ALA Council

Hi all,

The short answer to Diedre's questions:
"If a group is closed wouldn't you want to restrict those being added to a group and not those who would like to remove themselves from a group?  How does this directive make any sense?"

Closed groups are groups in which the members are added or removed via their membership status in iMIS (the database where our affiliations, contact info, etc. are stored within ALA).

Non-members cannot add themselves to Closed groups (but can petition the chair/admins to be added)

Logically, committee members cannot remove themselves from a committee's group. You can't just resign your seat on a committee, you have to notify the chair, this is consistent with long-term ALA committee membership practice.

There are other groups available on ALA Connect which you can join and un-join at whim.  There are also moderated and open groups. Pretty much any combo of group (fully private, fully open, moderated, read-only, etc) is possible in Connect.

Regarding access to content, within a group's ALA Connect space, we agreed (after all kinds of discussion about three Conferences/meetings ago) that each Committee could decide what to make public and what to keep private/members only.

Personal opinions aside, that's what we agreed upon...

That agreement basically allowed (sidestepped initial specific disagreements which would have killed) the creation of the TFoEMP and the excellent recommendations which we voted up during the last Council meetings.

-Aaron (councilor at large, if that matters)
:-)'

*****

If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. -- Henry Ford

Aaron said:
Logically, committee members cannot remove themselves from a
committee's group. You can't just resign your seat on a committee, you
have to notify the chair, this is consistent with long-term ALA
committee membership practice.

------------

I agree that one would not or even should not want to remove themselves from a committee's group but I really had not thinking about this when I wrote this part of my message.

I belong to a number of things like sections in LLAMA that I am only slightly interested in.  These are not committees for which I am a member but sections within a division or even a division or a round table which I want to have a general membership in and support and want to support by paying dues but may not want to be all that involved with for any number of reasons. 

For example, I have membership in the LLAMA BES (Building and Equipment Section).  I am only interested from time to time in this groups activities and want to remain a member but don't necessarily want this listed in ALA Connect since I don't particularly want to receive a lot of messages from the section. As far as I can tell, to get rid of messages from a section that I have not read I have to actually open the message to get rid of it.  There is no other way to drop them off the list of unread messages.  So, I thought that if I dropped out of some of the groups I would be able to limit the number of unread messages.  I tried to drop the groups and got the message "You may not leave this group because it is a /closed/ group. You should request removal from a group administrator."

Can you see why I think that one should be able to take themselves off of some groups in ALA Connect?  Do you understand that I am not talking about committees or situations where one has made a commitment to be an active participant as a member of the committee.

I also think that one should be able to sort of drop by any groups in ALA Connect and see what is happening, whether or not one is a member.  This does seem to be possible if the post was made public.  That is good.

I do wish that one at least had to opt out of making a message public instead of opting in.

Basically, I guess I am disappointed that there is not more flexibility available for controlling one's own account but I know that this can be very complex.  I also know that I am not on the committee or staff trying to make a one size fits all solution for a huge organization - which is basically an impossible task.

 

Lots of good questions are being asked about ALAConnect around this thread, I'll try to answer a bunch of them with either my experiences to date, links to the ALAConnect documentation, answers I received to similar questions early on in testing and ALA staff clarifications...
Surprise, I'm not a know-it-all *grin*

I'm using Diedre's questions as a base for examples and discussion (I
hope that's okay)
dc>
dc> For example, I have membership in the LLAMA BES (Building and Equipment Section). I am only interested from time to time in this groups activities and want to remain a member but don't necessarily want this listed in ALA Connect since I don't particularly want to receive a lot of messages from the section.

*ad* By default, ALAConnect does not send anyone email. ALA staff has configured Connect to require a user to explicitly turn on email (either manually turn on email from all groups, or manually turn on email from specific groups). The ALAConnect documentation about this can be found here:

* How to Set Your Email Preferences in ALA Connect - https://connect.ala.org/communities/community-home/librarydocuments/viewdocument?DocumentKey=0cae2b52-02e0-4969-999d-2e9689688c26

dc> As far as I can tell, to get rid of messages from a section that I have not read I have to actually open the message to get rid of it. There is no other way to drop them off the list of unread messages. So, I thought that if I dropped out of some of the groups I would be able to limit the number of unread messages. I tried to drop the groups and got the message "You may not leave this group because it is a /closed/ group. You should request removal from a group administrator."

*ad* Diedre, it sounds like you've turned on email notifications for all your groups? Change your preferences per the link above and you will not receive email from groups from which you don't want email.

*ad* Diedre, if you mean you want to get rid of the "New" icon next to unread messages in the ALAConnect web interface, I have not found a "mark all read" option, either. (This would be a great feature)

dc> I also think that one should be able to sort of drop by any groups in ALA Connect and see what is happening, whether or not one is a member. This does seem to be possible if the post was made public. That is good.

*ad* I completely agree that logged-in ALA members should be able to see what is going on in any group in ALAConnect. However, ours seems to currently be a minority opinion.

dc> I do wish that one at least had to opt out of making a message public instead of opting in.

*ad* I think the current implementation takes the more conservative approach, to err on the side of caution; but I'm with you again :)

dc> Basically, I guess I am disappointed that there is not more flexibility available for controlling one's own account but I know that this can be very complex. I also know that I am not on the committee or staff trying to make a one size fits all solution for a huge organization - which is basically an impossible task.

*ad* I take a different view: I am impressed with the level of user account flexibility while staying within the constraints of the organizational structure of ALA - talk about dancing on a tightrope.

For example, we (ALAConnect member-users) can (and here I'll quote Jenny) "completely hide their affiliations with any community, division, round table, or section if they don't want to appear on those groups' rosters. Members cannot "leave" these groups in Connect, just as they cannot "remove" them from their records in the member directory on the ALA website. However, we hope we've offered a viable alternative by letting members hide themselves and turn off email from those groups."

*ad* Other folks, in related threads, have indicated they are not interested in the "social networking" features of ALA Connect. Jenny tells me "there aren't any email notices for new networking requests, so no one is forced to participate in that side of Connect."

Jenny also clarified the following: "The only groups members cannot hide their affiliations with are committees/task forces/working groups since those are part of the official Handbook. A member needs to proactively change settings in order to receive notices from Connect, so if anyone is receiving unwanted emails [from "connect at ala dot org"] and did *not* change that setting, then we [ALA Helpdesk] need to know right away."

Lastly (thank goodness, I'm sure) here are two other ALAConnect help documents which may further explain privacy settings
https://connect.ala.org/communities/community-home/librarydocuments/viewdocument?DocumentKey=0cae2b52-02e0-4969-999d-2e9689688c26

by the way, just wanted to echo Diedre's comment about how all Council stuff should be publicly posted ... yes, all our stuff (unless it qualifies for a closed-door session. like personnel issues or awards, etc.) *should* be open to member-viewing (similar to alacoun-ro option) 

*****

If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. -- Henry Ford

Aaron is absolutely incorrect in the assumptions he has made about some of my
comments regarding ALA Connect. 

First, he seems to have missed a part of my original comment that says that I am
not at all against the development of ALA Connect.  I think it probably has a
place in our organization.  What I am realizing is that the place I think it has
in the organization and the place he thinks it has may not be the same.

Second, I am absolutely NOT getting anything from ALA Connect in my email.  I
did notice that I could have messages sent to my email if I wanted but this is
not yet an option I have chosen to use.  However, I think it is a nice option as
well as the option for RSS.  I may choose to use it in some instances at some
point but I am not now using the email option.

I just don't really like having a bunch of message sitting in my account that
are "new" or unread.  It is probably just a weird desire to see a conclusion to
things from time to time and a way to have a clean slate.  I guess this is one
more of my unreasonable thoughts.

You know, when I have made comments about ALA Connect, or any other thing or
issue, I do actually try to research it a bit before commenting.  I did look at
ALA Connect before this final release but did not see some of the issues that I
am now seeing.  Sorry for not being able to entirely visualize the tool before
now.  How unvisionary of me.

I really do see some of the final ways in which this tool is set up being in
conflict with some of our fundamental philosophies.  I do not think that there
has to be this conflict and I think it would be a far better tool without the
conflicts.

I like the new toys but that does not mean I think they are perfect and don't
need to be carefully and thoughtfully used and revised until they really meet
our needs and our ethics.