My love hate relationship with ALA
I have to admit I have a love/hate relationship with ALA. Over the last year and a half I’ve been participating more in ALA particularly LITA and have loved meeting and working with people. BIGWIG is the best group of folks and we are working on some really cool stuff.
Still this Midwinter meeting had moments that reminded me why I despise ALA with an undying passion. So what’s my problem with ALA?
- Overall as a conference and organization it is highly impersonal. With one notable exception, I haven’t met many people via ALA. The people I know and like from ALA I’ve met from other places and SEE at ALA. It is (IMHO) very difficult to network within ALA.
- ALA is an exceptionally rigid organization that expects everyone to follow a set of rules that may or not make sense. Case in point, programs for ALA Annual have to be turned in a year in advance in order to secure a spot. For someone working in technology this is beyond crazy. It is ludicrous. Technology can change dramatically in a year and it is difficult to bring cutting edge programming related to technology with this rigid planning structure.
- ALA is all about being “in the know”. If you don’t know how the system works, you are in trouble. Worse yet they expect everyone (particularly new committee and SIG chairs) to educate themselves as to how things work. The system has little error prevention or error forgiving built into place. As a result, even if you try your best to do the right thing, you can get into hot water.
- ALA is still primarily a paper form and face to face organization and nearly all decisions get made this way. In my opinion, this is a waste of members precious time. Good discussion can take place in a virtual environment. Face to face meetings shouldn’t be taken up with administria. Instead they should be reserved for interactions where group synergy is needed to develop new ideas or solve problems.
So how do these faults leave a relatively inexperienced but eager ALA member feeling? Angry, disappointed, and disheartened. I’ve built up some moderate hopes for ALA in the last year. In particular, I’ve been very excited about working as part of LITA. A colleague and I went so far as to discuss the formation of a new jointly sponsored interest group, with us as potential co-chairs. However, portions of the conference made me feel like my and my younger colleagues’ contributions weren’t valued, that we would always be viewed as unimportant peripheral participants, and that the last year had been a big waste of time.
Honestly, I don’t know where I go from here. One of the reasons that academic librarians participate in ALA is to fulfill the requirements of tenure/continuing appointment. I’m up for continuing appointment in the fall and so this will not, by itself, be sufficient motivation for me to continue. I want to do things that I care about and where I feel my contribution is valued. I’m very excited about BIGWIG’s projects for the next six months, but after term as co-chair is up I’m not sure. In my heart, I want to believe that change will come but my continued participation is seriously in jeopardy right now.
Karen, what did you have in mind for your proposed new group to do? I’d like to hear more about that. Thanks!
When faced with this kind of situation, my question to myself is, “What is the best use of my energy?”
I can’t answer that question for you, but I do think it’s a valuable question.
Karen,
1. you’re participating more (yay!) and you’re a whirlwind of ideas; I doubt I was the “notable exception” but I was happy to meet you (briefly) at LITA
2. yep, ALA is pretty rigid – especially when talking about program planning; the locations are set 10+ years in advance, technology concerns for those venues are set around then too, the conference services area of ALA is the most opaque of all of them – I’m still trying to get a good idea of how this works (I’ve been trying for ~4 years through many high-falootin’ contacts and with ninja-like infiltration and observation techniques – I’m still trying)
3. yeah, the intra-association training leave a lot to be desired; I found out about several things (incomming chair orientation, interns orientation, etc) via WOM; this is getting a little better (or I’m just in the know enough now to know where to look) :)
4. this used to be the case, but I think great strides are now being made to do more with ‘virtual’ participation — ‘virtual’ in quotes because the contibutions are real, not virtual.
I’d say more but my battery is sayinnnnnhhhhhhhhhhhhh a*
Thanks for the feedback. There are people working hard to “make it better” — particularly in areas like networking, transparency, simpler process — and this kind of direct feedback is truly useful. I’d be very interested in any recommendations or suggestions you have.
I suspect the issue of booking conference sites 10+ years out is not changeable anytime soon — just a fact of the size — and unusual shape — of the ALA conference. I’d be happy to provide as much information as I can — though that’s possibly more than you want.
Keep pushing — and posting. mg
Karen:
Your perceptions are not unlike mine those many years ago I first wandered into an ALA Midwinter Meeting. A couple of thoughts:
While the program planning cycle is long, there are creative ways around the time lag, such as designing a “hot issue” or “what’s new” umbrella that would allow for the specifics to evolve. A lot of programs end up quite a bit different from those approved last year, and you do have until program copy is due for fine tuning.
You’re absolutely right about using face to face – and discussion list – time well. One of the biggest problems has always been the fact that it’s pretty tough to accomplish much if you only get together twice a year. Now, discussion and projects can now move forward in between meetings, which is great.
The challenge is for the chair – and committee members – to get the balance right, so that you get the most value out of face to face meetings. That balance is going to vary quite a bit based on the specific projects and committee members involved. I’d love to see someone develop “a committee’s guide to getting the most out of face to face – and electronic – communication” (not that there’s a perfect answer).