ALA Presidential Candidate Roberta Stevens responds to Tom Peters’s question on how ALA can enable participation without travel. More ALA videos at alfocus.ala.org.
Question:
Tom Peters: Hi, ALA presidential candidates. Tom Peters here, coming to you from the eastern slope of Monkey Mountain, Missouri, nestled between Oak Grove and Grain Valley its really just a hill, not a mountain. I hope youre having a great time in the Mile High City. In case youre wondering, Im currently 263 meters above sea level, maybe 264 if you factor in the height of this chair.
Heres the lead into my question: tens of thousands of ALA members cannot attend Midwinter and Annual Conference and divisional national conferences. Maybe they work in a one-person or small library, or their travel budget is strapped, or they have family commitments, or they want to reduce their carbon footprint.
ALA has made some steps towards making it easier for us infrequent flyers to network, to learn new ideas and skills and to participate meaningfully in the splendiferous work of this association. ALA has begun using its quiver of 2.0 tools: blogs; wikis; web conferencing software; Second Life; and YouTube to make it possible for its members to participate and contribute from far flung locations. But, honestly, were still just scratching the surface.
As ALA president, what would you do to make it easier for all ALA members to both add to and gain value from our association without having to travel and attend events in person? Thanks much. Stay warm.
Response Transcript:
Roberta Stevens: Hi, Tom of Monkey Mountain, Missouri. This is Roberta Stevens: candidate for ALA president and staff member at the Library of Congress. In response to your question Im going to read it What would you do to make it easier for all ALA members to both add to and gain value from our association without having to travel and attend events in person?
Well, Tom, your question could not have come at a better time because, in fact, we are experiencing budget cuts in many libraries throughout the country. And when you have a choice between hours of service, and buying materials, and travel, you can guess which item is the item to go: and its going to be travel. I want to add that youre right, too, about the blogs; and the wikis; and the web conferencing software; and the YouTube videos all of those are techniques for bringing ALA to its members.
So, what can we do? Well, what we can do is something I talked about during the Presidential Candidates Forum at the Midwinter Meeting. And that is in the meetings we can have people who are Twittering. And we can have an official Twitterer or we can have a number of Twitterers official and unofficial and people following what is going on in the meetings. In the presentations they can do the same. And in big presentations important presentations, high profile presentations we can have them taped and we can put those up on ALAs website afterward. Those are a couple things that we can do.
Im going to ask you to keep your eyes open to something thats coming available very soon and thats ALA Connect. This is a very, very powerful opportunity for electronic communication among our members. And were going to make a leap forward with it. They have already pre-populated ALA Connect with the formal areas of ALA: the divisions, the round tables, and the sections. And it is pre-populated for the conferences. There are going to be all kinds of capabilities for you: posts, which are like blog posts; theres going to be online documents; polling of questions; chat rooms; and bulletin board discussion forums take advantage of that.
And Im going to make a pledge to you if Im elected for president: Im going to push hard and make sure theres financing for the second phase, which also includes a Craigslist exchange of services and physical items, a mentoring network, and online resume capability. These are great.
So, theres all kinds of capabilities that we have and they are expanding and getting better. And we know that with increased electronic communication, were going to be able to reach out beyond our national boundaries as well, and gain more members, internationally; thats one of my campaign platform planks. I want us to gain more membership, both within this country and outside. And electronic communication is going to help us to do that. So, thanks, Tom. It was a good question.