The MAGERT Membership Committee is seeking . . . wait for it . . . new members! Interested in providing professional service to ALA and MAGERT, but cannot attend the meetings at annual and mid-winter in person? No worries, the Membership Committee will conduct most of our assigned business by meeting through ALA connect. The committee is expanding its roles to include coordinating the marketing and promotion of MAGERT programming, articles, monographs, educational materials, and professional resources that various MAGERT groups and committee members create. Our role is not necessarily doing the actual marketing and promotion, but rather facilitating the process with suggested procedures, timelines, and guidelines.
Our initial new task will be creating flowcharts/templates/guidelines for various types of press releases for MAGERT programming, articles, monographs, educational materials, and professional resources. The guidelines will provide suggestions, such as who to contact to review the release, how much lead time to allow, distribution outlets, potential advertisers, programming co-sponsors, and so forth.
Some of the other membership committee responsibilities include:
Providing ideas on increasing the number of MAGERT members.
Suggesting ways to optimize the incentives for joining MAGERT.
Leveraging social media such as Facebook and Twitter to promote MAGERT.
Exploring potential emerging marketing innovations.
Suggesting items for MAGERT memorabilia and swag. (Shopping while on the clock!)
Brainstorming new ways to promote map and geographic resources, collections, and technologies that other MAGERT committees and members develop.
Serving on this committee is an excellent way for new professionals and library science students to influence the future direction of MAGERT. And if we do a great job, maybe other round tables will follow our innovative lead!
If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact the current membership chair, yours truly, at Roger.Knouff@asu.edu