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...and maybe a little influence by the current ALA membership payment options.  Used to have to pay your base membership and a division (or two?)   Recently, you can go cheap and pay ONLY the base membership cost!    No forced division membership.  

TK


Tom Klingler
Assistant Dean for Technical Services
University Libraries, Rm 300
1125 Risman Drive
Kent State University
Kent, Ohio 44242-0001
330-672-1646 office



-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Roy Tennant
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2015 11:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] lita

Also, I would point out that libraries increasingly hire non-librarians in technology positions. That likely means that even if said persons might eventually find Code4Lib, their allegiance to a profession as epitomized by ALA is unlikely.
Roy

On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 8:37 AM, Debra Shapiro <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> LITA is now the smallest ALA division.
>
> Personally, as someone who’s been involved with LITA for 20 years, I 
> think the decrease is due to all the reasons Kevin cites below, and 
> also because of something of an identity crisis - related to the 
> advent of the Internet, as Eric says.
>
> LITA is the technology division of the ALA. *Everything* in libraries 
> is done with technology now, so ALA members who once might’ve chosen 
> to join the technology division choose instead to join other 
> divisions, related to their other interests. Look at the list of ALCTS 
> (the cataloging division) programs for any given ALA conference, or 
> ALCTS list of CE webinars, and it’s all topics that might’ve once been more the purview of LITA.
>
> Of course I ran for LITA prez on that platform 6 years ago and lost so 
> what do I know …
>
> deb
>
>
> On Jan 5, 2015, at 10:28 AM, Kevin Ford <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > > 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
> >>
>
> [log in to unmask]
> Debra Shapiro
> SLIS, the iSchool at UW-Madison
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