by Cynthia Eastman, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Engineering and Environmental & Resource Mgmt Divisions
We as individuals need to be future ready but so does our support structure, in other words, SLA. We talk about attracting members from outside our traditional venues but if they don’t see any division or caucus activity that is in their line of work how can we ask them to join? If we want to attract members from non-traditional fields, we need to identify those potential fields and think about what SLA should have in place to attract those people. One approach would be to identify say three fields where we think we can attract new members and then set up a new forum for those fields. Obviously these forums won’t be like divisions but they could grow into divisions over time. Perhaps they are just a few existing members getting together for discussion sessions at the annual meeting. Yes, we already have caucuses that do this but I suggest we do away with the formal caucus formation process for these forums. Perhaps it’s as simple as asking for a few volunteers to lead a discussion and then setting up a web page where discussion notes and other information can be posted.
Switching to the opposite direction, is it time to look at de-structuring some of our current divisions to help us attract and retain active volunteers? At every conference I hear stories about the difficulties some divisions have filling Board positions and supporting conference sessions. On top of that are the burn-out stories where someone steps up to be Division chair and then disappears from volunteer roles after their term ends (or even sooner). Can we come up with a “small division” option with fewer positions to worry about and a lower number of sessions to plan? Yes, I know that divisions aren’t required to fill all positions or to do the maximum number of sessions allowed. But many people are intimidated away before we get them to a point where they understand the option to wrestle things down to a manageable level.
The keynote speaker at this year’s Leadership Summit showed that “Opportunities to Gain Leadership Experience” is not one of the aspects of association membership that is rated high by non-volunteers. If we want to turn those folks into volunteers, we need to think about new options for engagement. Less structure and fewer procedural requirements might be one way to go.
Cynthia is Corporate Librarian at Kennedy Jenks Consultants, an environmental engineering firm in San Francisco. Prior to Kennedy Jenks, Cynthia was Director of Information Services as Keyser Marston Associates, a real estate consulting firm. She is program planner for the Engineering Division for the Philly and Chicago annual conferences and has served as Chair of the Environment and Resource Management Division.
Cynthia – I totally agree, I’ve been trying to encourage and recruit around the edges of SLA for a while. I’m also working on a new conversation that will “hopefully” trigger a number of positive outcomes, including new members from other professions, increase in retention and a higher level of satisfaction with contributing to SLA.
Please let me know what you think of the following – June 14th SLA Unconference Session on Corporate Social Responsibility
Ready to join a conversation about something greater than ourselves? Want to help create transformational change in your community – or world? Join this social responsibility exploration to see how collaboration among info pros, their enterprises, vendors, professional associations, and not-for-profits/NGOs/community groups can start small, but achieve big. Come for ideas, stories, strategies, and resources…plus connections with others who share your passion for positive change.
Cheers,
CG
I’d attend that session, Christian – good idea!
Cynthia, I think your call to action for reaching out to new member audiences could be a way to renew discussion about repositioning of SLA more generally. In retrospect, the name change was just a little ahead of its time and proved alienating to the library professionals who felt SLA would be losing its identity and relevance for them as part of the larger “tribe” of info pros. I still support a renaming to articulate SLA’s need to reposition to a MUCH larger audience focused on higher value-added customer needs. But losing the library identity could feel disenfranchising for the core membership again, as I believe it did with ASKPro. However, that doesn’t mean SLA’s leadership should give up on getting this right, which I fear it has. I hope your post renews the idea but in the debate to follow, perhaps could include the word “library” somewhere in the acronym. I don’t believe you have the luxury of years to figure this out.
I like this discussion. I recently handed out a bunch of membership forms at an event and realized that there are an intimidating number of chapters and divisions for people to join, especially for new professionals just finding their feet.
The chapters based on geographical locations make sense, but it seems odd to have one Asian chapter for an area that accommodates billions of people and a Rocky Mountain chapter that encompasses a somewhat more nebulously defined area with significantly fewer people. But still, there is not much of an overlap there in terms of geography.
The divisions, however, are really intimidating. Do I pick a division that reflects my subject area, one that deals with the tools I intend to use, or the one whose title has more in common with my job title?
If I were a records manager at an engineering firm looking to engage in social media, I could be really torn.
Fully agree we should take ” time to look at de-structuring some of our current divisions to help us attract and retain active volunteers?”. As we need those volunteers to make SLA what it is, let’s take a close look on how we can make best use of their time and efforts with maximum value.
Maybe we shoud limit the number of roles per group and aim more for energetic, inspiring moderators for those groups.