Hello,
I wanted to bring attention to ALA's new Online Code of Connect that members were required to agree to earlier this month when they logged into ALA Connect.
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The American Library Association has a single Online Code of Conduct that applies to its blogs and websites, its social media, ALA Connect, and other channels across ALA (including those managed by Divisions and Round Tables). The Online Code of Conduct replaced the many policies/guidelines that were previously used across the organization.
The Online Code of Conduct is designed to build an open, inclusive, and collaborative experience for participants on all online platforms used by ALA.
The Online Code of Conduct is a living document and revisions are guided by the work of the Code of Conduct Committee. The Code of Conduct Committee was established to protect members, administer, and apply the Code, while providing transparent, consistent, and context-sensitive accountability to ensure mutual respect and community safety. This committee has worked to improve the framework that sustains a successful, respectful, and safe community, as they continue to improve the strong procedures for handling
incidents.
Thank you to the members who served on the inaugural Code of Conduct Committee. As a result of their collective work, the new Online Code of Conduct:
- improves the language and the framework that sustains a successful, respectful, and safe community.
- prohibits the promotion of paid products, events, or services not initiated by the American Library Association.
- establishes a single community where ALA members can post share career opportunities.
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One of the rules, which is easy to miss, is about job postings.
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.
A few reasons for this change are listed below:
- It is best practice for communities such as Connect not to allow job postings at all as it tends to drive out discourse and sharing of other types of content. However, we understand the desire of our community to be able to share the content.
- We created the consolidated ALA Jobs community to streamline where users can find this information. Secondly, it streamlines all other community digests where long job posts and descriptions would cause members to either not read digests in their entirety or unsubscribe from digest all together.
- The join permissions of the ALA jobs community ensure that sharing this type of content in Connect is an ALA member benefit. Nonmembers will no longer have the privilege of overtly and overly posting career opportunities in the Connect community.
The Online Code of Conduct applies to all Connect groups. Please follow the Online Code of Conduct by only posting jobs in the ALA Jobs community linked above. For NMRT members looking for jobs, you can join the ALA Jobs community to see job postings.
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Annice Sevett
Library Director
Albert Lea Public Library
She/Her/Hers
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