Sarah,
Thank you for sharing some background of reorganization attempts within the association for the broader group. Prior committee work, task force work, kitchen table conversations, membership surveys and studies, and more informed our work and we wanted to be very mindful of what was done before, what were the successes and challenges, and what were the pressure points of previous attempts at changing our various structures within the organization.
We relied a lot on the lessons learned from these previous groups and are grateful for all of the work that has come before us. This work has allowed today's membership the opportunity to even imagine what ALA members will need from our organization and how ALA can respond to those needs more effectively as our society and our profession rapidly changes. The way we do work, the way we engage not only with each other but our organization, and the way we want to engage with both have some constant threads -- we are looking for connection, advocacy, and meaningful work with like minded people -- but there are also changes in the ways we create these connections and do this work that we hope to address while building on the strengths of our association.
Our committee is very thankful for engaged members such as yourself to provide us with historical context and input as that input has helped shape and change our work over the last year. We look forward to sharing the next set of recommendations with everyone at the end of October and look forward for more opportunities to engage.
Best,
Lessa
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Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozada
ALA Executive Board Member
Chair, ALA Steering Committee on Organizational Effectiveness
Adult Services Assistant Manager, Palos Verdes Library District
she/her/hers
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Original Message:
Sent: Sep 15, 2019 08:58 PM
From: Sarah Pritchard
Subject: SCOE and the history of ALA structure attempts
This is a P.S. to my own comments above. I don't mean to suggest that members have not already commented on the negative implications of eliminating the Council; and I support the memo submitted by SRRT. But this whole examination seems to have been somewhat ahistorical. Maybe I have not read in enough detail all of the SCOE's meeting minutes. But there are meaningful reasons why the ALA structure has evolved the way it has -- and most restructuring attempts have ignored the successful aspects of ALA's membership culture. My belief is that the problem is not so much with the structure and the array of units (and not with the Council), but with the Operating Agreement -- and even more specifically, with the little-known internal staff guidelines ("Operational Practices," American Library Association operational practices). These are internal guidelines about how business gets done, and indirectly they have a large effect on for example incentives to have shared programs/meetings. The SRTF made quite a few recommendations to BARC that would have required addressing both these documents in the interest of an easier-to-navigate ALA; most were ignored.
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Sarah Pritchard
Dean of Libraries
Northwestern University
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