Director of technology for the Shenendehowa Public Library in Clifton Park, New York.
kgs@bluehighways.com
Column for December 2000
By next January, if all goes well, ALA committees will have a new tool for meeting between conferences: a chat room hosted by ALA. Exactly how this will be rolled out is still in the works, but I’ve seen it—so I believe it!
ALA has made great strides in electronic services for its members. In addition to its Web site, ALA now provides e-mail lists—including a searchable Web archive—and uploads key documents to ALA Webspace. I don’t even receive ALA Council mail messages any more; I have the ability to post to the list, but I read all Council mail through the Web.
These electronic services mean that it is increasingly common for ALA committee members to arrive at conference with resolutions ready for Council to debate, reports near completion, and other tasks accomplished in advance—because the committees have in effect been meeting year-round.
Chat technologies promise to take us even farther on this journey, offering the opportunity to meet online, in real time. The Electronic Meeting Task Force, which I chair, has been meeting for a year to evaluate chat technologies. It’s been a fun ride that will end with an informational session at ALA Midwinter, where we will demonstrate how we meet via chat.
Not surprisingly, the EMTF has used chat to meet a number of times throughout the year, with good results. Meeting via chat has the “real-time” flavor of telephone conferences, but offers more communication capabilities. You can’t see others, but you can see who is logged in. You can’t lean over and tap someone on the shoulder, but you can exchange one-on-one messages. You do have to type like crazy, but reading the conversation on-screen is useful; it’s nice to scroll back and see what someone said.
Recording minutes becomes a breeze. The capability to log sessions provides instant electronic transcripts—you can “read” several of our meetings through the ALA e-mail archives. “I’ve almost forgotten how to take real minutes,” enthused Donna Cranmer of Siouxland Libraries in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and recording secretary for Customers of Dynix Inc. (CODI), a committee that meets regularly via chat.
Chat has its technical problems. Creaky or unstable connections and slow or clumsy chat software can be big obstacles, as we found out this summer. The EMTF had such success meeting electronically that we invited a member of another ALA committee to sit in on a chat-based meeting.
Murphy’s Law stepped in to ensure that many of us had unbearably slow or shaky connections—I couldn’t connect for half an hour—resulting in a less-than-impressive meeting as our conversation stuttered slowly across the screen and members suddenly vanished into Webspace. Even ALA’s Jack Briody, who has provided wonderful technical support all year long, couldn’t bail us out of that one.
Nevertheless, most of the time chat works well—just like most of the time it doesn’t snow at Midwinter—and we’re definitely not in the same place we were five years ago when you couldn’t assume an ALA member had access to the Internet. We can probably spend less time worrying about the technology and more time thinking about how we handle voting, nominations, and similar parliamentary activities in an online environment.
The task force has also been careful to focus on chat technologies that most, if not all, computers could support right now. They should be Web-based, simple to use, and not require special software that members need to load. We all like the videoconferencing potential of Microsoft Netmeeting, for example; Sheila W. Bankhead of the Northwest Regional Library System in Panama, Florida, notes that “The OCLC WebExpress Development partners [a group of nine librarians plus OCLC staff] used NetMeeting once a week very successfully.” However, right now we can’t assume that most ALA members have access to the bandwidth needed to pull in video. In a year or two—who knows?
One of the concerns we’ve heard about introducing more methods for electronic participation is that it could adversely affect attendance at ALA conferences, where exhibit income and registrations produce a significant revenue stream for the Association. However, e-mail and Web access haven’t led to less member participation; membership is at an all-time high, and conference attendance has been on the rise for the last five years.
Task force members have some ideas as to why conference attendance is up. First, being able to do committee work between conferences, and knowing that when you get to conference you can actually attend programs and exhibits (or possibly do a little sightseeing), makes attending more appealing for most members—particularly those who pay their own way.
Also, meeting electronically can whet the appetite for face-to-face sharing—which brings us to conference, but also bring us together as a community. Digital communication, particularly among kindred spirits in a small group, can be an excellent lubricant for the gears of social discourse. I know that the Friday night parties we have at ALA Conferences for Publib, the electronic discussion group, happen because we talk year-round online.
In this era, anything we do to build community—electronically or otherwise—fills a powerful need. If it could make ALA conference more effective, and fun as well—then bring it on!