two great examples of this type of initiative were posted online.

1. Steven R. Harris created an infographic to help explain the major pieces of ALA and how they relate to each other. It’s a great perspective, and I like that he was able to do this visually. Like Steven, I’d love to see others build on it or create their own explanations.
2. Oleg Kagan ran a survey of non-voting ALA members to help determine why they didn’t vote and how ALA could improve the process. The results are pretty straightforward, and I definitely see room for improvement there. I’m pretty sure a couple of different groups within ALA will discuss the results, so I hope to report back about this topic in the future.

Have you created something that helps explain ALA or seen something useful that someone else posted? Let me know so I can help highlight it.

I missed it in real-time, but the May 11th #libchat on Twitter included a question that asked the following: “Very few ALA members vote in ALA elections. What are some reasons for low turnout?” There were a variety of answers, many of which voiced specific complaints about the organization overall, not just the election process.

Personally I’ve heard all of those complaints before, and I was planning to provide some context for each one as we went through ALA Civics Class. However, I’m bogged down in a couple of major projects right now, so rather than wait until we get further into the syllabus, I’m going to try to do a few blog posts during the next week to help explain why some things are the way they are. These posts are informational – I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind or start an argument.

To start out, we’re going to talk about why you have to join ALA to be a member of a division. When I hear this question, there are usually one of two motivations behind it: 1) “it’s too expensive to join ALA so I want to just join the division,” and/or 2) “I don’t like ALA and don’t feel like I should have to support it just to be a member of a division.” A corollary I sometimes see expressed is, “I don’t like how political ALA is” or “I don’t like how ALA handled the [insert your own hot topic] issue.”

To provide context, I want to start by noting that the divisions are relatively small in terms of staff, budget, and resources, even though when you look at their output, it’s a pretty impressive amount of “stuff” (programs, courses, publications, initiatives, coordination, etc.). There are 11 divisions (look in the left-hand column for links) and for the most part, each one has only a handful of staff. From the inside, I can say that most staff are pretty dedicated and do more than could reasonably be expected of them. As a membership organization, ALA and the divisions also rely a lot on member volunteers.

When you look at the staff list for a division, you don’t see people dedicated to things like Accounting & Finance, Building & Maintenance, HR, ITTS, and other support services. The reason division dues are less expensive than ALA dues is because all of those support departments and staff are folded into the larger organization.

To help pay for those costs, divisions (and other ALA units) pay a standard “overhead” cost that gets built into their budgets. If a division had to pay for a physical building, utilities, an HR department, an IT department, etc., its dues would cost a lot more and would be comparable with the cost of joining ALA. So to be clear, the divisions have to make enough money on their own to support their own services, but they also have to meet enough budget to pay that overhead fee.

With that background, it’s easy to see that it would cost well more than $100 to join a single division if it had to pay all of the costs on its own that ALA is covering for it. To join a second division would then cost double that amount, which would quickly put multiple memberships out of reach for most people. If you don’t want to pay more than $65 to join a division, then you probably wouldn’t be happy with the dues you’d have to pay in a setup where that division was off on its own.

The second motive I’ve heard for asking this question is that someone doesn’t like ALA’s stance on a particular issue(s), so they’ve dropped their membership. I know it’s difficult to support an organization you disagree with, especially if you’re a single-issue type of voter.

However, the thing about ALA is that it does so much and covers so much territory that I can pretty much guarantee you’re not going to agree with all 60,000+ members on every topic. In fact, I don’t know that I even want to be part of an organization where that many people do agree about everything. I don’t say that lightly, because there are things I can’t do as a staff member and other things I disagree with as a member that I WANT TO CHANGE RIGHT NOW. Believe me, I know how frustrating it can be.

You know that saying that a good library has something to offend everybody? That’s how I feel about ALA. There’s such a broad range of members that someone is going to be offended about every single thing but that’s okay, and we have to make room for those folks to voice their disagreement.

But to me participating is the same as the political process in my country. I’m not ashamed to say I support government and that I think pooling our resources as a society is a good thing. I disagree with some of the things my government does, but I don’t check out and give up because of it. Instead, I try to direct my money and efforts to the pieces I believe in and work to change the other parts.

That’s the philosophical approach I take to ALA, too. I wish we did certain things differently. I wish we could move faster on other things. I wish we were better at collaborating internally. But if I throw up my hands and walk away, who’s going to be working for the issues I value and the changes I’d like to see happen?

I’m honestly not being a Pollyanna, and I’m not faulting those who have tried and left. I get it, I do. And I’m sorry you don’t like how ALA handled Issue X but I’m willing to bet you support our efforts on Issue Y. That’s how this works. I’m guessing it’s how your organization works.

Which is another reason for us all to be one association – because we’re more powerful together and our voice is louder and stronger.

Addendum: After I wrote this post, I talked to Mary Ghikas, Senior Associate Executive Director at ALA, because she has a lot of the institutional knowledge that I don’t. In this video, she explains how ALA used to be structured back in the day and describes today’s setup.

I didn’t know ALA had a motto until I started doing some research for Civics Class, so I tried to “stump the Keith” to see if our Executive Director knew it. Watch the video to see how he did.

“The best reading, for the largest number, at the least cost.“

The motto was adopted in 1892 and reinstated in 1988. Overall I think it holds up pretty well, although these days I’d be tempted to substitute “information” for “reading” based on our mission. That actually resonates with me personally and will help me explain ALA.

What do you think?

To kick off ALA Civics Class, I talked to Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels (aka, The Big Kahuna) about our mission. ALA does so much that sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what’s at the heart of the organization and why we do what we do. ALA has to align its services to its mission, just as libraries do, so it’s important to understand the scope of ALA’s mission.

I also asked Keith what the mission means in action and how he evaluates whether an initiative aligns with said mission.

Honestly, I hadn’t read ALA’s mission statement since I started working there. Given the professional debate, it’s interesting that there’s no mention of reading or books in it, concentrating instead on learning and information. Personally I like that focus because it includes books, technology, physical space, literacy, instruction, and everything else we do.

One of my goals for Civics Class is to help you figure out where you want to contribute to that mission and how. So what does ALA’s mission mean to you?

I’m still putting together our first class materials (actually, @thearystocrat is doing the heaviest, but awesomest, lifting for some of it), so here are some background materials for you to go over in the meantime.

Here’s the official 2011 ALA Organizational Chart (47.3Kb PDF). You can see the typical silos-like structure that org charts are meant to show, but I think of it as a representation of how staff and dues are organized.

After you look at the official org chart, take a look at the informal one that Mary Ghikas created a few years ago. It’s more of a representation of the interactions between various pieces of ALA. I think it illustrates why we’re having Civics class in the first place – there’s a lot going on there. Did I mention that ALA is 134 years old?

You’ll need help decoding acronyms as we go through class, so keep this link to the list of ALA & LIS Acronyms handy. And of course, “LIS” stands for “Library and Information Science Studies.”  ;-)

Although we’re going to take a different approach, ALA member Michael Golrick took a stab at ALA 101 in 2010. You can get a head start on a few of the things we’ll cover by reading through his posts.

If you’re really brave, you can look through the ALA Constitution and Bylaws or try virtually thumbing through the Handbook of Organization, where you’ll find listings for things like the Committee on Committees and the Committee on Organization. No, I’m not kidding, and yes, they’re actually useful and necessary. And double yes, we’ll talk about why later on. True policy wonks can dive into the ALA Policy Manual.

Technically, you don’t need to read any of this ahead of time, although we’ll reference some material from the Bylaws and the Handbook down the road. This is just background info as we gear up.

You should, though, take a break and watch The Wheel of Confusion video we did a few years ago to poke some fun at all of this. Keep score and see how well you do playing along.

Here’s what I’m thinking of for our syllabus. I’m sure we’ll meander, go on tangents, and take extra time with some of these topics, but it’ll give us a helpful foundation for explaining why some of the weird things about ALA are the way they are.

1. What is “ALA?” – divisions, sections, round tables, member initiative groups, assemblies, and offices (oh, my)
2. ALA governance and how it all works – ALA Board, ALA Executive Committee, Council, President, BARC, and elections
3. ALA committees – let’s make some sense of the 1200+ committees (yeah, you read that right)
4. How to get on committees – advice for the committeelorn
5. Virtual participation – what does this mean, what’s happened so far, what still needs to happen, how do we get there
6. Getting things done in ALA – underused options like membership meetings, resolutions, and subcommittees
7. Other ways to get involved – ways to volunteer that don’t involve committee work
8. ALA conferences
9. ALA affiliates and other library orgs – how do they all fit together? what’s the difference between them?
10. Why ALA? – why we need ALA and what’s in it for you

What’s missing? What do you want to add to one of the headings? Now is a good time to speak up, because we’re in the process of building something special to dive into the amorphous topic of “what is ALA.”

I think we’ll also have some conversations on Twitter using the #alacivics hashtag, which I’ll be tracking so I’ll try to close the loop and bring those discussions back to this blog so that there’s one central site for finding everything. Note, too, that all of the class material will be under the category heading “ALA Civics Class.” Watch out for pop quizzes.

I’ve given a couple of presentations to associationland (as opposed to libraryland), and one of the things that quickly became clear to me is that ALA is different from pretty much every other association out there. Most associations have trouble getting their members to participate in conversations online to gather input and feedback, whereas there’s no shortage of either of that from ALA members, a fact that has been greatly in evidence the past few weeks (see Exhibits A, B, and C for starters).

I knew what I was getting into when I started this job (after all, ALA is 134 years old), but the recent conversations about it, both before and during #hcod, have been a little tougher for me to read because of a unique position I occupy. I’m a degreed librarian and an ALA member. I work at ALA because I’m passionate about libraries and librarians. And as one of the few ALA staff members who puts herself out there on social networks as an individual to publicly answer questions, solve customer service issues, and help explain how things work, I’ve generally considered myself a kind of outpost (hopefully I won’t freeze beyond the outer marker).

As I watched these recent conversations build, I could tell that they were asking for something more and that I wasn’t really the right person to respond to them. They required a response from “ALA,” which is simultaneously a broad and narrow swath of people. When I see questions about “what’s wrong with ALA” and “where is ALA,” it’s tough not to take it personally because technically I am ALA. Except that I’m not.

I can’t speak for “ALA,” issue a position statement, or chair a task force. Those are all responsibilities handled by ALA members, so as a staff person I play more of a supporting role. As an outpost, my role the last few weeks has been to alert others to the discussions, which I’ve been doing on a regular basis. I can’t control what happens once that information is received, but one of the things I think we see pretty clearly is that despite the progress ALA has made during the last few years (and yes, there has definitely been progress), there’s still no good place for ALA members to have a public conversation with their elected leaders. I hope that’s something we can work on, beyond the formal spaces of Council and membership meetings.

We also need to do a better job of explaining how ALA works and how members can make things happen within the organization. That’s where this blog comes in. That had been my goal in starting Marginalia back in 2007, but the rest of my job took over and blogging fell by the wayside. That’s going to change, though.

After four and a half years at ALA, I think I finally have enough of a handle on it to help explain the inner workings and secret handshakes. But it’s going to be a two-way street. I’ll share what I know and help draw back the curtain, but it’s up to you to read the blog, ask questions, and most importantly, do things with what you learn. Let’s figure it all out together, because I still have a lot to learn myself.

I may not always have a great response and sometimes it may take me a little while to find an answer, but I’ll do my best to reply honestly and provide context. I sit at some interesting intersections within ALA, so one of my most satisfying roles so far has been to connect people so that they can work together and help each other to #makeithappen.

Our first big project that we’ll start tackling in a couple of weeks is ALA Civics class. In the meantime, what do you want to know about ALA and how it works? Leave your questions in the comments, and we’ll start a syllabus.