SRRT (Social Responsibilities Round Table)

 View Only
last person joined: 17 hours ago 

The Social Responsibilities Round Table works to make ALA more democratic and to establish progressive priorities not only for the Association, but also for the entire profession. Concern for human and economic rights was an important element in the founding of SRRT and remains an urgent concern today. SRRT believes that libraries and librarians must recognize and help solve social problems and inequities in order to carry out their mandate to work for the common good and bolster democracy.

Learn more about SRRT on the ALA website.

  • 1.  ALA dissolution policy



  • 2.  RE: ALA dissolution policy

    Posted 7 hours ago

    Boy that sure sounds ominous without context!

    The context: one goal of the policy manual is to provide procedures for everything in the bylaws. In this case, the policy monitoring committee is moving to adopt fleshed out procedures for Article XVIII, Dissolution. Nonprofits are expected to have dissolution policies in place even if they don't have imminent plans to dissolve. The IRS requires one if there isn't one provided by state law to ensure that remaining tax exempt funds from a defunct nonprofit are distributed to other qualifying organizations rather than used to benefit private individuals. Some states (including Illinois) have a template nonprofits can fall back on if they need it, but they are still free to adopt their own so long as it satisfied the IRS's requirements and does not violate the state law. 



    ------------------------------
    Tara Brady
    Queens Public Library
    She/Her/Hers
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: ALA dissolution policy

    Posted 6 hours ago
    Part of the context is that ALA has a huge deficit, and is continuing to draw down the endowment to meet current expenses. Currently these drawdowns must be repaid back to the endowment with interest. However, there is a proposal for the Wednesday Council meeting that would make it possible not to repay funds taken out of the endowment. At a fall Council meeting, the Treasurer said that "ALA is shrinking, not sinking.” At Council I, which I did not attend, the Committee on Organization put forward 10 motions to merge or discontinue ALA committees. I assume all of this was approved. This included dissolving the Committee on the Status of Women and giving its mandate to the Committee on Diversity. This included dissolving the Committee on Professional Ethics into the Intellectual Freedom Committee. This included the discontinuance of the Office for Diversity, Outreach, and Literacy Advisory Committee, and the relocation of the EDI Assembly, the Services to Refugees,Immigrants, and Displaced Persons Subcommittee, and the Spectrum Committee to the Diversity Committee.

    In addition, it doesn’t seem that the Intellectual Freedom Committee even met recently. There is a blank report on the Council documents website. The last time I went to the IFC meeting, there was no quorum so no business was done.

    Of course, some will claim that these mergers and discontinuations is all in the service of efficiency and saving staff time. However it will certainly reduce member participation, as so many other actions have done lately. The more members are disenfranchised, the more places for involvement are reduced, the more likely that the membership will decline at a faster rate. If this keeps going, the logical conclusion is dissolution of the association. It may take some years because ALA still has a large endowment, but the trend seems clear to me. I am sure others will disagree with me, and I hope they are right.

    Al


    Original Message