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Council on Library/Media Technicians

The Council on Library/Media Technicians was founded in 1967 by people who administered two-year associate degree programs for the training of library technical assistants. These librarians and educators recognized that the library support staff of the future would be called upon to provide increasingly more technical service to the libraries in which they worked and would need to continually update their skills. Originally the acronym COLT originally stood for Council on Library Technology. Within ten years COLT was well established as a national organization with members drawn from the full spectrum of those who work in and care about libraries including librarians, library support staff, library administrators and educators.

The 1990s were a busy decade. COLT became an incorporated organization in 1991. Its visibility increased on state and local levels due to the president's speaking engagements and participation with library support staff associations. In January 1991, during the Mid-Winter ALA Conference, COLT's Executive Board participated in the first meeting of ALA's library support staff interest Membership Initiative Group (MIG). People representing all areas of service in public, special and academic libraries shared in a lively discussion of the role of the library support staff worker. That same year COLT also participated in, and members often acted as facilitators for, the nationwide focus groups of the ALA Office for Library Personnel Resources, Standing Committee on Library Education (SCOLE), World Book-Goal Award Project on Library Support Staff. Additionally, COLT submitted a chapter for the ALA SCOLE casebook developed to characterize the status of library support staff issues.