SRRT (Social Responsibilities Round Table)

Perhaps this has already been discussed, but it seems to me like it would be a good time to run a survey of SRRT members, to see what their priorities are. Among other questions, people could be asked to rank SRRT activities in order of importance. I don't think elections or participation at meetings by the most committed members are necessarily sufficient to determine what SRRT should be focusing on. At other times, I think it would be, but right now we have a sort of a crisis of direction. Key question: How important are resolutions to the membership? If they're not a top priority, what are the top priorities?  We may find that SRRT resolutions are what drive membership, but I don't think we can know that without gathering some kind of data. If we find that resolutions remain a top priority of membership, it would help us get through the question of how to place them on the agenda and have a decisive effort to devote a lot of time to them. What do people think?

Rory Litwin

Perhaps this has already been discussed, but it seems to me like it would be a good time to run a survey of SRRT members, to see what their priorities are. Among other questions, people could be asked to rank SRRT activities in order of importance. I don't think elections or participation at meetings by the most committed members are necessarily sufficient to determine what SRRT should be focusing on. At other times, I think it would be, but right now we have a sort of a crisis of direction. Key question: How important are resolutions to the membership? If they're not a top priority, what are the top priorities?  We may find that SRRT resolutions are what drive membership, but I don't think we can know that without gathering some kind of data. If we find that resolutions remain a top priority of membership, it would help us get through the question of how to place them on the agenda and have a decisive effort to devote a lot of time to them. What do people think?

Rory Litwin

Hi April,

Thanks for sharing the survey. I guess I wasn't paying attention when it was originally done. At any rate, I know I had not looked at the results. I think the survey is useful to this discussion. A lot of people had complaints that mirror things that Tara and others have been saying. There were a lot of complaints about a small handful of white men controlling things and gatekeeping, creating a "you're with us or you're against us" feeling. 

I think it's also worth noting that the survey made some assumptions about what the work of SRRT is, in that there were questions about programming but no questions about resolutions, or more generally what SRRT should be doing as a political actor.  I think this reflects the fact that the "small handful of older members" that survey respondents were referring to views SRRT through the window of the political activism that was happening when it was created. It reminds me of things I've read about STS sitting and intensely drafting the Port Huron Statement. That's what political engagement was, and it seems there are few older members of SRRT who see the work of SRRT as continuing that tradition, or see that kind of work as the central thing that a politically-oriented group should be doing. I think they feel that if we're not doing that, we're not doing anything that is effective. But is that mode of activism still effective? I don't mean to be offensive, but it feels like it's part of a world that doesn't exist anymore. 

Back to the survey. Even though it doesn't directly address the question of resolutions, I think it does tell us a lot about what SRRT members want, and we should consider it in this debate.

I also want to say I agree with what Diedre said in a separate thread.

Rory

Perhaps this has already been discussed, but it seems to me like it would be a good time to run a survey of SRRT members, to see what their priorities are. Among other questions, people could be asked to rank SRRT activities in order of importance. I don't think elections or participation at meetings by the most committed members are necessarily sufficient to determine what SRRT should be focusing on. At other times, I think it would be, but right now we have a sort of a crisis of direction. Key question: How important are resolutions to the membership? If they're not a top priority, what are the top priorities?  We may find that SRRT resolutions are what drive membership, but I don't think we can know that without gathering some kind of data. If we find that resolutions remain a top priority of membership, it would help us get through the question of how to place them on the agenda and have a decisive effort to devote a lot of time to them. What do people think?

Rory Litwin

Hi Rory,

I am responding to your comments to April about the SRRT Member Survey, which I, too, have now spent considerable time studying.  I applaud SRRT for taking the initiative to do this survey, and agree with you that, as a tool, it can be useful in shedding light on current discussions.  I think, however, it is essential that we report accurately on the survey findings and their implications. 

1.    With only 167 completes, the response pool is too low to generalize back to the member population of 1227 SRRT members at the time the survey was fielded.  According to the SurveyMonkey Calculator, we would have needed 293 completes to achieve a 95% Confidence Level and 5% Margin of Error, which are surveying standards.   Thus, we can only generalize about SRRT survey respondents, not SRRT members.   To illustrate this, just take the age data we elicited.  Only 2 of 167 respondents reported being under the age of 30, which is just 1%.  Any survey company worth its salt would weight responses back to real-world proportions to get an accurate picture. 

2.   The report I received from April is an untabulated Excel spreadsheet, itemized by respondent.  I don't see any tabulations to form the basis for statistical findings on the answers to any of the data points from survey respondents, which, again, cannot be generalized back to represent SRRT members. 

3.   Comments you and others have made regarding survey findings appear to reference "verbatims" from survey respondents, and while these can be, and often are, useful, they have no statistical significance, and certainly shouldn't be weaponized to support specific biases.   Your suggestion, for example,  "there were a lot of complaints about a small handful of white men controlling things and gatekeeping" is not accurate.  Only two verbatims include the words  "white men".  In answer to Question 7A, Respondent #31, wrote:    "The roundtable seems to be dominated by opinionated older white men…and I keep seeing people who are not white men talked over and spoken to rudely."  This comment was just one of fifty-three verbatim responses to Question 7A about barriers to participation. In answer to Question 8, Respondent 149, wrote:  "the voices of about three white cis older men who take up all the space in the room."  That was just one verbatim response out of twenty-five to Q8.  Respondent 26 is the only respondent I could see who referenced "International Issues" and did so twice, in response to Q4 and Q8.  Blowing such comments out of proportion and misrepresenting their weight is neither accurate nor helpful, especially when used to fuel a false narrative that has been perpetuated by Tara and others.  Finally, it is worth noting, if one were to call-out frequency of mentions, support for Gaza would be up there at the top. 


Mark R.
SRRTAC/liason from IRTF

------------------------------
Mark Rosenzweig

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 30, 2026 04:45 AM
From: Rory Litwin
Subject: SRRT survey of membership?

Hi April,

Thanks for sharing the survey. I guess I wasn't paying attention when it was originally done. At any rate, I know I had not looked at the results. I think the survey is useful to this discussion. A lot of people had complaints that mirror things that Tara and others have been saying. There were a lot of complaints about a small handful of white men controlling things and gatekeeping, creating a "you're with us or you're against us" feeling. 

I think it's also worth noting that the survey made some assumptions about what the work of SRRT is, in that there were questions about programming but no questions about resolutions, or more generally what SRRT should be doing as a political actor.  I think this reflects the fact that the "small handful of older members" that survey respondents were referring to views SRRT through the window of the political activism that was happening when it was created. It reminds me of things I've read about STS sitting and intensely drafting the Port Huron Statement. That's what political engagement was, and it seems there are few older members of SRRT who see the work of SRRT as continuing that tradition, or see that kind of work as the central thing that a politically-oriented group should be doing. I think they feel that if we're not doing that, we're not doing anything that is effective. But is that mode of activism still effective? I don't mean to be offensive, but it feels like it's part of a world that doesn't exist anymore. 

Back to the survey. Even though it doesn't directly address the question of resolutions, I think it does tell us a lot about what SRRT members want, and we should consider it in this debate.

I also want to say I agree with what Diedre said in a separate thread.

Rory

------------------------------
Rory Litwin
President
Library Juice Academy
He/Him/His

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 29, 2026 09:07 PM
From: April Sheppard
Subject: SRRT survey of membership?

Original Message:
Sent: 1/29/2026 7:52:00 AM
From: Rory Litwin
Subject: SRRT survey of membership?

Perhaps this has already been discussed, but it seems to me like it would be a good time to run a survey of SRRT members, to see what their priorities are. Among other questions, people could be asked to rank SRRT activities in order of importance. I don't think elections or participation at meetings by the most committed members are necessarily sufficient to determine what SRRT should be focusing on. At other times, I think it would be, but right now we have a sort of a crisis of direction. Key question: How important are resolutions to the membership? If they're not a top priority, what are the top priorities?  We may find that SRRT resolutions are what drive membership, but I don't think we can know that without gathering some kind of data. If we find that resolutions remain a top priority of membership, it would help us get through the question of how to place them on the agenda and have a decisive effort to devote a lot of time to them. What do people think?

Rory Litwin

------------------------------
Rory Litwin
President
Library Juice Academy
He/Him/His
------------------------------

Hi Mark,

I'd like to offer a clarification on the sample size. Statistically, a sample size of 167 from a population of 1227 gives you 95% confidence with a +- 7% margin of error. While it may not be the accuracy we would often aim for in published research, the results are not "too low to generalize back to the member population"; it just has a larger margin. That means if we were to do this survey 20 times, two responses will accurately represent somewhere between 0% and 7% of all of SRRT's members 19 times. The remaining survey may have answers that do not represent the membership within the margin.

Optional sections are harder to calculate statistically. One could argue that results within the "do you have any more feedback" section are either under-representative or over-representative of the population for several reasons. Regardless, folks felt strong enough about a topic to go out of their way to tell us something. We should not quickly dismiss any specific feedback from the membership. 

------------------------------
Ian

Original Message:
Sent: Feb 01, 2026 02:20 PM
From: Mark Rosenzweig
Subject: SRRT survey of membership?

Hi Rory,

I am responding to your comments to April about the SRRT Member Survey, which I, too, have now spent considerable time studying.  I applaud SRRT for taking the initiative to do this survey, and agree with you that, as a tool, it can be useful in shedding light on current discussions.  I think, however, it is essential that we report accurately on the survey findings and their implications. 

1.    With only 167 completes, the response pool is too low to generalize back to the member population of 1227 SRRT members at the time the survey was fielded.  According to the SurveyMonkey Calculator, we would have needed 293 completes to achieve a 95% Confidence Level and 5% Margin of Error, which are surveying standards.   Thus, we can only generalize about SRRT survey respondents, not SRRT members.   To illustrate this, just take the age data we elicited.  Only 2 of 167 respondents reported being under the age of 30, which is just 1%.  Any survey company worth its salt would weight responses back to real-world proportions to get an accurate picture. 

2.   The report I received from April is an untabulated Excel spreadsheet, itemized by respondent.  I don't see any tabulations to form the basis for statistical findings on the answers to any of the data points from survey respondents, which, again, cannot be generalized back to represent SRRT members. 

3.   Comments you and others have made regarding survey findings appear to reference "verbatims" from survey respondents, and while these can be, and often are, useful, they have no statistical significance, and certainly shouldn't be weaponized to support specific biases.   Your suggestion, for example,  "there were a lot of complaints about a small handful of white men controlling things and gatekeeping" is not accurate.  Only two verbatims include the words  "white men".  In answer to Question 7A, Respondent #31, wrote:    "The roundtable seems to be dominated by opinionated older white men…and I keep seeing people who are not white men talked over and spoken to rudely."  This comment was just one of fifty-three verbatim responses to Question 7A about barriers to participation. In answer to Question 8, Respondent 149, wrote:  "the voices of about three white cis older men who take up all the space in the room."  That was just one verbatim response out of twenty-five to Q8.  Respondent 26 is the only respondent I could see who referenced "International Issues" and did so twice, in response to Q4 and Q8.  Blowing such comments out of proportion and misrepresenting their weight is neither accurate nor helpful, especially when used to fuel a false narrative that has been perpetuated by Tara and others.  Finally, it is worth noting, if one were to call-out frequency of mentions, support for Gaza would be up there at the top. 


Mark R.
SRRTAC/liason from IRTF

------------------------------
Mark Rosenzweig

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 30, 2026 04:45 AM
From: Rory Litwin
Subject: SRRT survey of membership?

Hi April,

Thanks for sharing the survey. I guess I wasn't paying attention when it was originally done. At any rate, I know I had not looked at the results. I think the survey is useful to this discussion. A lot of people had complaints that mirror things that Tara and others have been saying. There were a lot of complaints about a small handful of white men controlling things and gatekeeping, creating a "you're with us or you're against us" feeling. 

I think it's also worth noting that the survey made some assumptions about what the work of SRRT is, in that there were questions about programming but no questions about resolutions, or more generally what SRRT should be doing as a political actor.  I think this reflects the fact that the "small handful of older members" that survey respondents were referring to views SRRT through the window of the political activism that was happening when it was created. It reminds me of things I've read about STS sitting and intensely drafting the Port Huron Statement. That's what political engagement was, and it seems there are few older members of SRRT who see the work of SRRT as continuing that tradition, or see that kind of work as the central thing that a politically-oriented group should be doing. I think they feel that if we're not doing that, we're not doing anything that is effective. But is that mode of activism still effective? I don't mean to be offensive, but it feels like it's part of a world that doesn't exist anymore. 

Back to the survey. Even though it doesn't directly address the question of resolutions, I think it does tell us a lot about what SRRT members want, and we should consider it in this debate.

I also want to say I agree with what Diedre said in a separate thread.

Rory

------------------------------
Rory Litwin
President
Library Juice Academy
He/Him/His

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 29, 2026 09:07 PM
From: April Sheppard
Subject: SRRT survey of membership?

Original Message:
Sent: 1/29/2026 7:52:00 AM
From: Rory Litwin
Subject: SRRT survey of membership?

Perhaps this has already been discussed, but it seems to me like it would be a good time to run a survey of SRRT members, to see what their priorities are. Among other questions, people could be asked to rank SRRT activities in order of importance. I don't think elections or participation at meetings by the most committed members are necessarily sufficient to determine what SRRT should be focusing on. At other times, I think it would be, but right now we have a sort of a crisis of direction. Key question: How important are resolutions to the membership? If they're not a top priority, what are the top priorities?  We may find that SRRT resolutions are what drive membership, but I don't think we can know that without gathering some kind of data. If we find that resolutions remain a top priority of membership, it would help us get through the question of how to place them on the agenda and have a decisive effort to devote a lot of time to them. What do people think?

Rory Litwin

------------------------------
Rory Litwin
President
Library Juice Academy
He/Him/His
------------------------------

Hi Mark,

I'd like to offer a clarification on the sample size. Statistically, a sample size of 167 from a population of 1227 gives you 95% confidence with a +- 7% margin of error. While it may not be the accuracy we would often aim for in published research, the results are not "too low to generalize back to the member population"; it just has a larger margin. That means if we were to do this survey 20 times, two responses will accurately represent somewhere between 0% and 7% of all of SRRT's members 19 times. The remaining survey may have answers that do not represent the membership within the margin.

Optional sections are harder to calculate statistically. One could argue that results within the "do you have any more feedback" section are either under-representative or over-representative of the population for several reasons. Regardless, folks felt strong enough about a topic to go out of their way to tell us something. We should not quickly dismiss any specific feedback from the membership. 

------------------------------
Ian

Original Message:
Sent: Feb 01, 2026 02:20 PM
From: Mark Rosenzweig
Subject: SRRT survey of membership?

Hi Rory,

I am responding to your comments to April about the SRRT Member Survey, which I, too, have now spent considerable time studying.  I applaud SRRT for taking the initiative to do this survey, and agree with you that, as a tool, it can be useful in shedding light on current discussions.  I think, however, it is essential that we report accurately on the survey findings and their implications. 

1.    With only 167 completes, the response pool is too low to generalize back to the member population of 1227 SRRT members at the time the survey was fielded.  According to the SurveyMonkey Calculator, we would have needed 293 completes to achieve a 95% Confidence Level and 5% Margin of Error, which are surveying standards.   Thus, we can only generalize about SRRT survey respondents, not SRRT members.   To illustrate this, just take the age data we elicited.  Only 2 of 167 respondents reported being under the age of 30, which is just 1%.  Any survey company worth its salt would weight responses back to real-world proportions to get an accurate picture. 

2.   The report I received from April is an untabulated Excel spreadsheet, itemized by respondent.  I don't see any tabulations to form the basis for statistical findings on the answers to any of the data points from survey respondents, which, again, cannot be generalized back to represent SRRT members. 

3.   Comments you and others have made regarding survey findings appear to reference "verbatims" from survey respondents, and while these can be, and often are, useful, they have no statistical significance, and certainly shouldn't be weaponized to support specific biases.   Your suggestion, for example,  "there were a lot of complaints about a small handful of white men controlling things and gatekeeping" is not accurate.  Only two verbatims include the words  "white men".  In answer to Question 7A, Respondent #31, wrote:    "The roundtable seems to be dominated by opinionated older white men…and I keep seeing people who are not white men talked over and spoken to rudely."  This comment was just one of fifty-three verbatim responses to Question 7A about barriers to participation. In answer to Question 8, Respondent 149, wrote:  "the voices of about three white cis older men who take up all the space in the room."  That was just one verbatim response out of twenty-five to Q8.  Respondent 26 is the only respondent I could see who referenced "International Issues" and did so twice, in response to Q4 and Q8.  Blowing such comments out of proportion and misrepresenting their weight is neither accurate nor helpful, especially when used to fuel a false narrative that has been perpetuated by Tara and others.  Finally, it is worth noting, if one were to call-out frequency of mentions, support for Gaza would be up there at the top. 


Mark R.
SRRTAC/liason from IRTF

------------------------------
Mark Rosenzweig

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 30, 2026 04:45 AM
From: Rory Litwin
Subject: SRRT survey of membership?

Hi April,

Thanks for sharing the survey. I guess I wasn't paying attention when it was originally done. At any rate, I know I had not looked at the results. I think the survey is useful to this discussion. A lot of people had complaints that mirror things that Tara and others have been saying. There were a lot of complaints about a small handful of white men controlling things and gatekeeping, creating a "you're with us or you're against us" feeling. 

I think it's also worth noting that the survey made some assumptions about what the work of SRRT is, in that there were questions about programming but no questions about resolutions, or more generally what SRRT should be doing as a political actor.  I think this reflects the fact that the "small handful of older members" that survey respondents were referring to views SRRT through the window of the political activism that was happening when it was created. It reminds me of things I've read about STS sitting and intensely drafting the Port Huron Statement. That's what political engagement was, and it seems there are few older members of SRRT who see the work of SRRT as continuing that tradition, or see that kind of work as the central thing that a politically-oriented group should be doing. I think they feel that if we're not doing that, we're not doing anything that is effective. But is that mode of activism still effective? I don't mean to be offensive, but it feels like it's part of a world that doesn't exist anymore. 

Back to the survey. Even though it doesn't directly address the question of resolutions, I think it does tell us a lot about what SRRT members want, and we should consider it in this debate.

I also want to say I agree with what Diedre said in a separate thread.

Rory

------------------------------
Rory Litwin
President
Library Juice Academy
He/Him/His

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 29, 2026 09:07 PM
From: April Sheppard
Subject: SRRT survey of membership?

Original Message:
Sent: 1/29/2026 7:52:00 AM
From: Rory Litwin
Subject: SRRT survey of membership?

Perhaps this has already been discussed, but it seems to me like it would be a good time to run a survey of SRRT members, to see what their priorities are. Among other questions, people could be asked to rank SRRT activities in order of importance. I don't think elections or participation at meetings by the most committed members are necessarily sufficient to determine what SRRT should be focusing on. At other times, I think it would be, but right now we have a sort of a crisis of direction. Key question: How important are resolutions to the membership? If they're not a top priority, what are the top priorities?  We may find that SRRT resolutions are what drive membership, but I don't think we can know that without gathering some kind of data. If we find that resolutions remain a top priority of membership, it would help us get through the question of how to place them on the agenda and have a decisive effort to devote a lot of time to them. What do people think?

Rory Litwin

------------------------------
Rory Litwin
President
Library Juice Academy
He/Him/His
------------------------------