LITA’s Mission Statement

LITA educates, serves, and reaches out to its members, other ALA members and divisions, and the entire library and information community through its publications, programs, and other activities designed to promote, develop, and aid in the implementation of library and information technology. (Adopted May, 1999)

2002-2003: a Time of Challenge

At a time when library and information technology practitioners are facing a number of economic challenges, LITA has continued and expanded education, communication, and planning initiatives to better meet the current needs of members and the library and information community as a whole.

Educating

LITA continued its emphasis on high-quality programming and publications, aimed at providing learning material to members and non-members alike, in a variety of formats.

The 2002 LITA National Forum took place in Houston on October 10 – 13; the theme was “Making Connections,” and this is exactly what happened for the 342 attendees. Three preconferences, three plenary sessions, a vendor showcase, and 30 concurrent sessions all took place in an environment conducive to personal networking. Although attendance was not as high as that at the 2001 Milwaukee forum (448), considering the changed travel environment in which we find ourselves, the attendance was still quite respectable, and forum goers have always appreciated the smaller, more intimate atmosphere. LITA still realized quite a reasonable amount of revenue.

The 2003 National Forum will take place in Norfolk, Virginia. Its theme is “Putting Technology into Practice.” As part of LITA’s efforts to facilitate more efficient processes, the planning committee for this Forum was appointed earlier than in the past, allowing it to get a “head start” on program development. Committee membership was also expanded to ensure inclusion of many regional members, representing all types of libraries.

Three preconferences are planned: “The Library as a Place in the Digital Age,” “Handhelds for Library Programs: Providing New Levels of Service,” and “Creating, Maintaining, and Using Open Source Software in Libraries.” Planned plenary session speakers include R. David Lankes, Liz Bishoff, and David Seaman, in three general sessions. Twenty-nine concurrent sessions will be joined by a first-time appearance by poster sessions at the Forum; twelve were accepted. A vendor showcase will also be featured.

LITA continued its successful presentation of Regional Institutes, which are intended to bring programming to a number of different areas of the country. They also offer partnering opportunities that put LITA in touch with a number of regional consortia. A phenomenally successful institute on “XML and Libraries” was developed and presented 4 times, including presentations at the 2002 forum and as a Midwinter 2003 workshop. An institute on ebooks has also been developed; it has been presented once and was also scheduled as a preconference for Toronto. Other potential topics that are being developed include wireless telecommunication and open source software (with one version of this planned for delivery at the 2003 forum, as noted above.)

For the 2003 Annual Conference, LITA continues its presentation of useful programming with two preconferences (ebooks, as noted above, and “Breaking Free: Recreating Your Library Web Site From A-Z”), 14 conference program sessions, and the LITA President’s Program, featuring Brewster Kahle, speaking on “Universal Access to all Human Knowledge.”

Although this year did not see any new LITA monographic publications, its practical guides continued to be popular, and one is in development on XML and libraries. LITA’s journal, Information Technology and Libraries, has many of its articles available online as well as in print. In addition, a new President’s column was inaugurated this year. Technology Electronic Reviews continued to provide useful reviews, available entirely online.

An effort that began this year which LITA hopes will ultimately result in a publication/Web site feature is being developed by the Practice Guidelines Task Force. Its charge is to develop a process for creating practice guideline documents relating to library and information technology.

Communicating

A major initiative for 2002-2003 was the redesign of the LITA Web site, as well as its conversion for the reorganized and Content-Management-System-based ALA Web site. LITA’s Web Coordinating Committee and the LITA Office put immense effort into ensuring that the most used portions of the site were available and accessible when the new ALA site went up. A new design and architecture for the site were put into place at the same time; they will serve as an intermediate phase while survey input is sought by members for a more extensive redesign.

The use of the new Content Management System allows much more flexibility in both developing and accessing the LITA Web site. Although use of the LITA address www.lita.org originally “disappeared” from the Web site, LITA appreciates the work by ALA to restore this; it has now been restored.

Other moves were made to improve communication in a variety of ways involving the Web site and the LITA-L discussion list. Agendas for governance meetings were published in advance on the Web site, with notice provided to LITA-L about their availability. Minutes have been placed on the Web site for a number of years, but now announcements of them also appear on LITA-L.

Two task forces were created that should provide underpinning for making the LITA Web site a better communication tool: the Online Manual Task Force and the Web Policy Task Force. The Online Manual Task Force will complete the task of incorporating the old LITA Manual into the structure of the Web site, allowing for better communication of the basics of LITA procedures and processes. The Web Policy Task Force will establish policies governing the LITA Web site’s content, responsibilities for its management, and an approval process for posting content online.

Through the LITA Town Meeting at Midwinter 2003, members conveyed a frustration with the ebb of LITA news information availability, and the Board had also been concerned about this. The Web Coordinating Committee is working to revive the news function on the Web site to provide association news, while an initiative is underway to redefine and implement a broader news function, especially covering the activities of Interest Groups.

Planning

Inspired by attendance at an American Society for Association Executives workshop in fall 2002, LITA leadership has been instituting new procedures to better prepare the Board for strategic progress. The Board is working to make better use of its face-to-face meeting time by ensuring that there is an opportunity for discussion of broad issues.

Out of this work has grown a desire to develop a vision statement for LITA and to go through the process of reexamining LITA’s mission and strategies to be sure that it is moving in a direction that will help it achieve its preferred future. Work is beginning on this process at the Annual 2003 ALA conference, and it will continue through the next year. The Board recognizes that, as in the past, change has to be driven by the input and participation of the association as a whole.

LITA considers it vital to continue to develop an association that is of high value to its members. In times of economic difficulty, realizing value for money invested is of even higher concern than usual; we have noted that our membership is down 3.7%, to 4,840 (as of Midwinter 2003). It is of supreme importance that the association goes through a process of determining what it wants to be, in order to stay creative and strong.

LITA's Budget

LITA's revenues continue to be largely derived from membership dues and special programming efforts, and it does appear likely that there will be reasonable net revenue this fiscal year. Fund balances continue to be in healthy shape, enough so that LITA was glad to be able to contribute $10,000 to the CIPA defense fund in the fall. LITA is budgeting conservatively for the near future, but it is still possible that we will undergo a couple of years with small, if any, net revenue. Our fund balance should see us through to a time when we can engage in long-term investment efforts.

LITA Board of Directors

Pat Ensor, President
Thomas Wilson, Vice President/President-Elect
Flo Wilson, Past President
Barbra Buckner Higginbotham, Councilor
Karen Cook, Director at Large
Thomas Dowling, Director at Large
James Kennedy, Director at Large
Scott P. Muir, Director at Large
Patrick Mullin, Director at Large

Bonnie Postlethwaite, Director at Large
Colby M. Riggs, Director at Large
Susan Jacobson, Parliamentarian (Ex Officio)
Mary Taylor, Executive Director (Ex Officio)