joy at moll projects dot com
This is the first of two posts helping me get organized for my year as Chair of the Missouri Library Association Computer and Information Technology Special Interest Group (MLA CIT SIG). Writing it here allows me to share what I know with the other two officers (knowing they read my blog, for which I'm grateful, makes this a good communication tool for us). Also, I hope that having it out there may help other people who are active in MLA. Most of the information in these posts apply to every other SIG and, to a lesser degree, to the Divisions. It might even help people active in other state library associations. They're not all the same, but some of the functions are pretty similar.
My information sources are the information packet that I just received in the mail as a new leader of a SIG or other unit of MLA, the calendar I got because I attended a meeting of the Conference Arrangements Committee in January, a variety of items from the MLA website, and notes I took last year when I was Vice Chair, including this blog post.
This first post is some overview items which will provide background to the next post, a calendar.
Here are some assumptions that I'm making about me and the other officers of the CIT SIG. I'm writing them here because I know they'll correct me if I'm wrong and because it might be useful to other SIGs to see how our situation is similar to or different from theirs.
As the Chair and the officer with the most flexible time, I'm assuming that I will do much of the work while keeping up a constant patter of what I'm doing so that next year's officers will know what I did and be able to learn from my successes and failures.
Our Vice-Chair started a new position in her library a few months ago. She lives closest to Columbia, Missouri, where many of the meetings of the association happen and is the most technologically savvy of our current officers. I'm assuming that she has less time to devote to this, but would be willing to occasionally attend a meeting or perhaps do a technology project like get our web page up and running.
Our Recorder is a new librarian, eager to be involved. I'm guessing that she'll willingly take on the traditional jobs of Recorder in the SIGs -- writing the SIG reports for the association newsletter and taking minutes at our meeting in October.
Officers, I just learned from my packet, are required to be members of the Association (I would have guessed that) and to have their dues paid by March 1 (didn't guess that). Here's the membership form.
There are two activities that require attention every couple of months.
The first, I just learned from my packet, is to submit a report to the Executive Board two weeks before their meeting. We could, of course, attend the meeting, but a written report is all that's necessary. As chair, I plan to write and email these at the appropriate times.
The second, is to submit articles to the association newsletter, MO INFO, (published every other month) about our SIG and its activities. This isn't really required, but can be a useful way to promote the SIG. The first deadline of the year is February 15 -- that might be a good time to promote our new SIG email list server. The submission details are in pdf form on the website and were also part of my information packet.
Almost everything else we do as a SIG is targeted to getting good technology programming at the annual conference in October.
Okay, that's enough for today. Tomorrow, I'll post a calendar with the Executive Board report deadlines, the newsletter deadlines, and the many different activities for putting together conference programming.
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