President’s Column

By Linda Crook 

Greetings NMRT Members!
 
This is already shaping up to be a great year, and I'm excited about the opportunities we'll have for "Making & Maintaining Connections." With that as my Presidential Theme, my vision is of new ALA members, newish ALA members, and established ALA members working together and learning from each other. In that spirit, we're trying to bring NMRT together with other groups in ALA.
 
One of our primary partnerships this year is with the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA), and we recently formed the LLAMA / NMRT Joint Committee on Collaboration. We're planning to continue holding New Leaders Discussion Groups at the ALA Midwinter and Annual Conferences, and there's an online space to keep the discussion going year-round at (http://connect.ala.org/node/150557). There will be other programming about new leadership at the Midwinter and Annual conferences - stay tuned!
 
The NMRT Executive Board is working on several initiatives this year, starting with updating the NMRT strategic plan for 2012/2015. As the largest Round Table in ALA, it's hard not to have a little mission creep, but we hope that this will help us concentrate on the issues that are most important to our members. The Board also recently submitted some project proposals to the Emerging Leaders program, so we're hoping to be working more closely with them as they help us with some of our more big-picture projects. Any projects which aren't accepted by the Emerging Leaders program will be undertaken by NMRT task forces, so we're planning to accomplish a lot this year - from creating a comprehensive NMRT timeline to improving the report submission process.
 
I also want to update you that the "Marshall Cavendish Award Committee" has been renamed "Annual Conference Professional Development Attendance Award Committee." This is an essay contest which now provides the winners a ticket to the professional development event of their choice at the Annual Conference. In the past only tickets to the Newbery Caldecott Wilder Banquet were provided, so we hope that this will interest a wider audience.
 
We'll also be holding monthly leadership chats (November and February-May) using ALA Connect chat. Everyone is welcome, but we're particularly hoping that this will give committee chairs and board members a chance to discuss what's happening in the committees and get ideas and support from one another. The first one will be held the last week of November, when we'll also be talking about the Strategic Plan. Details will be posted to the nmrtbd mailing list (http://lists.ala.org/wws/info/nmrtbd).
 
I'm looking forward to Midwinter in Dallas, TX. I hope to see lots of you at NMRT events. If you have friends or colleagues who are NMRT-alumni, or maybe never had the pleasure, please bring them along, especially to the NMRT Midwinter Social!
 
As ever, if you have questions or suggestions about NMRT, please feel free to contact me at (lcrook@ wsu.edu). I’d love to make a connection with you!
 
Linda Crook
ALA NMRT President 2011/2012