(I’m going to be documenting what I do throughout the year as VP, with the goal that, by the end of the year, this will be a useful manual for next year’s officer. That means this page is unfinished and will keep changing. -AY)
Deadlines
You have some. See the LITA Officers’ todo list.
You may get additional deadlines from the following sources:
- The orientation letter from the LITA Executive Director
- The ALA Appointments Committee
- The LITA Appointments Committee, per your plan for its work
- Any other committees or task forces you’re involved with
It’s your job to get a gift for the outgoing past-president at Annual.
Documents
There are a lot of things to consider reading as they provide useful context for LITA and ALA. Rereading may be useful as many of these are long and dry, and it may take a while for them to stick. That said, it’s understandable if you don’t necessarily get through them all — this is a lot to read!
- LITA Bylaws
- In theory the LITA Manual has lots of information on how things operate, but in practice much of it is out of date, and it’s proved surprisingly resistant to updates.
- ALA Operating Agreement — surprisingly useful
- ALA Financial Learning Series
- LITA history
Appointments
You and your glorious Appointments Committee appoint LITA committees; LITA representatives to other bodies; and members of some ALA committees. This is the most important and time-consuming thing you are likely to do as VP.
There’s enough info on this topic that it has its own page: Appointments
Travel
- ASAE meeting
- Several dates and locations throughout the year
- Arrange with LITA ED; you’ll be attending together
Misc
Dealing with your email
You will get a lot of email. You need a strategy for ensuring that you notice all your VP emails. For instance: set up gmail filters to filter all your mailing lists into a LITA Board folder, and also tag all incoming non-mailing-list LITA emails (there will be several per day).
You should be on the following mailing lists (you can confirm your subscriptions at http://lists.ala.org/sympa/):
- ala-appt (ALA Appointments Committee)
- divpres (Division Presidents)
- lita-appointments (LITA Appointments Committee)
- lita-fac (LITA Financial Advisory Committee)
- litachairs (LITA committee & IG chairs)
- litaboar (LITA Board)
- lita-l (LITA-L, which hopefully you were already on anyway)
- Your Forum list, and possibly also the list for the Forum before yours
- You are not automatically on the ALA Council list, but its archives are public through http://lists.ala.org/sympa/, so you can read it if you like.
- You should automatically receive copies of committee & representative activity reports (quarterly) and commitment reports (yearly).
LITA communications
LITA maintains social media and other communications channels that you should be aware of, even if you are not active on that particular platform:
- @ALA_LITA Twitter (WCC & CAM)
- LITA.ALA Facebook (WCC & CAM)
- LITA Blog (blog editor & blog, overseen by WCC)
- LITA members’ newsletter (office staff)
- Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL board & Publications)
- LITA Guides (Acquisitions editor & Publications)
- If you need to request that something go out over social media, use the forms site or talk to the CAM or WCC chair.