ALA Annual 2018

Right now, this matches the version of the calendar in the ALA Scheduler, and lives both on Google Calendar and in my personal Outlook calendar.

Here is my tentative schedule for ALA Annual. Note that it is still tentative!

I will be arriving on Canal Street on Thursday afternoon - it should take me a whole 90 minutes from work!

Clicking on any event will show details. Also clicking on "ALA" opens the calendar for that day. For some reason, not all events are currently showing up, and I will work on that!

And do note the time zone note on the bottom. Here, I am seeing things in the Central Time zone, not sure how true that is for others, but this time, again, I don't change time zones!

ALA Annual 2017

Monday 6/19 revision - more items added! There is still tweaking to be done. But right now, this matches the version of the calendar in the ALA Scheduler, and lives both on Google Calendar and in my personal Outlook calendar.

Here is my tentative schedule for ALA Annual. Note that it is still tentative!

I will be arriving in Chicago on Thursday, and get some wandering around time! (Yay!) I have nwt figured out how to make "Agenda" the default view. (Again ... Yay!) Clicking on any event will show details. And do note the time zone note on the bottom. Here, I am seeing things in the Central Time zone, not sure how true that is for others, but this time, the I don't change time zones!
I am posting on Friday (6/16) and have noticed that there is a lot missing. So by Monday or Tuesday, there will be more. I promise!

ALA Elections 2015 - Some Reflections

First of all, wow. It was an interesting election.

All of the results are posted on the ALA web site, here.

One of the documents that I particularly looked at was 2015 Election Response Rate by Ballot. With all the sections of divisions and all the round tables, there are 81 different ballots. (Yes, you read that right, 81!) Most people only get some of them. How many, depends on how much you pay in dues and how the particular division or round table is structured. What I was interested in was the participation rate.

Both for ALA as a whole (Ballot 0 - Officers), like in the local, state, and national elections, the turnout of voters is not always what we would like. It is usually lower. But, I am proud to say that the election in which I was a candidate had one of the highest participation rates.

My visual inspection (I could not quickly grab it an put it in Excel for sorting, but may try again) shows these as the top participation rate groups:

RMRT	56.06%
GLBTRT	38.67%
LearnRT	38.34%
ASCLA	33.66%
IFRT	33.62%
EMIERT	32.68%
SRRT	31.14%

This means that ASCLA was the only division with more than 30% participation. It is the smallest division (615 members eligible to vote). But it clearly reinforces my contention that it is the easiest to get involved in - I believe that the voting participation rate shows that.

ALA Elections 2015 - about me

Edited 5/11 - no part 2 or part 3!


If you have not received your ALA ballot, they are distributed over several days.

Some of you may have noticed my name out there. This went out to a discussion list a little bit ago:

ASCLA 2015 Elections are Approaching!
Please click on this link to view the following ASCLA members who will be running for election for ASCLA offices in the 2015 Elections. Please join me in thanking these members for agreeing to stand for election for an ASCLA office and be sure to vote in the Spring elections! Voting begins on March 24, 2015 through May 1, 2015 @ 11:59 PM CDT.

Because of my standing for election as Vice President/President-Elect of ASCLA. For those who do not know, ASCLA  is the Association for Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies, one of the divisions of the American Library Association.

It is the smallest of the ALA divisions. For more about ALA and ASCLA, visit the tab ALA 101 (on this blog).

So, here is what I said in my statement of professional concerns:

I have often recommended to new members of ALA to find a home in ALA with others whose work is like theirs. ASCLA has been ALA's smallest division and because of the small size, it is possible to get to know people and to become involved.

I did some simple analysis of recent membership trends, and plotting ASCLA's membership against ALA's membership shows that ASCLA has retained members better than ALA. That does not mean that we do not have to continue to work to recruit members, but it does show that ASCLA has value for ALA members. I have many contacts across the association, and want to leverage the knowledge those people have, to make ASCLA even more successful. Part of the perspective which I bring is from having been active in the larger organization. I believe that my experience, and contacts, will help position ASCLA for the future.

I ask for the vote for those of you who are ASCLA members.

I did stand for this office once before, in 2000. In that election, I was not successful. The difference was four (4) votes. In a way I was relieved. I changed jobs after agreeing to run, and it would not have been as good a fit as it is now. I also had a great deal less experience with ALA.