Category: ala

AL Direct, a “perq” from the American Library Association

Posted on by jessamyn

The American Library Association has launched an email newsletter and they have sent it to every ALA member with an email address on file. The AL Direct FAQ states “AL Direct (American Libraries Direct) is an electronic newsletter sent to ALA personal members by e-mail as a perquisite of membership.” Here is what I noticed in the first 15 minutes of getting my first newsletter.

  • The links in the newsletter go to a combination of online content (already available) and giant PDFs that seems to come directly from the pages of American Libraries. I’m not sure I see the value-add.
  • I wish I could tell which links went to giant PDFs before I clicked them, but each hyperlink is an affiliate link through an outfit called ixs1.net (helpful error message here) which means no mousing-over the text to figure out which is which.
  • The site uses web bugs as near as I can tell, while this is not surprising, neither is it cool
  • There is an unsubscribe link, but I had to use my email’s find feature to locate it.
  • They don’t post old issues on the web site. This makes a certain amount of sense, since there is already an AL Online news digest as well as a weekly roundup of stories coming to interested members in their inboxes, but then there’s the question: why do this at all?
  • I specifically set my communications preferences with ALA — once there was a way to do so — to receive “official communications only” which is described as “ballot, renewal and membership card, American Libraries and division journals and newsletters specified in the ALA Handbook of Organization” on the Communications Preferences page. This may be nitpicky of me, but I don’t see why a heavily-advertiser supported newsletter — Sirsi is the sponsor for issue 1 — which is mostly rehashing news I already have access to elsewhere in ALA is seen as official communications. Put another way, why is me saying it’s okay for them to mail me a magazine seen as the same as saying it’s okay to put me on an email list for a newsletter?

For those of you who are already not fans of ALA, this will come as no surprise, ALA continues not to understand how to communicate in the digital world. For those of us who keep saying “No no, I think there’s still hope” each fumbling foray like this makes us wince and wish we belonged to a savvy organization that excited and interested us with their new ideas and options for intteraction.

There has been a lot of talk about Library 2.0 lately, and I’m with Steve that I’m more interested in doing cool stuff with my libraries than writing about libraries, or debating semantics, but I can say one thing for sure, I know it when I see it. In this case, I know I’m looking and not seeing it

ALA membership renewal

Posted on by jessamyn

I’m back from my trip and reading through email. On my “to do” list is to renew my ALA membership before the conference since it expired at the end of the year. I figured since ALA had my email address, they might send a reminder about this and they did… today! It reads, in part, “Thank you for this past year of ALA Membership. Your membership year ends December 31, 2005 ” Please note the present tense of the word “ends” my membership ended a few weeks ago. Now, this is my own fault for not staying on top of my professional association dues over the holidays, but you’d think that even an organization like ALA could manage a reminder email that went out before my membership had expired, maybe?

Additionally, I just bought my plane tickets for San Antonio and found that I had to stay an extra day in order to stay for the full Council meeting on Wednesday since all flights for my small airport seem to leave at the crack of dawn. This tosses a small wrench into my plans lodging-wise, so if anyone has tips for cheap/free places to stay in San Antonio on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings the 24th and 25th, please let me know.

what I think is my last word on speaking and presenters and money and power

Posted on by jessamyn

Karen has a nice long post about the current ALA discussions including presenters getting paid/paying to speak, and ALA’s proposed dues increase. I share her feeling about giving presentations

It’s also a not-too-well-kept secret that there are some speakers who only speak when their presentation costs are fully funded, and in some cases when they receive honoraria. I don’t ask, and I don’t care, if the speaker in the next room got a perk I didn’t get. My assumption is that none of us are getting rich on presenting, and that we all know what we need to make it possible for us to share what we know.

I talk to my colleagues in general terms about reimbursement, honoraria and comped registrations, but I must admit to having a sort of “Aw shucks” response when people offer to put me in a hotel room. The first time I got reimbursed for hotel room expenses, I got all ootchy because the room cost over $150 a night and I was amazed anyone would pay that! I am a bit of a yokel in terms of money and so I try not to speak as if my opinions reflect those of a larger segment of travelling and speaking librarians, but I think I represent the low-budget traveller pretty well. Clearly I live in some alternate universe where staying in someone’s home is preferred over a hotel — one of my favorite speaker overnights was at the home of a library student with beer, wifi and company all night — and where money for speaking doesn’t have to be the deciding factor in whether I give a talk or not (library schools take note, I LOVE speaking to library students).

Since I talk about poverty issues often — financially poor, information poor, technology poor — watching this whole tennis match has been informative since a lot of it is about money and how much you should be grateful for having it as well as ethics regarding sharing it. Of course money can be code for other sorts of priorities as well — your value to the association versus the association’s value to others, tithing to your professional institutions, paying your dues — and I feel that this is where things get trickier. Some people see public speaking as a similar type of encoded message — you must have a big ego, you must think you’re better than other people, you must be some sort of shill for corporate America or evangelical zealot, you must be broke and desperate for attention, you must need tenure — and it’s harder to untangle this one. While we all have experience with money, for good or for bad, we don’t all have “get up in front of a room and say something” experience and even less of us have “get an invitation to get up in front of a room and share your expertise” experience.

I’d love to hear some of the people who have been saying “it’s an honor just to be invited” share their public speaking experiences and impressions, or maybe just tell us a little more about how they assess whether a public speaking engagement is “worth it” for them to attend. I’m sure we all have a line demarcating just how much sacrifice in the public good is too much sacrifice, and I have to admit that I bristle when people say or imply that they can make that judgement for others. Of course, discussing these money and power sorts of questions is thought by some to be tacky, and the cultural taboo against discussing status openly or specifically means that I’m sure this isn’t the last time this issue will come up. I know that the ALA Executive Board was talking about it last week and I think that can only be seen as a good start.

update: Jenny synthesizes some discussion about conferences & registration fees

Posted on by jessamyn

Jenny posts a follow-up to her earlier post about organization membership and guest speakers and conference registration fees and the weird relationship between them. A few of us were trying to do some damage control on the Council list where it became clear that people were misunderstanding the issues, either accidentally or because of a radically different worldview than some of the rest of us. I’ve been asking friends of mine in other professional organizations and it’s become clear to me that some organizations have similar policies, many do not, and most people who don’t have just a flat-out “it’s an honor to be invited to speak and you should expect nothing in return.” seem to be surprised that exceptions weren’t made for Michael and Jenny not because of who they are but just because of their extentuating circumstances [not attenting the conference, paying all expenses in Michael’s case, etc.] and peoples’ ability to be flexible about things like this. update: Meridith makes a very compelling “librarians should not be martyrs” point with plenty of stats to back up her vision of a more just professional association.