ALA recently adopted a new
Online Code of Conduct that applies to our group listserv and other Connect listservs.
I have a couple of concerns with the code, and I'm curious what others are thinking. Perhaps if my concerns are widely shared, this is something that ANSS Executive could raise up the chain, and we could ask for ALA to consider making revisions. Please share your thoughts...
#1
re: " Promotion of paid products, events, or services not initiated by the American Library Association is not allowed. We encourage the sharing of nonpaid opportunities that may benefit the community. However, we ask that you do not spam. Be conscious of the number of times that you share the same opportunity and be thoughtful of the number of communities where this information is shared. When sharing your opportunity, we ask that you not just aim for reach within our community but also seek to ensure that your opportunity matches the specific needs of that community's members."
Everything from the third sentence (beginning with "However") makes good sense to me. But the limitation to only sharing nonpaid activities or ALA only paid activities seems to be going too far.
e.g., I noticed a post on the ACRL Instruction Section list from last Friday, wherein the liaison to NRCFYE (a first year experience prof org) stated that she can no longer share conference and event opportunities from that group because it would violate the new code of conduct. Surely, this would impact our own ANSS liaisons in a similar manner. That's a clear problem.
e.g., Many of us are involved in outside of ALA groups, activities, publications, etc., that are relevant to our work here that we may want to share with the ANSS community. We already have the example of other complementary professional organizations. Sometimes our own libraries may host paid symposiums or other events that are relevant to ANSS members that we want to promote. As a personal example, I teach a class with Library Juice Academy and might like to be able to share that when enrollment is open. Rory Litwin, the founder of LJA, wrote up a statement that explains why this rule should be reconsidered. See
https://libraryjuiceacademy.com/alas-new-online-code-of-conduct-and-commercial-activity/
#2
re: " Job Postings are Restricted to the ALA Job Community or ALA JobLIST. We recommend the use of the ALA JobLIST career center for a greater variety of career-related services. If you do choose to post an opportunity Connect, it can be placed in our ALA Jobs community only"
It's been a long-time tradition to post job ops on group listservs. It helps spread the word about jobs that are of interest to the group. This is helpful for networking purposes, and sometimes people come across relevant jobs even if they weren't actively searching for work. And of course, it's super helpful to people who are either casually or actively seeking new job opportunities. Even if you're not looking for a job, it can be helpful to know how other institutions are scoping their job descriptions, if there are any new trends in jobs, etc. Who does it really serve to restrict job postings to only specific ALA locations?
Sincerely,
Hailey
p.s. If you haven't run into the new code of conduct yet, I just found in attempting to post this message that it wouldn't send...I received a notice that I had to first log in to Connect and accept the new code of conduct and then re-send this message.