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Top Ten Reasons I’m Supporting the ALA Dues Increase

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According to LITA Blogger Aaron Dobbs, ALA Council just approved placing the $30 dues increase on the ballot. Here’s why I’m asking you to join me in supporting the dues increase:

  1. The Washington Office. The rest of ALA could vanish, and I’d get my bang for the buck out of these intrepid freedom fighters.
  2. Just having an Office for Intellectual Freedom is pretty damn cool. What they do every year–the campaigns, the advocacy–is even cooler.
  3. Because I know what it’s like to be flat-funded, and it hurts. Flat-funding is negative funding.
  4. Because I’ve had cost of living increases in the last decade (not last year, but most years), and ALA staff deserve them too.
  5. ALA Techsource. This seems self-serving, since I write for the Techsource blog, but really, this is one of the best new publishing efforts to come out of ALA in a decade.
  6. Because when the bibliorati groused about the hideous new ALA website, ALA gave their IT department more power and resources and agreed to fund a new CMS, which was selected through a process that would make most libraries proud.
  7. Because some of us think of ALA as backward, but in 1995, when I told Leonard Kniffel American Libraries needed a column on the Internet, he agreed (and hired me to write it!). They were “at the plate” long before anyone else was.
  8. Because some library associations charge far more and give you far less. Far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, less. Catch-me-at-the-bar-at-midnight-next-time-you’re-at-ALA-and-I’ll-bend-your-ear less.
  9. Because ALA is the Mother Ship for LITA, providing services and support LITA couldn’t swing on its own for $60 a year, and I don’t know where I would learn about emerging technologies without LITA.
  10. Because for the equivalent of three lattes the first year, six the second, and nine the last, I can continue to take care of an organization that fights its battles with such humor and style.

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