> I think this just goes to show, with the advent of the
 > Internet, centralized authorities are not as necessary/useful
 > as they once
 > used to be. —ELM
 >

-- Maybe.  I think it it recession-related.  The high water mark for 
nearly all of the groups on that list is 2007 (2006 for one or two). 
The overall stats for ALA show the same membership pattern (increasing 
until 2007, decreasing thereafter): 
http://www.ala.org/membership/membershipstats_files/annual_memb_stats

I'd be interested to know if LITA's membership decrease is greater (as a 
percentage) than the others.  Perhaps that would suggest forums such as 
code4lib peeled off some of those would-be LITA members.  Otherwise, it 
just looks like a broader decline in ALA membership, probably for a few 
reasons: fewer librarians in the workforce, fewer institutions willing 
to pay professional membership fees, less willingness to pay those fees 
out of pocket, etc.

Yours,
Kevin




On 1/5/15 10:12 AM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
>>> I’m curious, how large is LITA (Library and Information Technology
>>> Association)? [0] How many members does it have?
>>
>> Apparently it has around 3000 members this year. I found this on the ALA
>> membership statistics page:
>>
>> http://www.ala.org/membership/membershipstats_files/divisionstats#lita
>
>
> Interesting and thank you. Code4Lib only needs fifty more subscribers to equal LITA’s size. I think this just goes to show, with the advent of the Internet, centralized authorities are not as necessary/useful as they once used to be. —ELM
>