 |
 |
(Putting on LITA Board hat) To pull out some math in case you don't want to sort through the docs, and also make a correction: Yes, LITA's membership decline is faster than average for ALA. No, LITA is not the smallest division; ASCLA and United are quite a bit smaller. (Putting on personal hat) I find myself thinking of LITA less as "the technology division of ALA" and more as "the libtech association where I get to meet non-technology librarians". I love getting to meet people I can talk Django and Heroku with (!), and I meet more of those in code4lib than in ALA. But I *also* love seeing how the tools of the libtech world do, and don't, support the needs of library staff and patrons more broadly. And I love learning how the issues that matter to us as technologists - copyright, data quality, privacy - impact librarians in other subfields. And, to be blunt, there are some damn fun youth services librarians, copyright librarians, instructional librarians, et cetera. And I meet them through LITA. (okay maybe that was my Board hat too. I can wear two hats at once! I am like Hydra. Well. Not Project Hydra. Or Hail Hydra. SO YOU HOPE.) On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 11:59 AM, Cindi Blyberg <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > You can see the Executive Director's membership reports on ALA Connect: > > Annual 2014 - http://connect.ala.org/node/225631 (pdf) > Midwinter 2014 - http://connect.ala.org/node/216881 (pdf) > Annual 2013 - http://connect.ala.org/node/208000 (.docx) > Midwinter 2013 - http://connect.ala.org/node/197812 (.rtf) > > -Cindi > LITA Immediate Past President > > > On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 11:28 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 > >> > >> > -- Andromeda Yelton Board of Directors, Library & Information Technology Association: http://www.lita.org Advisor, Ada Initiative: http://adainitiative.org http://andromedayelton.com @ThatAndromeda <http://twitter.com/ThatAndromeda>