Membership Development Committee – May 2020 Report


The group met 4-6 times this quarter.

Recent Activities

First Activity
The committee coordinated a joint LITA/LLAMA/ALCTS "happy hour" during Midwinter at Roy Pitz Barrel House, led by Pauline Stacchini. The event was well attended, attendees represented a mix of divisions, and received positive feedback.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Member Engagement, Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Second Activity
The committee's Vice Chair, Anne Pepitone, led a series of LITAchat events beginning in April that covered both lighter-hearted topics, such as favorite zoom backgrounds, more serious topics, such as self care and morale management during alternate operations, and professional development topics, such as tools that aid productivity working from home. Anne's ability to make these social media enabled discussions interactive, fun but also earnest in their tone made them a success.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Education and Professional Development, Member Engagement

Third Activity
The committee hosted a virtual "happy hour" event for LITA/ALCTS/LLAMA divisions in June, alongside ALA's virtual annual conference. The event was held using Zoom and was co-hosted by Anne Pepitone and Ida Joiner, and featured comments by outgoing division presidents, games and a general social/networking time.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Member Engagement, Organizational Stability and Sustainability

What will your group be working on for the next three months?
Under the leadership of Anne Pepitone, the committee will take part in transitional exercises as the divisions comprising the future Core work to align themselves toward a unified, reoriented structure and mission.

Is there anything LITA could have provided during this time that would have helped your group with its work?
This was a difficult, transitional year characterized primarily by uncertainty of the future. As such the committee, with no differing guidance, focused on the already established annual events and items left to it, such as LITAchat and the happy hour events.

Please provide suggestions for future education topics, initiatives, publications, resources, or other activities that could be developed based on your group’s work.
Establishing, during this transitional phase, a series of outreach "touch points" with membership will be vital as Core collectively defines itself to its members. Within LITA this falls across both the MDC and Communications committees. In Core it will be important that whomever owns this responsibility that individual members are communicated with frequently to facilitate a new, group sense of community as Core, not as refugees of LITA.

Submitted by Leland Deeds on 08/02/2020