So far I have received only the SRRT membership statistics for December 2025 from Hillary. I have asked for the compete round table and division statistics report that we used to get on a regular basis. That report makes it possible to compare what is going on with all the round tables, and especially the large round tables like SRRT. Here is what we have so far.
Over the past year from December 2024 to December 2025:
SRRT membership has declined 22.73%, from 1311 to 1013 members. The biggest drop was from so-called Type II members. These are "Librarians and other employees in library and information services or related positions that: (a) earn <45k annually, including being not currently employed; (b) work outside the U.S.; (c) are retired; or (d) are not listed in Type I." Type II members dropped 56.07% from 173 to 76. Perhaps this partially reflect the precarious nature of work these days.
The most important category where membership declined is students, which dropped 38.39%, from 448 to 276. This must at least partially reflect the directive that all round table dues be standardized. Students used to automatically get free SRRT membership. Even through we were granted the ability to issue a coupon to them to get free membership, until recently this was very obscure. And even now that it is easier to find, it is still a barrier to membership.
And let me add that this trend is exacerbated in that we no longer have an active SRRT Membership Committee that used to send out reminders to members who had recently dropped and welcome letters to new members.
But in my personal opinion, I think the decline also reflects the perception that SRRT is not doing enough to justify membership.
SRRT membership has varied dramatically over time, and SRRT has often been ALA's largest round table, as it was at its inception in 1969 with 1050 charter members. With the conservative resurgence of the country in the late 1970s and early 1980s and the election of Ronald Reagan as President, SRRT member had fallen to 755 in 1982. As the political culture gradually become more progressive again, including a large movement against the US wars in Central America in the 1980s, SRRT membership began to rise again. By 2000, we had 1716 members, and again became ALA's largest round table. Our highpoint was in 2007 when we had over 2421 members. After another drop because of technical malfunctions in the implementation of ALA membership software, and as progressive movements came to the fore especially seen in the Bernie Sanders' campaigns for President, and in conjunction with a concerted effort by a new SRRT Membership Committee beginning in 2014, SRRT membership began to skyrocket and increased 71% from 2014 to 2017 back to 1370. By 2021, we had 2069 members. It has been downhill since then.
Al