I’m wedded to the ALA for at least another year or two. After that, we’ll see whether my energies are better spent elsewhere. Depends on how quickly the coup happens, I suppose… :-)

(Saw your comment on the post at ACRLBlog, KGS — thought it was right on, and thank you very much for saying it.)

Most organizations forget that their core deliverable is to help make life (/work) better for their members. Period.

The difference to me is whether the eyes of the organization are on the prize (the mission, the outcomes, the product, whichever is appropriate) or whether they’re on perpetuating the organization itself. On an individual level, are folks at all levels (not just leadership) in it for the accomplishment or for the whuffie?

I’m in ASIST because they don’t make grandiose pronouncements about what they’re about, and they pretty much do what they’re in business to do, which is advance the state of the art through putting the right people in the right conference rooms and the right journals.

ALA has forgotten — or at the very least is deeply conflicted about — what it’s in business to do. This leaves far too much room for organizational navel-gazing and individual fief-building.

The “negative impact” comment made me chuckle. I’d call that a “librarian” thing to do. Librarians love to pick apart things that aren’t perfect and ignore anything good, I see it time after time after time….

Unfortunatly organizations are made up of meetlings (people who enjoy meetings, committees and conferences).

The best part (the only good part?) of membership within a large national association is the peer network. Without these connections, I wouldn’t belong. With the Web, I’m not sure why I still belong, except it’s good on the old C.v. and when I have a regular day-gig my attendance is generally paid for, which means I get to f2f with my buddies.

Pick and choose your battles, for sure. I wrote off my former state library association (though I had to participate nominally as part of my job). It’s not that I couldn’t see how to change it… but I had enough oomph for one or two things of that flavor, and didn’t want to waste my oomph fixing the largely unfixable.

Note that in the best of organizations there will always be a 80-20 breakdown; there are personal differences; there is a shortfall between what you want and what really happens. It happens everywhere, and certainly not just in associations. The key is whether in the end what you contribute makes a difference for you and everyone else.

This is not a recruitment or mentorship problem. This is a problem of organizational effectiveness — a systemic problem — and all the recruitment and mentorship in the world will not solve it. At most, it’ll recruit and mentor more people to get chewed up and spat out by the same old bad systems. Cui bono?

Case in point, what’s going on over at ACRLblog over a Five Weeks spinoff. If you read the comments, you find a lot of people more concerned about potential negative impact on ACRL than excited about better member service. The system’s self-perpetuation has taken precedence over the good of the profession and its members. Recruitment and mentorship won’t fix that.