feedback, please: help me navigate ALA?

I realized at ALA10 that one of my projects needs to be figuring out how this frankly byzantine organization works. (Or, at least, how some relevant subsets of it, like LITA and ACRL and NMRT, work…[*])

Then I was stumbling around through the blogosphere and realized that the ever-thoughtful Andy Woodworth had already asked the questions I wanted. So I’m going to reuse them. Whee! If you’re in libraryland, I would really appreciate your answers. (And if you’re not, why not riff on what libraries mean to you, how you do or do not belong to them, how they make this easier or harder for you…That or link to cute animal pics.)

1. “Are you a member of ALA?” (If no, why not? If yes, continue to 2.)
2. “Do you serve on any committees, roundtables, and the like?” (If no, why not? If yes, continue to 3.)
3. “What does that committee/roundtable/whatever do?”

[*] When I was in library school it totally pissed me off that people threw these acronyms around everywhere and never expanded them. Like…aren’t librarians supposed to be about making information more accessible, not less? And how am I, a larval little graduate student, supposed to tell if I’m interested in being part of your conference/committee/etc. when you can’t be bothered to tell me what your acronym means? Do not make me Google to understand your email, not least because there is some irony.

I know that the readers of this blog aren’t all librarians. I want my readership to include non-librarians. Which means I value being accessible.

The upshot of my rant being:
ALA10 = American Library Association 2010 Annual Conference;
LITA = Library Information Technology Association;
ACRL = Association of College and Research Libraries;
NMRT = New Members Round Table.
These latter three are all subsets of ALA.