Comments on: ALA MW and learning from one another

By: Michael Golrick

Michael Golrick — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 18:06:26 +0000

I was checking something else and wandered back here. The reason for San Antonio no longer being on the list has to do with the last visit there. One of the conference/meeting trends is for more and more activities to include the “shoulder nights.” Those are the nights before (Thursday) and after (formerly Wednesday, now Tuesday). For the last San Antonio Conference, the city’s convention staff booked some very large events which included the shoulder nights. You may or may not recall the issues over booking rooms for that meeting. I was on the ALA Exec Board then, and we heard. We heard very loudly. The ALA staff recommendation was that the CVB folks were not very pleasant to deal with on this issue, and seemed to ignore ALA’s needs. As a result, Dallas replaced San Antonio on the schedule.

By: walt

walt — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:49:14 +0000

Michael: Thanks for that. I would add one point: I am well aware of ASCLA (after all, it *should* have been my home division, technically)…but didn’t include it for two reasons:

1. Technically, it’s a type-of-library division, not a type-of-activity division.

2. AFAIK, it’s the one type-of-library division that is unable to sustain itself–at least when I was paying attention, it had to be subsidized by the rest of the association to keep going at all.

But thanks for the expansion. San Antonio, my absolute favorite Midwinter city, never had the facilities for Annual either–unfortunately, it seems to be off ALA’s list.

By: Michael Golrick

Michael Golrick — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:42:54 +0000

Like Walt, I am unable to attend Midwinter this year. I am a former member of the ALA Executive Board, and this topic has been discussed in that venue for some time.

I also want to point out some important points he makes above:

First: Midwinter produces revenue for ALA. That revenue supports activities like the ALA Washington Office, the Office for Research and Statistics, the Office for Intellectual Freedom, etc. which do not have memberships and therefore revenue streams.

Second: While the “big Divisions” can have successful conferences [and do great things at them], those conferences are significantly different than ALA meetings because they are all content with no business meetings. But…as Walt so eloquently points out…what about the smaller divisions? He left out the smallest one in his laundry list: ASCLA. And folks talk about it as if it would save money. This is not necessarily true if you (like me) are a member of multiple divisions. Attending multiple conferences would increase my costs.

Third: The cross-divisional fertilization which happens at ALA Annual and Midwinter is very important, and Walt’s observations on the state association conferences is on target.

Fourth: This is a point which Walt does not make, but has always been important in the ALA EB discussions, geographic diversity. ALA Annual has become so large that there are a limited number of cities where it can be held. Midwinter is smaller, and there are more options for other geographic locations. Between 25 and 30% of either event’s attendance is regional attendance. That is why you see the ALA meetings moved around. It is my understanding that Boston, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Seattle do nor have the requisite facilities for ALA Annual. They are all on the schedule for Midwinter Meetings between now and 2019 (the latest calendar I have downloaded.

Walt, thanks for the thoughtful (and timely) posting.

By: walt

walt — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 23:18:16 +0000

Lazygal: There are two issues in your first paragraph. One, ALA’s Policy 4.5 has been revised, but the revision’s a little fuzzy (and damned hard to find)…and most divisions haven’t updated their own policies to match. So, in practice, missing two consecutive meetings (the usual standard) will cause you to be removed from most committees–if the committees hold physical rather than virtual meetings. Oddly, ALA seems never to have had a formal policy requiring two physical committee meetings a year. Admittedly, I, for one, wouldn’t accept a committee appointment if I wasn’t willing to attend Midwinter–but, you know, thousands of ALA members attend Midwinter when they’re not on committees with physical meetings. (And in LITA, most of the action is from Interest Groups, so “forced attendance” really isn’t an issue.)

As for the second paragraph: If people don’t attend, the conference will get smaller–which, for a while, might be a good thing. If that eventually makes it unworkable, well, that’s people voting with their bodies & funds as well. I am not suggesting that Midwinter is such a Good Thing that people should be required to attend–I am suggesting that Midwinter shouldn’t be shut down even though people choose to attend.

By: Lazygal

Lazygal — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:23:02 +0000

Wait – you don’t have to attend both conferences to be on committees? Perhaps not for Big ALA, but AASL still insists on it.

As for Midwinter being well attended, with YALSA making most committees virtual and school districts lowering professional development funding, I think we will start to see lower attendance. Not perhaps a dramatic drop, but slow steady loss.