SRRT (Social Responsibilities Round Table)

Tara,

Your reply to Patricia illustrates a larger problem we've been facing with SRRT's current leadership. To dismiss her points as "misleading and inaccurate" reduces what she offered - drawn from decades of direct service as ALA President, Treasurer, Endowment Trustee, and SRRT leader - to a quibble, when in fact she was raising a substantive concern about how awards policy, endowment requirements, and fundraising intersect. Patricia is right to insist that endowed awards, having met the $50,000 threshold, are not subject to a "trial period" in the way you suggested. To gloss over that distinction may sound minor, but it directly affects how members understand their contributions and whether they can trust that their fundraising will have lasting impact.

This is not simply a matter of wording. It is about how SRRT leadership engages with members, especially those who carry the memory of how SRRT has historically fought to keep ALA accountable to its values. The pattern has become one of quick deference to staff documents and policy framings, coupled with a readiness to dismiss or minimize critical input from members themselves. That is not the democratic, member-driven SRRT that was created as ALA's conscience.

By characterizing Patricia's post as "misleading and inaccurate" without acknowledging her deep institutional knowledge, you reinforce the impression that critique and dissent - especially when it challenges staff-driven processes - are treated as obstacles rather than contributions. This undermines both the credibility of SRRT's leadership and the confidence of members who expect their experience and judgment to be valued.

The issue here goes beyond one award. It speaks to how SRRT positions itself in the current climate of ALA de-democratization, where staff and the Executive Board increasingly dominate, and round tables are relegated to the margins. If SRRT leadership cannot recognize and defend the authority of its own members - especially founding figures like Patricia - then SRRT risks complicitly erasing the very traditions of independence and accountability that gave it meaning.

We need leadership that treats members as the primary authority, not staff, and that welcomes critical knowledge rather than labeling it "inaccurate." Anything less represents a retreat from SRRT's historic role and weakens its ability to stand for intellectual freedom, social responsibility, and democracy in librarianship.

Mark R.

Tara,

Your reply to Patricia illustrates a larger problem we've been facing with SRRT's current leadership. To dismiss her points as "misleading and inaccurate" reduces what she offered - drawn from decades of direct service as ALA President, Treasurer, Endowment Trustee, and SRRT leader - to a quibble, when in fact she was raising a substantive concern about how awards policy, endowment requirements, and fundraising intersect. Patricia is right to insist that endowed awards, having met the $50,000 threshold, are not subject to a "trial period" in the way you suggested. To gloss over that distinction may sound minor, but it directly affects how members understand their contributions and whether they can trust that their fundraising will have lasting impact.

This is not simply a matter of wording. It is about how SRRT leadership engages with members, especially those who carry the memory of how SRRT has historically fought to keep ALA accountable to its values. The pattern has become one of quick deference to staff documents and policy framings, coupled with a readiness to dismiss or minimize critical input from members themselves. That is not the democratic, member-driven SRRT that was created as ALA's conscience.

By characterizing Patricia's post as "misleading and inaccurate" without acknowledging her deep institutional knowledge, you reinforce the impression that critique and dissent - especially when it challenges staff-driven processes - are treated as obstacles rather than contributions. This undermines both the credibility of SRRT's leadership and the confidence of members who expect their experience and judgment to be valued.

The issue here goes beyond one award. It speaks to how SRRT positions itself in the current climate of ALA de-democratization, where staff and the Executive Board increasingly dominate, and round tables are relegated to the margins. If SRRT leadership cannot recognize and defend the authority of its own members - especially founding figures like Patricia - then SRRT risks complicitly erasing the very traditions of independence and accountability that gave it meaning.

We need leadership that treats members as the primary authority, not staff, and that welcomes critical knowledge rather than labeling it "inaccurate." Anything less represents a retreat from SRRT's historic role and weakens its ability to stand for intellectual freedom, social responsibility, and democracy in librarianship.

Mark R.

Hi Julie,

Thanks for your question. I don't think there is any "correct" way of going about providing your feedback, since this is an entirely new process that I anticipate will receive varying responses across the different entities that are being assessed and surveyed. I think feedback on the process in tandem with the specific initiative you wish to provide more clarification or narrative around would both be helpful. 

Hope that helps - Warmly, 

I suggest that there's some misunderstanding here .  This is not supposed to be a staff liaison final document  

I think we're under a misapprehension when we call this "" Hillary's document" and assume that we cannot make changes to it - only comments. SRRT should commend the search staff liaison for helping our work along, but not accept it as the final document . That is not what the executive board asked for or expected

here is the executive board action, address to Ala units, not ALA staff  : 

The ALA Executive Board approved the following motions on May 15, 2025: 

• Motion #1: Direct ALA units, including Divisions and Round Tables, to conduct an audit of their member committees, interest groups, and other member groups with recommendations to continue or sunset to aid in future budgeting decisions to the Executive Director of the Association by September 30, 2025; and 

• Motion #2: Direct ALA units, including Divisions and Round Tables, to conduct an audit of their awards, scholarships, and grants with recommendations to continue or sunset to aid in future budgeting decisions to the Executive Director of the Association by September 30, 2025. 

Recommendation should be coming from members and Action  Council and we should be free to make changes to the document presented in accordance with the executive board instructions. The Final audit should  be an SRRT member document not a staff live on document

Pat Schuman

------------------------------
Patricia Glass Schuman
ALA Past Treasurer
ALA Past President
ALA Honorary Member
------------------------------

I suggest that there's some misunderstanding here .  This is not supposed to be a staff liaison final document  

I think we're under a misapprehension when we call this "" Hillary's document" and assume that we cannot make changes to it - only comments. SRRT should commend the search staff liaison for helping our work along, but not accept it as the final document . That is not what the executive board asked for or expected

here is the executive board action, address to Ala units, not ALA staff  : 

The ALA Executive Board approved the following motions on May 15, 2025: 

• Motion #1: Direct ALA units, including Divisions and Round Tables, to conduct an audit of their member committees, interest groups, and other member groups with recommendations to continue or sunset to aid in future budgeting decisions to the Executive Director of the Association by September 30, 2025; and 

• Motion #2: Direct ALA units, including Divisions and Round Tables, to conduct an audit of their awards, scholarships, and grants with recommendations to continue or sunset to aid in future budgeting decisions to the Executive Director of the Association by September 30, 2025. 

Recommendation should be coming from members and Action  Council and we should be free to make changes to the document presented in accordance with the executive board instructions. The Final audit should  be an SRRT member document not a staff live on document

Pat Schuman

------------------------------
Patricia Glass Schuman
ALA Past Treasurer
ALA Past President
ALA Honorary Member
------------------------------

Subject: Urgent: Clarification Needed on Assessment Document

Dear Rachel & Olivia,

I'm following up on the assessment document process. It seems there may be a significant misunderstanding about the purpose of the draft we have. This is not meant to be a staff liaison "final" document. While we should acknowledge and appreciate the liaison's assistance, the Executive Board clearly instructed ALA units-including SRRT-to conduct audits and produce member-driven recommendations. The final document should reflect SRRT members' decisions, not a staff-authored draft.

Could you clarify:

1. What are the next steps for finalizing this as a true SRRT member document?

2. Why is the current approach apparently treating the liaison draft as final, when even  the Executive Board's motions explicitly call for member-led recommendations?

Frommy point of view, it's important that we move forward in a way that preserves SRRT's role as a member-driven body.

Thank you,

Mark Rosenzweig

IRTF Co-coordinator

Thank you for the robust member feedback provided, both posted to Connect and provided via email to me and Olivia. We have submitted everything to Hillary, who has made many modifications to the report based on feedback and her own subsequent research. I expect she will also share what the next steps are related to transmission and outcomes. It's worth noting that a preponderance of the feedback related to the process undertaken to conduct the assessment, including my own, which I relayed as part of the aggregated feedback and will share here as well, as follows:

My feedback relates to the purpose and process of this assessment rather than the scoring of individual initiatives.

I recognize that the American Library Association (ALA) has never been a grassroots organization and has always been a large cross-sector professional association with many different stakeholders primarily devoted to advocacy for the LIS field, its workforce, and its centrality to the core values of American democracy, like intellectual freedom, privacy, and civic belonging. I appreciate the resources and opportunities the ALA provides to develop some of the core competencies and critical lenses necessary to excel as a professional and advocate in this field. 

Having said that, my own involvement in ALA has waxed and waned over the course of the past 25 years I've been engaged in some way with the LIS profession, for reasons related to its often insular, overly professionalized, and bureaucratic/technocratic tendencies. These range from the persistently prohibitive cost of membership and conference attendance fees to the historical lack of support for African Americans and suppression of the organization's "silence and indifference" in the face of their oppression and exclusion to the current corporate/consultant-refresh that seems to have overtaken the organization and threatens its credibility as an inclusive and politically potent force for social good and justice. 

The program assessment is a reflection of the latter trend, one that is not unique to ALA but rather has dominated the educational and knowledge industries for the past several decades, on a parallel track with escalating social polarization, economic inequality, and political authoritarianism. I believe that these are intertwined. While the Social Responsibilities Round Table has had an unfortunate tendency in recent years to devolve into fractiousness and in-fighting, I remain engaged because I believe that librarianship is inherently linked to the pursuit of social justice - which is to say, egalitarian institutions, equitable resource allocation, and an engaged citizenry ("citizen" not meant to be defined by nativity or nationality). Through its programming, resolutions, and various other initiatives and resources, SRRT has persisted as a beacon within ALA, and I am still committed to moving it forward in this capacity. Becuase of this, it is critical that the internal practices of SRRT's umbrella organization, the ALA, should model behaviors that foster collective discussion and action rather than hierarchical decision-making.

I believe that the program assessment process should therefore be a collaborative effort with each entity being assessed and that the feedback provided should be a springboard to redirect the assessment back to a member-oriented process that engages all stakeholders as equal members of a democratic body. While that may seem like it will produce more fractiousness and/or the classification of all initiatives as "preserve and invest" (and it may be so on both counts), that would at least create a process that tracks with the ideals we espouse as professionals and advocates and activists within this field and the broader society we are immersed in. I do not know what this revised path may look like, but I would urge ALA staff to consider, particularly in light of feedback received by SRRT members, how we might re-form this process to achieve a more transparent, legible, and inclusive pathway that aligns with our shared values and goals.

Thanks for your consideration,

Rachel Rosekind, PhD, MLIS

Root and Bloom

Thank you for the robust member feedback provided, both posted to Connect and provided via email to me and Olivia. We have submitted everything to Hillary, who has made many modifications to the report based on feedback and her own subsequent research. I expect she will also share what the next steps are related to transmission and outcomes. It's worth noting that a preponderance of the feedback related to the process undertaken to conduct the assessment, including my own, which I relayed as part of the aggregated feedback and will share here as well, as follows:

My feedback relates to the purpose and process of this assessment rather than the scoring of individual initiatives.

I recognize that the American Library Association (ALA) has never been a grassroots organization and has always been a large cross-sector professional association with many different stakeholders primarily devoted to advocacy for the LIS field, its workforce, and its centrality to the core values of American democracy, like intellectual freedom, privacy, and civic belonging. I appreciate the resources and opportunities the ALA provides to develop some of the core competencies and critical lenses necessary to excel as a professional and advocate in this field. 

Having said that, my own involvement in ALA has waxed and waned over the course of the past 25 years I've been engaged in some way with the LIS profession, for reasons related to its often insular, overly professionalized, and bureaucratic/technocratic tendencies. These range from the persistently prohibitive cost of membership and conference attendance fees to the historical lack of support for African Americans and suppression of the organization's "silence and indifference" in the face of their oppression and exclusion to the current corporate/consultant-refresh that seems to have overtaken the organization and threatens its credibility as an inclusive and politically potent force for social good and justice. 

The program assessment is a reflection of the latter trend, one that is not unique to ALA but rather has dominated the educational and knowledge industries for the past several decades, on a parallel track with escalating social polarization, economic inequality, and political authoritarianism. I believe that these are intertwined. While the Social Responsibilities Round Table has had an unfortunate tendency in recent years to devolve into fractiousness and in-fighting, I remain engaged because I believe that librarianship is inherently linked to the pursuit of social justice - which is to say, egalitarian institutions, equitable resource allocation, and an engaged citizenry ("citizen" not meant to be defined by nativity or nationality). Through its programming, resolutions, and various other initiatives and resources, SRRT has persisted as a beacon within ALA, and I am still committed to moving it forward in this capacity. Becuase of this, it is critical that the internal practices of SRRT's umbrella organization, the ALA, should model behaviors that foster collective discussion and action rather than hierarchical decision-making.

I believe that the program assessment process should therefore be a collaborative effort with each entity being assessed and that the feedback provided should be a springboard to redirect the assessment back to a member-oriented process that engages all stakeholders as equal members of a democratic body. While that may seem like it will produce more fractiousness and/or the classification of all initiatives as "preserve and invest" (and it may be so on both counts), that would at least create a process that tracks with the ideals we espouse as professionals and advocates and activists within this field and the broader society we are immersed in. I do not know what this revised path may look like, but I would urge ALA staff to consider, particularly in light of feedback received by SRRT members, how we might re-form this process to achieve a more transparent, legible, and inclusive pathway that aligns with our shared values and goals.

Thanks for your consideration,

Rachel Rosekind, PhD, MLIS

Root and Bloom

Thank you for the robust member feedback provided, both posted to Connect and provided via email to me and Olivia. We have submitted everything to Hillary, who has made many modifications to the report based on feedback and her own subsequent research. I expect she will also share what the next steps are related to transmission and outcomes. It's worth noting that a preponderance of the feedback related to the process undertaken to conduct the assessment, including my own, which I relayed as part of the aggregated feedback and will share here as well, as follows:

My feedback relates to the purpose and process of this assessment rather than the scoring of individual initiatives.

I recognize that the American Library Association (ALA) has never been a grassroots organization and has always been a large cross-sector professional association with many different stakeholders primarily devoted to advocacy for the LIS field, its workforce, and its centrality to the core values of American democracy, like intellectual freedom, privacy, and civic belonging. I appreciate the resources and opportunities the ALA provides to develop some of the core competencies and critical lenses necessary to excel as a professional and advocate in this field. 

Having said that, my own involvement in ALA has waxed and waned over the course of the past 25 years I've been engaged in some way with the LIS profession, for reasons related to its often insular, overly professionalized, and bureaucratic/technocratic tendencies. These range from the persistently prohibitive cost of membership and conference attendance fees to the historical lack of support for African Americans and suppression of the organization's "silence and indifference" in the face of their oppression and exclusion to the current corporate/consultant-refresh that seems to have overtaken the organization and threatens its credibility as an inclusive and politically potent force for social good and justice. 

The program assessment is a reflection of the latter trend, one that is not unique to ALA but rather has dominated the educational and knowledge industries for the past several decades, on a parallel track with escalating social polarization, economic inequality, and political authoritarianism. I believe that these are intertwined. While the Social Responsibilities Round Table has had an unfortunate tendency in recent years to devolve into fractiousness and in-fighting, I remain engaged because I believe that librarianship is inherently linked to the pursuit of social justice - which is to say, egalitarian institutions, equitable resource allocation, and an engaged citizenry ("citizen" not meant to be defined by nativity or nationality). Through its programming, resolutions, and various other initiatives and resources, SRRT has persisted as a beacon within ALA, and I am still committed to moving it forward in this capacity. Becuase of this, it is critical that the internal practices of SRRT's umbrella organization, the ALA, should model behaviors that foster collective discussion and action rather than hierarchical decision-making.

I believe that the program assessment process should therefore be a collaborative effort with each entity being assessed and that the feedback provided should be a springboard to redirect the assessment back to a member-oriented process that engages all stakeholders as equal members of a democratic body. While that may seem like it will produce more fractiousness and/or the classification of all initiatives as "preserve and invest" (and it may be so on both counts), that would at least create a process that tracks with the ideals we espouse as professionals and advocates and activists within this field and the broader society we are immersed in. I do not know what this revised path may look like, but I would urge ALA staff to consider, particularly in light of feedback received by SRRT members, how we might re-form this process to achieve a more transparent, legible, and inclusive pathway that aligns with our shared values and goals.

Thanks for your consideration,

Rachel Rosekind, PhD, MLIS

Root and Bloom

Subject: Urgent: Clarification Needed on Assessment Document

Dear Rachel & Olivia,

I'm following up on the assessment document process. It seems there may be a significant misunderstanding about the purpose of the draft we have. This is not meant to be a staff liaison "final" document. While we should acknowledge and appreciate the liaison's assistance, the Executive Board clearly instructed ALA units-including SRRT-to conduct audits and produce member-driven recommendations. The final document should reflect SRRT members' decisions, not a staff-authored draft.

Could you clarify:

1. What are the next steps for finalizing this as a true SRRT member document?

2. Why is the current approach apparently treating the liaison draft as final, when even  the Executive Board's motions explicitly call for member-led recommendations?

Frommy point of view, it's important that we move forward in a way that preserves SRRT's role as a member-driven body.

Thank you,

Mark Rosenzweig

IRTF Co-coordinator