Having spent the last few years immersing myself in LITA, I’m trying to articulate things I’ve learned in case you want to get involved, too, but are looking for places to start. The whole series can be read at the how to get involved in LITA tag. Stay tuned for more over the next few days!
Meetings
ALA meetings, with only a tiny handful of exceptions, are open. You should totally exploit this fact! You do not need permission to attend just about any meeting at ALA. If you are interested in the work of the LITA Board or committees or task forces or interest groups, you should show up. (I’ve been showing up to Board meetings consistently since Midwinter 2011. Apparently this is how you end up nominated for office. Who knew.[ref]Keith Michael Fiels (Executive Director of ALA), for starters. I mean, he told us this pretty much verbatim during Emerging Leaders orientation in 2011.[/ref])
The Board typically has online meetings in the fall and spring, which are also open. If you monitor the formal communication channels above you will see announcements as to when and how they will meet. They’re often tweeted (informally, albeit mostly by Board members) under #litabd.
The Executive Committee, a subset of the Board which does a lot of the decision-making heavy lifting in between Board meetings, also has open meetings, but I’ve found I have to pay a lot more attention (often to informal channels; see next post) to find out when and where, and often they’re face-to-face between conferences, so I can’t attend. But in theory I guess one could.
You can also read past agendas and minutes of Board and Executive Committee meetings. Reports of other LITA bodies are sometimes on Connect as well.
andromeda yelton 