ALA’s President-Elect’s blogs
Loriene Roy, ALA’s president-elect, is a faculty member here at the School of Information. I’ve been acquainted with her from some time, first as a student, later as a staff member, and now both. I didn’t really write about her during her campaign for various reasons (although I did leave a few comments here and there), but now that she’s been elected I feel freer to.
Loriene’s a pretty interesting person. Of all the faculty members here, I think she’s the person who most integrates community service in her courses, although several faculty members are starting to rival her (notable some of our recent arrivals). She’s been both complimented and criticized for that practice, but I personally believe it’s a positive thing.
Yesterday, she did something pretty interesting- she had a meeting with the some of the tech staff (including me) and talked about her plans related to the ALA presidency for the coming years. She sought our opinions about how to approach some of her ideas, particularly when they involve utilizing technology. I really appreciated that- you might be surprised at the kinds of things that we don’t get consulted about that we should be, and in this case there really are ways we can contribute that coincide with our existing projects. I’m not sure if the situation is the same in every iSchool/LIS school out there, but here all of the full-time tech staff have MLIS or equivalent degrees as well, so we do believe strongly in the success of the school and of the professions.
One thing I learned from this meeting is that she’s continuing her use of blogs- her campaign blog is now her president-elect blog, and she’s had blogs set up for the various task forces and groups that she’s creating/working with. I don’t like the navigation to find the blog listing and on the page with the blog listing (navigation text identified via rollover- well, I plan to direct the usability class her way ^_^;), but the sites have potential. Here are the blogs:
Loriene Roy’s President-Elect Blog
Workplace Wellness Blog
Circle of Literacy Blog
Supporting LIS Education through Practice
Each of those ventures seem worth following, to me.