During the 2018 Midwinter Meeting the ALA Executive Board and ALA Council discussed ALA’s organizational effectiveness. The document “ALA Organizational Effectiveness Discussion — 2018” This is available on ALA Connect for your review and comment.
For some time now and especially during the past few months there have been ongoing discussions about the complexities and challenges facing ALA and the sustainability and future of the mid-size functional divisions within ALA, of which ALCTS is one. After discussing the difficulties facing ALA and our divisions, the current and future leaders and executive directors of ALCTS, LITA, and LLAMA wrote the “Working Document Exploration of Integration and Realignment Opportunities for ALCTS, LITA, and LLAMA” [PDF]. This document was added to the ALCTS Midwinter Board agenda for discussion and also shared with the ALCTS Division chairs.
The ALCTS Board discussed the working document during their meeting on Monday afternoon. Board members discussed what they thought the benefits of additional collaboration or realignment opportunities would be as well as their concerns. The LITA and LLAMA boards also discussed the working document during their Board meetings. The ALCTS, LITA, and LLAMA Boards have agreed to continue discussing the concepts proposed in the working document.
As we note in the document there a number of ways our divisions overlap including through our strategic missions, continuing education and the topical interests between our divisions. This document is meant to provide us with a starting place for discussions of the possibility of “increased collaboration between divisions or something bigger involving shared or joint membership and structural realignments, or even a full merger to a new single division.”
We want this to be an open and public dialogue with you, our members, with numerous opportunities for you to participate across a variety of channels. To that end a new ALA Connect community, the ALCTS LLAMA LITA Alignment Discussion, has been developed. A copy of the working document is available on the site, and we welcome your thoughts. Additional information will be posted in the coming days and weeks.
I encourage each of you to consider the working document and post your comments or feel free to contact me directly (mbthomson@uky.edu). You are ALCTS so I look forward to hearing from you.
