Comments on: Why virtual participation in ALA must be legalized, not decriminalized

By: If its broken (part three) « Venn Librarygram

If its broken (part three) « Venn Librarygram — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:22:50 +0000

[...] Schneider recently posted three great posts on how ALA’s committee/meeting structure is broken. I was thinking about those as [...]

By: Council Resolution on Electronic List Participation

Council Resolution on Electronic List Participation — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 14:36:53 +0000

[...] Personally, I see no harm and only good from this resolution. Some of it ties into a post I wrote last year about why electronic participation needs to be legalized, not decriminalized. [...]

By: Jenny Levine

Jenny Levine — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:00:58 +0000

BTW, I can’t believe I forgot to note that there is a page on the Annual 2007 wiki for linking to content from the conference – http://wikis.ala.org/annual2007/index.php/Handouts%2C_Podcasts%2C_and_other_Post_Conference_Information. The link to it is the first topic on the wiki’s home page, but you’ll note how sparse the content is. Even the LITA BIGWIG Showcase didn’t show up here, nor did *any* committee meeting notes (including from, um, participation task forces).

We could try something like this for Midwinter 2008, but a big part of it will be an education issue that the divisions and the members have to come together to build the resource in order to make it as comprehensive as possible.

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:08:59 +0000

Jenny, that sounds exactly right: an approved poster (and delegate posters, if the chair approves) for each committee (TF/unit/etc.).

A wiki is just a simple publishing mechanism. A wiki doesn’t have to be wide-open to be useful. (In fact some wikis aren’t that easy MediaWiki comes to mind — I would also hope we’d use one with a simple visual editor. And of course it needs feeds!)

By: Jenny Levine

Jenny Levine — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:00:55 +0000

If there was such a wiki, how would you propose handling who is authorized to post about the committee's activities and actions? I can say from experience that we would have to limit author access to the wiki to registered accounts or else it would be spammed to death, so we'd need a way to make sure that committee members are the ones posting information, especially when the roster changes each year. No roadblock here - just trying to think through the details. @Abigail: Site rebuilding is well underway. You can track information about it on the Web Planning wiki and blog.

By: Abigail

Abigail — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 04:40:01 +0000

So revolutionary an idea and yet it makes such sense.

Now if we could just add in a little site rebuilding to go along with that….

By: David lee king

David lee king — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:33:22 +0000

as I was reading, I was thinking “that could be done easily with a wiki…” – and then you said it! Yes! Amazing really, how easy this can be to solve.

By: Anne in AZ

Anne in AZ — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:04:34 +0000

I’d love to see ALA get on board with this approach. This could give me the chance to finally be involved with ALA rather than just reading newsletters and journals and blogs. I might even join and participate in a committee or two.

Further, seeing how this works and improves the organization might give libraries also wanting to use this technology an example to use when planning their own “revolutions.”