[WEB4LIB] RE: New Directions

[Drew, Bill]

Karen is right on target with her critique of the ALA penchant to keep
to old ways of doing business.
Currently I am chair of the SUNY ALEPH Users Group.  Except for our
annual conference, all business is conducted via e-mail and if necessary
telephone conference calls.  I have also served as president of the SUNY
Librarians Association (late 1990s) and will again serve as president in
2005-2006 academic year.  Large amounts of business are conducted via
e-mail.  I am currently a virtual member of one LITA interest group and
of one LITA committee.  I am one of those members of ALA that can not
afford to attend the national conferences because of extremely tight
budgets in our library.

Other groups of librarians also work mostly by e-mail.  The North
American Aleph Users Group conducts its annual review of proposed
changes and upgrades to the Ex Libris ALEPH system via well run e-mail
exchanges using listserv or bistro.  

I have been trying to sign up for the ALA Members Forum for several
months now and have yet to have my subscription approved.  Evidently it
is not a high priority to look at such requests at ALA headquarters.  It
would be nice if at least the council and the executive moved into the
late Twentieth Century instead of being in the late nineteenth.

To make this about webs for libraries, the organization of the ALA
website is improving but is still difficult to navigate or to search.

Bill Drew
drewwe at morrisville.edu