Advocacy: What Does It Mean for Technical Services?

February 8 and 9, 2012
Hosted by the ALCTS Advocacy Task Force

Comments received in response to ALCTS’ “Reshaping Our Future” survey suggest that advocacy is an area ALCTS should examine. ALCTS President Betsy Simpson has charged the ALCTS Advocacy Task Force to:

  • Identify what ALCTS members mean by “advocacy”
  • Define ALCTS’ role in advocating for our functions or for libraries
  • Recommend what steps, if any, ALCTS should take to strengthen its advocacy efforts.

Additionally, the Task Force has been specifically asked to:

  • Review comments from the Reshaping survey related to advocacy
  • Identify existing ALCTS advocacy activities
  • Consider new avenues for advocacy within ALCTS
  • Assess the need for organizational change to support advocacy

In order to answer some of the questions posed by Betsy Simpson, the Task Force is hosting an e-forum to get feedback directly from ALCTS members. We welcome your input and concerns and look forward to engaging in a meaningful dialogue with ALCTS members to fulfill our charge.

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Hosts

ALCTS Advocacy Task Force

Erin E. Boyd is the Cataloging/Reference Librarian at the Rosa Parks Library at Troy University’s Montgomery Campus in Alabama. She is currently a member of the ALCTS CMS Education Committee, and serves Web Coordinator for the ALCTS NMIG and Secretary for the Alabama Library Association’s Technical Services and Systems Round Table.

Eleanor I. Cook is Assistant Director for Collections and Technical Services at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, where she has been since 2008. Prior to this she was the Serials Coordinator at Appalachian State University for 18 years. She has also held positions at UNC-Chapel Hill, Georgia Institute of Technology and North Carolina State University. She has held a number of leadership roles over the years, most notably President of the North American Serials Interest Group (2002-2003) and President of the North Carolina Preservation Consortium (NCPC). She is also active in ALA and NCLA. Eleanor serves as Chief Editor of ACQNET-L, a discussion list for those interested in acquisitions issues and also is on the editorial boards of Serials Librarian and Against the Grain.

Louise Ratliff is the Social Sciences and Map Catalog Librarian at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she catalogs print and electronic resources as a BIBCO member of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). In 2010 she participated as a member of the PCC Task Force to develop the BIBCO Standard Records for use by BIBCO participants. Within ALCTS she has served as Chair of the Council of Regional Groups (now ceased) and is currently the past-chair of the ALCTS Affiliate Relations Committee (successor to the CRG). As Chair of the CaMMS/MAGIRT Cataloging of Cartographic Resources Interest Group, she recently led a discussion about RDA issues related to map cataloging.

Duncan Stewart is a Cataloging Librarian at the University of Iowa Libraries specializing in foreign language and special collections cataloging. Duncan serves as the ALCTS representative to ALA's Legislative Assembly and is also a member of ALA's Committee on Legislation. He served two terms as chair of the Iowa Library Association's Governmental Affairs Committee and currently sits on the ILA Executive Board. Duncan has attended ALA Library Legislative Day in Washington, D.C. three times as an Iowa representative and is an ACRL federal legislative advocate.

Mary Beth Weber has been head of Central Technical Services at Rutgers University Libraries since 2008. She has served in a number of positions at Rutgers, including Head of Cataloging and Metadata Services. Mary Beth served as the editor of the ALCTS Newsletter Online 2005-2011, and also served as an ex-officio member of the ALCTS Board of Directors and the LRTS Editorial Board. She chaired of the ALCTS Audiovisual Committee, the Copy Cataloging Discussion Group, and the Computer Files Discussion Group (now the Electronic Resources Interest Group). Mary Beth is the author of two books on cataloging nonbook resources and co-author of Describing Electronic, Digital, and Other Media Using AACR and RDA (Neal-Schuman, 2011).

Registration

How to Register

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Tech Requirements

Email account with an Internet connection.

Credits

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Questions?

If you have trouble subscribing to the discussion list or have questions, please contact alcts@ala.org. Or, contact e-Forum Coordinator, Kristin Martin, kmarti@uic.edu.