Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Forum Planning Committee – September 2020 Report

The group met 11+ times this quarter.

Recent Activities

First Activity
Accessibility/Streaming SubCommittee (last 6 months):
* Met on February 12, 2020 and April 13, 2020
* We can make a call for volunteers for shepherding sessions as a way to get people involved to meet promotion/tenure requirements (badges in ALA Connect?)
* ADAhospitality.org is a great resource to rely upon to ensure Forum is accessible to attendees
*Forum is transitioning to a Virtual Conference
*Project management will be important for tasks that need to get done (we can use tools like, Trello)
**Each subcommittee will have distinct roles for completing these tasks
**Berika will set up a Trello Board for the entire Forum Planning committee.
*Accessibility will always remain a top consideration:
**Presenters will need to be trained on accessibility to describe visuals for those who are visually impaired and captioning (or ASL live translation) will also be needed
**There also needs to be support for call-in users and those with low vision impairment
**Carli Spina is still slated to give a webinar to accepted speakers on accessibility; she will be updated on Forum and followed up with
** We need to first address the overall structure of streaming and offering a Virtual Forum with these considerations
**We need to enforce standards for accessibility for everyone involved
*LITA Office will be handling logistics (incl. streaming with the Platform selected), this subcommittee is to focus solely on accessibility of events)
* Carli Spina released a pre-recorded webinar for accepted Forum session speakers on "Accessibility for Presenters"
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Member Engagement

Second Activity
Programming Subcommittee (last 6 months):
* Met on March 10, 2020; June 2, 2020; July 7, 2020, July 29, 2020
* Call for proposals extended 3 times from original March 30th date (April 8, May 22, and June 12)
* Registration will open soon, waiting on ALA to finish the registration form
* We can use FormStack (or alternative) to evaluate each session proposal
* To reduce bias in evaluation of submissions, identifying information will be removed (Name, Title, Institution) but Institution Type will be present (Academic, Public, School, Special, etc.)
* Total of 80 session proposals and a handful of preconference proposals were received
* *Preconference proposals were emailed about possible consideration in becoming a webinar/web course for LITA, ALCTS, and LLAMA respectively
**Session are still in the process of being selected
**All proposals will know their status by the end of August 2020
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Education and Professional Development

Third Activity
Sponsorship Subcommittee (last 6 months):
* March 5, 2020; June 11, 2020
* After obtaining feedback about sponsorship opportunities for mid-size and smaller companies, we are revising our Sponsorship Propectus and making current sponsor, a top tier sponsor
* On 4/6/20, sponsorship activities were suspended until further guidance is received regarding the COVID-19 public health crisis about Forum Planning (SEE email dated 4/13 on COVID-19 Update.)
*Meeting resumed in June
*Updated emails informing potential sponsors of Core Virtual Forum went out in July 2020
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Fourth Activity
UX/Sustainability Subcommittee (Last 6 months):
* Met on March 6, 2020; May 01, 2020; June 5, 2020; July 10, 2020
* Discussed recruiting additional local arrangements subcommittee members/volunteers for the local arrangement subcommittee by reaching regional listservs (when we thought Forum was going to be in-person)
* Had questions for the LITA Office which has since been addressed:
* On 4/6/20, UX/Sustainability and Local Arrangements activities were suspended until further guidance is received regarding the COVID-19 public health crisis about Forum Planning (SEE email dated 4/13 on COVID-19 Update).
* Resumed meetings on 05/01/20
*Met with Emerging Leaders for their project on sustainability for future in-person Forums
*Discussed ideas for structured socialization:
**Virtual Lounge Zoom room
**Collaboration Room
**Schedule breaks (chair yoga, magic show)
**Evening Social Events (game night, happy hour, escape room, netflix party)
*Establishing a sense of place for attendees
**The goal here is to create an environment and experience so that attendees feel like they have a connection to their fellow attendees and eliminate the sense of being with 100 strangers on the internet and replace it with a sense of being among colleagues.
*Create a map of virtual "rooms" or spaces where different activities/conversations are taking place so that people have a visual diagram of what's going on and available to them.
**Assign attendees to a "table" that will then determine their breakout room
**Send an optional swag-bag to attendees with a handful of items that may be useful during the conference to first 100-200 registrants.
*Session moderation and speaker preparation
**Speaker preparation
***Work with Programming subcommittee to provide recommendations for incorporating interactive elements into the presentation (see the SUNYLA best practices doc for some recommendations)
***Work with Programming/speakers to hold a test practice session to ensure all presenters are acclimated to the tools.
***Session moderations – This topic actually didn't come up in the meeting, but I thought of it later. Is it the UX subcommittee or the programming subcommittee that will be responsible for coordinating session "hosts". We do this for the in person conference and I think it will be just as useful, if not more useful to have in the virtual forum.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Member Engagement

Fifth Activity
Web/PR Subcommittee (Last 6 months):
* Met on March 10, 2020; June 01, 2020
*Official Hashtag: #CoreForum2020
*Sent out Targeted communications to LITA, ALCTS, and LLAMA respectively about tracks that might be of interest to membership for Call for Proposals
*We can work on a promotional video to promote Forum
**YouTube offers royalty free audio and library clips where no attributions are needed
*Language for updating the website with a COVID-19 contingency planning update (SEE COVID-19 Update email sent to Forum Planning Members, sent out, 4/13) – website will be updated to announce that Forum will go virtual
*Discuss a weekly PR calendar
**Every other Monday Berika will send out a draft in a Google Doc for promoting Forum
**Friday that same week is deadline for Web/PR Subcommittee to provide edits/feedback on that draft
**Following Monday final draft will be sent to Chrishelle (LITA), Brooke (ALCTS), and Fred (LLAMA) for distribution.
*Volunteer to work on various portions of the Forum website
**Statement of Appropriate Conduct Page â G.
**Planning Committee Page â K.
**Keynotes (will be published this week) — Berika will work with Web/PR Subcommittee on crafting an announcement
**All other pages (forthcoming based on speaker selections from programming and content/work from other subcommittees)
*Will work on article promoting Forum for ALCTS
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Member Engagement

What will your group be working on for the next three months?
* After LITA Office confirms contract with Learning Times, working with them to set Forum schedule with accessibility and UX considerations
* Wait on ALA office to release registration
* Complete accepting sessions for Forum and send all proposals a response
* Complete planning of social events surrounding Forum
*Follow up with potential sponsors again

Please provide suggestions for future education topics, initiatives, publications, resources, or other activities that could be developed based on your group’s work.
All non-accepted proposals will and those that indicated interest for publication will be placed in touch with the appropriate Core Committee for webinars/web course/web series and publications.

Additional comments or concerns:
For Core Forum going forward (after 2020):
Appointments committee must establish a Forum Planning leadership team consisting of 2-3 overall chairs, AND a chair for each Forum subcommittee (Accessibility, Programming, Sponsorship, UX/Sustainability, Web/PR) to reduce stress/burn out on one person. This must happen upfront, before the committee is established.

Submitted by Berika Williams on 08/04/2020

Instructional Technologies Interest Group – September 2020 Report

Recent Activities

First Activity
Mainly monitoring CORE website changes, ALA Connect posts and the head's up email.

We usually have a business meeting or pitch a program at ALA Annual which was not an option. I tweeted and posted to ALA Connect the official news about CORE so people who followed based on sessions or using connect would be aware. No replies to CORE announcement.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Member Engagement, Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Second Activity
I reviewed the listserv for engagement in the last year – mostly just calls for participation in conference or ad for vendor products. While the over 400 members is one thing, there has not been any "discussion" here this year. (Activity is filling out this report with detail : )
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

What will your group be working on for the next three months?
My Chair position expired in July but i can assist in August with feedback or transition. I will post again to LITA Connect this month based on CORE's decision on this, other interest groups. There have not been any inquiries or requests on ALA Connect LITAITIG site, or the LITA ITIG listserv.

Is there anything LITA could have provided during this time that would have helped your group with its work?
Not really – every one is adjusting and doing what they can under difficult circumstances. If I had been contacted before the Aug 4th date I might have been able to provide more targeted feedback based on where CORE might be leaning with IGS as the current chair, and encouraged members. However, that may not be decided yes due to more pressing matters (Like the need to stay safe!) so I provided extra feedback on in the comments section.

Additional comments or concerns:
I have not been contacted about this IG specifically, but unless you find more board members it's time to sunset, or merge some of these themes to a committee (Or IGs if those continue in CORE). This could be groups using technology for educational purposes (very broad) or topics of privacy — which was the theme of last year's program. The emphasis tends to be on committee work, as it may be so perhaps that would be a better option than the IG if they want to do programming. The programs were a was a lot of work, but I'm happy with the outcome of two well attended sessions with this IG.

In terms of membership and roles – sunseting or merging topics with another group will not affect anyone else. This is so importatnt terms of conference funding or committee commitments (sometimes needed for travel justifications in academic at least). It's just been me for this IG officially (although Bree Kirsch helped last two years as a speaker!) No one is listed on the 2020 site for . Here is the 2019 site: http://www.ala.org/lita/about/igs/insttech/lit-igit?year=2019

Communtity – ALA Connect:
https://connect.ala.org/communities/community-home?communitykey=1b472812-3dbf-46b1-bc91-e0bfe96c6bff&tab=groupdetails

Now you have 3 divisions of CORE, and expert in marketing, it's a great time to see what works best for the CORE membership, not only attend but serve in roles. Special thanks to Jenny for all her support from day 1! Hope you are doing well. Thanks.

Submitted by Lilly Ramin on 08/03/2020

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

ITAL Editorial Board – September 2020 Report

The group met 2-3 times this quarter.

Recent Activities

First Activity
Published the March and June quarterly issue of ITAL, the latter despite the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Education and Professional Development, Member Engagement

Second Activity
Reviewed Editorial Board membership and vacancies; we had only one current member who opted out of a second term, so decided with the Core vote on the horizon not to advertise for new ITAL editorial board members pending the outcome. We are comfortable with the moving forward with the remaining editorial board for the coming year as things become clear about journals under Core.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Third Activity
Continued our work to understand the scope of topics that we publish in relation to short and long-term popularity (downloads and citations). Originally intended to more clearly define ITAL's niche in the library literature, this research and eventual reporting will be significant in understanding overlaps and distinctions between ITAL, LL&M, and LRTS.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Education and Professional Development, Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Fourth Activity
The routine work of reviewing incoming submissions for broad fit with ITAL's scope, peer review of submissions, and generating journal content continues.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Education and Professional Development, Organizational Stability and Sustainability

What will your group be working on for the next three months?
The September 2020 issue's peer-reviewed content has been copyedited and will soon be sent to ALA Publication Services for proofreading. Columns receive only copy editing and are not due until late August. We have accepted 5 of 7 articles for the December issue and will soon begin populating March 2021.

I expect the ITAL Editorial Board will be deeply engaging with the recommendations of the Core Publications Working Group as we move to transition into one unified publication strategy.

Is there anything LITA could have provided during this time that would have helped your group with its work?
No

Submitted by Ken Varnum on 07/27/2020

LITA / ALCTS Metadata Standards Committee – December 2020 Report

The group met 2-3 times this quarter.

Recent Activities

First Activity
Impact and Assessment for Fields in Metadata Standards

During this reporting period, work has been done to investigate and/or develop a system of analysis or best practice for asking and answering the above questions. A useful framework should analyze how a typical metadata standard contributes to the success of specific stakeholders and functions (users, content management systems, preservation, administration, etc.) It should also be bold enough to discuss level of utility.

It would be important to not only propose a system for analyzing this, but to also test it out across multiple standards to determine the efficacy of the system and its potential uses/misuses for metadata. It would also be vital to gather data across multiple institutions and database types using the same standards to see how specific stakeholders/functions change the value of fields.

During this reporting period, a literature review was completed and the group has been meeting to draft an analysis framework
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Education and Professional Development, Member Engagement, Organizational Stability and Sustainability

What will your group be working on for the next three months?
During the next three months, the group will be working on a draft of the project executive summary and work out a timeline to have a working draft out for community comment.

Submitted by Darnelle Melvin on 01/17/2020

Communications and Marketing Committee – December 2020 Report

The group met 2-3 times this quarter.

Recent Activities

First Activity
Working with Chrishelle to update and improve our Twitter engagement.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Member Engagement

Second Activity
Working with Chrishelle on some member engagement projects for Spring 2020 – such as helping supply questions and responses for new member discussions.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Member Engagement

Third Activity
Revise and update CAM documentation.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

What will your group be working on for the next three months?
We will be working with Chrishelle on identified projects to improve member engagement as well as focusing on improving our social media engagement.

Submitted by Cameron Cook on 01/03/2020

Financial Advisory Committee – December 2019 Report

The group met 1 time this quarter.

Recent Activities

First Activity
The Financial Advisory Committee met online as a group on October 23. The committee reviewed the LITA budget information from the previous and current fiscal years, discussed budget shortfalls and projections and developed a general assessment of the association's fiscal health, which chairperson Michael Rodriguez delivered as an oral report to the Board of Directors on October 24. We agreed to meet next in January 2020, or whenever the preliminary FY21 LITA budget is distributed to the FAC.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

What will your group be working on for the next three months?
The Financial Advisory Committee will hold its second meeting in winter 2020 to review the current year's LITA budget and discuss the next fiscal year's budget, once information is distributed to us.

Submitted by Michael Rodriguez on 12/29/2019

ITAL Editorial Board – December 2019 Report

The group met 2-3 times this quarter.

Recent Activities

First Activity
Published the December issue of the journal
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Education and Professional Development, Member Engagement

Second Activity
Drafted and nearly finalized a policy to make it clear that article authors may put a copy of their article in a local repository or elsewhere (they maintain copyright, so this is fully in their rights), but requesting that a note be added to such copies asking that the ITAL version be the one cited.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Third Activity
Worked with Jenny Levine and HathiTrust to change status of back issues of ITAL to open access in HathiTrust to enable reading of full text of articles there. Previously, digitized issues of ITAL were "search only", not available for reading.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Member Engagement, Organizational Stability and Sustainability

What will your group be working on for the next three months?
Finalizing the policy, working on the March issue, and minor updates to the template used to generate the PDFs for publication.

Additional comments or concerns:
I'm beginning to think about the post-Core plans and processes for ITAL, especially migrating the journal to the TDL platform used by Library Leadership & Management. I noticed that Library Leadership & Management runs version 2.X of the software, while ITAL is on version 3.X. I suspect a downgrade would be a challenge, as the recent upgrade from OJS 2 to 3 conducted by Boston College was not a straightforward one.

Submitted by Ken Varnum on 12/20/2019

Web Coordinating Committee – December 2019 Report

The group met 4-6 times this quarter.

Recent Activities

First Activity
The WCC spent time working on improving the user experience of the Docs site. By December we had produced a set of development pages and passed them to LITA's executive director for review.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Second Activity
We made a breakthrough with the Jobs site. Since no progress towards a payment gateway is possible, the WCC in conjunction with LITA's Executive Director, decided to pursue a more manual method of payment collection instead. Unfortunately some technical challenges remain before the project can go live.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Third Activity
We continued to maintain and update our WordPress sites.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Fourth Activity
The WCC migrated from KanBanChi to Trello for project management.
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

What will your group be working on for the next three months?
In addition to continuing to maintain and update our WordPress sites we are planning on developing a form which would allow members to suggest changes or updates to LITA's web presence.

Please provide suggestions for future education topics, initiatives, publications, resources, or other activities that could be developed based on your group’s work.
Once the new Docs site is live we could begin to use it as way to preserve documentation for LITA's various functions and preserve/consolidate our institutional memory.

Submitted by Michael Paulmeno on 12/19/2019

Forum Planning Committee – December 2019 Report

The group met 2-3 times this quarter.

Recent Activities

First Activity
11/4/19 Meeting (Entire Forum Planning Committee):
* Finalized Theme
* Discussed Planning Timeline
* Discussed general ideas for Forum
* Discussed using the 2020 Forum Slack Channel for ideas for invited keynote speakers ideas/leads (Please note, there's a possibility, we will open up both the opening and closing keynote speakers as an option in the forthcoming call for proposals, due to few leads generated from the committee)
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Member Engagement, Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Second Activity
12/4/19 Web/PR Subcommittee (via email)
* Worked on language for the 'Save the Date' Communication about 2020 Forum
*Requested Forum site access for Web/PR Subcommittee members
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Member Engagement

Third Activity
12/6/19 Sponsorship Subcommittee, 12-1pm Central
* Finalized prospectus for potential sponsors: https://forum.lita.org/sponsors/prospectus/
* Developed a list of potential sponsors to reach out to
* Discussed a communications plan for reaching up and following up with sponsors
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

Fourth Activity
12/10/19 Programming Subcommittee, 12-1pm Central
* Reviewed LITA Forum Assessment Task Force Report from 2017 for Track ideas that could also be of interest to ALCTS/LLAMA
*Discussed Proposed Tracks
*Discussed Theme and Additional Ideas to tie to Call for Proposal Language
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Education and Professional Development, Member Engagement

Fifth Activity
Scheduled SubCommittee Meetings for January and February:
* Web/PR Subcommittee – Jan 15, 1-2pm Central
*UX/Sustainability Subcommittee -Feb 5, 2-3 Central
*Accessibility/Streaming Subcommittee – Feb 12, 1-2 Central
Meets LITA’s strategic goals for Organizational Stability and Sustainability

What will your group be working on for the next three months?
Priorities:
*Reaching out to potential sponsors (Forum Planning – Sponsorship subcommittee)
*Work on Call for Proposals (Forum Planning – Programming subcommittee) (incl. sessions, possibly keynotes, preconferences) and opening it up sometimes in January
*Confirming Opening and Closing Keynote Speakers and preconferences
*Call for local Baltimore LITA/ALCTS/LLAMA members to join new local arrangements subcommittee

Is there anything LITA could have provided during this time that would have helped your group with its work?
N/A — Am grateful and appreciative of Jenny's and Chrishelle's support, feedback and patience. Makes the experience of planning Forum so much easier!

Please provide suggestions for future education topics, initiatives, publications, resources, or other activities that could be developed based on your group’s work.
*Would like to connect with Carli Spina on providing a webinar for accepted speakers on 'Making their Presentations/Talks Accessible'. Depending on sponsorship response, hoping it will enable support for this webinar to be free and compensating Carli for the time and effort.
*Would like to develop a free pre-recorded 'Git for Presenters' talk as a value-added talk for LITA/ALCTS/LLAMA members and accepted speakers. Depending on sponsorship response, hoping it will support the costs of getting previous LITA eLearning Git instructors to do this to allow it to be free to members/speakers.
*Would like to ask current D&I chair for a partnership to provide Allyship training at Forum (2 Forum Planning committee members attended the train the trainer session, and I believe 1 D&I committee member)
*Would also like to partner with D&I and ask for permission to use Drupal's diversity speaker webinar by developing a pre-recorded webinar and adapting to Forum during the call for proposals period. I attended the train-the-trainers session for this, as well. I can spearhead this effort w/o any additional cost…just need to ask permission first. Example of Drupal Diversity speaker content: http://diversein.tech/drupal-sept2019

Additional comments or concerns:
I have suggestions for documenting a generic timeline for the next Joint-Forum (in whatever form that may be) based on lessons learned this year. There needs to be a partnership with this year's Appointment Committee to ensure next Forum Planning Committee has a leadership team consisting of leaders from each Forum Planning subgroup, as well as an overall chair, but I feel at this point, I'm delicately balancing not losing any additional members to ask current members so late in the term. So, I'm managing the best I can. Would like to work with Evviva and Appointments Committee on identifying a Chair-Elect for next joint-Forum Planning committee term to groom/prepare.

Submitted by Berika Williams on 12/18/2019