Amber Williams, Councilor at Large

Tod Colegrove, Nevada Chapter Councilor

Brenda Ealey, Nebraska Chapter Councilor

membership meeting is like petition the leadership.

Regarding what Tara says -- outreach can help - little videos sharing knowledge and tips to post via Twitter and YouTube, etc...

But on the other side -- resources needed to produce those

Tara's right. We don't do much to encourage active participation in membership meetings. Especially during in person meetings where they are scheduled at conflict times.

+1 Sara, thank you TAG team!

I'm on mobile and I can't remember how to put my hand down >.<

+Pat

I think we are looking at some serious re-education of the membership that ALA works best when all members participate. That will mean they send ideas/suggestions/critiques to Council often, not waiting until a certain date.

++ Dorcas

+Pat

I think we also have to ask ourselves why members do not participate more. I don't think the previous survey, upon which we have based so many conclusions, did not really scratch the surface of trying to get at that question.

Can we harvest septimate analysis from Connect and other listservs?

The main issues are the issues members act around. Is there a groundswell of activity? Figure out how to provide the support the members need.RTs do this. Divisions do this. MIGs do this.More importantly, members (and non-members) self-organize outside formal ALA channels (because it is so much easier now with social media)

I love hearing that, Joan. There is a Youth Council Caucus that meets but there are few Councilors who attend who are not school, youth or children’s councilors. It would be really helpful if others attended. And, yes, it is a good idea if the YCC reported out to others. That is not happening and could.

(Hi Kim!)

+Sara

No contest time for membership meetings as Pat suggested should be considered.

Along with the hot button issues that drive action there are sustained efforts needed at the policy level (federal, state, local).ALA does pretty well on keeping the long-term efforts going (see PP&A / ALA WO).ALA loses ground on the hot button issues and organizationally we need to figure out how to support grassroots efforts around these issues

I also think that membership meetings, like council meetingsl, are too focused on reporting down to us and not on really surfacing issues people want to talk about.

Member voice should be year round, not just during Council Meetings times.

Maybe an ALA Connect space that facilitates conversation between current councilors and members?

++Eileen

Governance is not Meaningful Engagement; governance enables meaningful engagement.

Promote membership meetings AND procedures to bring business to Council and ALA

Is there a way we can collect feedback anytime? a specific twitter account? a basic online form (discoverable by QC, perhaps) that people can use anytime and is emailed to council as well as ALA governance?

+Jennifer

I just email the Exec if it's operations question or Pres if it's a current issue in librarianship.

Yes! And membership meetings need to be at no conflict times.

ALA Membership Community should be the default, imho:https://connect.ala.org/communities/all-ala-groups/ala-members-community

Regarding email, It might be easier to have a single 'contact' address for input that would be distributed among Councilors. There are so many councilors at present it would be hard to pick who to email. I like the Connect space idea!

When a member expresses a concern to "Council", that concern needs to be "assigned" to a specific Councilor to follow up. In my mind, followup would mean further conversation to really understand the concern or suggestion, and then pushing that understanding to the right channel for further action.

We need to have a way for non-members to reach out.

+Dorcas

+1 Natalie

What is the goal? member retention, member education, member engagement, council awareness, catching trends, etc...

I like Dorcas' suggestion. That would also give councilors the opportunity to volunteer to work on the concerns that mean the most to them.

An easy way to make member meetings no-conflict is to hold them outside of conference. Nobody needs to get in a horse and buggy to attend a membership meeting.

Dorcas, could you bring your ideas to the discussion?

Education of the membership on how to interact with Council could involve a series of really short videos (5 min) pushed out through some specific channel, and then collated on the Council pages for future reference. The channel could be Engage to all the different pages there - I don't think many people really read the All Member posts unless the subject calls their name.

+1 Karen

The no conflict membership meetings used to go much longer as well, i.e. a 2hour block was set aside with option to extend if necessary. I believe the elimination of No Conflict meetings was dismissed for fiscal motivations, i.e. more conference attendees, more programs, more vendor/exhibit time, etc. Perhaps we can reimagine the idea.

As a chapter councilor I put in place several mechanisms to encourage my chapter members to communicate concerns to me. I learned though that members reach out when they are motivated by serious concerns and at those times they tended to do so directly and not through the mechanisms I had put in place to encourage discussions. My main take away is that I needed to be visible to them and available when they needed me.

We're looking for a culture change where whining in private to a friend or three isn't the primary method. Take the whines you discover in random conversation and push them up to Council by some predictable method.

I think Membership Comm has a role

Yes, I was wondering about Membership Committee too!

I think the Membership Committee is a good idea, they technically are in charge of the membership meetings now.

+Joan, a network of experts

Knowledge Management (KM) calls them Nodes

Intake form for members=> posted to ALA Council group's Connect group so multiple councilors can see and use respond function to take it on

+ Joan, we use similar process for our Ask-A-Librarian, where questions are triaged by staff and directed to specific individuals/experts for follow-up

What about an Office Hours model? A few councilors would arrange to be available on zoom once a month - and I think many different councilors should have the assignment over time. Lots of possible ways to organize this - by division, or by some topical theme, or … This would also contribute to a perception of Council transparency, which has been thought to be lacking.

I like that idea Dorcas

Hold a virtual membership meeting outside school teaching hours to enable school librarians to attend.

Definitely have to accommodate different time zones too

We can have "pages" with our policies with who to contact in ALA or Units who know more and answer questions.

@Pauline - I think there will need to be some method for assignment. Maybe as easy as I (maybe a small group) will respond to any of those in the week of April 20-27 and others will respond by a schedule. This would be a Councilor responsibility.

+1 Dorcas and Joan. And as a member I'd much prefer to send an email or fill out an online form than navigate Connect Council page.

All questions don't have to be answered by Council

The other thing I've learned as a chapter councilor is that it is more important HOW we respond when members have concerns. Hearing their concerns is important but the real measure of their satisfaction and potential future engagement is the action we take. What can we put in place to assure members concerns are actually responded to in a way that is respectful of those concerns.

Yes, Mike Marlin

Yes, Jennifer. But if the contact thinks we should answer, we should reply to connect them to the right person. Just like our legislators. Imperfectly efficient, but important.

I love this chat bot idea.

How about an article in American Libraries about Council processes, procedures, how to bring an issue forward? Not everyone is going to search ALA's website to find councilors, etc.

@Dorcas Depends on the purpose of the contact, for information or action.

Could we embed a temperature taking survey for all members to take as they renew their membership?

+++Brenda

Good idea, Pauline

Here is the charge to the Policy Monitoring Committee: https://www.ala.org/aboutala/committees/ala/ala-polmonit

I think the issue is partially "members need to know more about how ALA works" and the other part is recognizing that members pay membership then are expected to learn everything about ALA and how it works to try to find a councilor they might know that they could reach out to... it's too hard!

🏆 Yes Brenda

+! Andrea - I feel these things need occasional refreshers

Its primary role is to ensure new policy is correctly integrated into the existing policy manual.

+1 Pauline

- even for members with several years or longer experience

Right Nick

+1 Pauline & Harriet

++Pauline

We can a form on the landing page: "how do I...." or "where can I find more about...."

Yes. Jennifer!

At ALA Annual, the Youth Council Caucus will meet on Sunday from 1-2pm EDT

Aren't council meetings open for the most part? (Sorry the transcription was a bit garbled so I may have misunderstood something.)

Lowering barriers for members to get a voice is important enough that I think we should fund initiatives to do it: perhaps that means creating another position at ALA, funding "networking-style" events at LLX or Annual with refreshments that invite members to participate in unintimidating environments

+1 Pauline

I believe our discussion should be on the floor of Council and I’d like to see Council Forum gp awauy

+Ann

+1 Ann

Maybe the ‘charge’ identified for the policy monitoring committee could be revised to encourage members to get involved as ‘change agents’ and not just act as a rubber stamp for the status quo. Just my personal thoughts.

Ann, but in order to have full discussions we need to spend less time being talked to and more time talking to each other

+Eileen

whether we move on now or not please do schedule a full meeting for oversight, there's a lot to discuss

+Tara

Agreed Tara

I so appreciate your service on Council Jennifer.

Idea for survey to be embedded at ALA membership renewal: how knowledgeable do you feel about how ALA works? How do you prefer to engage with ALA? How would you want to be informed of ALA governance topics?

Yes, reschedule for Org

If folks are serious about reaching out to the membership, put forward a resolution in DC that membership meetings should be in a no conflict time and publicize it.

https://www.ala.org/aasl/about/townhall

AASL holds monthly town halls. Please check out the topics and sign up.

Restructuring the Council agenda for more conversation and less process seems parallel to more TAP.

One thought I had related to ORB is that it could be integrated with TAP… So ORB receives the TAP info and uses it to evaluate the effectiveness of governance.

townhall and petition gives people a platform

Town Halls are great - doesn't ALA have similar? But they often have themes for practical content rather than a focus on ALA work.

I’ve love the rich conversation and look forward to our next TAG meeting to discuss these contributions.

Nick ++++

Eileen++

Thank you Amy and TAG, on to the next meeting!

Yes, Eileen. And that response needs to somehow be personal. One person reaching back with the process of how the request will move forward.

+Eileen

Sincere thanks to Amy, the tag team and the ALA staff for all of their work on this project

Thank you TAG team - great work and productive discussions!

+1 Eileen, that's a good connection to ORB and Nick's comments about using ORB to review the TAP process

Just curious to know how many ‘members’ actually completed a survey that indicated Council was not effective?

I have to go, thanks TAG and everyone for the discussion!

Thank you, All!

Thanks for another great meeting!

Thank you TAG

Good discussion today! Thanks!

Thank you!

Thanks, everyone - especially TAG!!1

Much appreciated - thanks team!!

thank you🤜🤛

greta jpb

Bye all!

thanks!