LITA Blog

Mission

The mission of the LITA Blog is to advance the LITA mission to educate, serve, and reach out to all ALA members in the areas of information technology and to promote LITA programs, conferences, projects, and ongoing activities.

Goals and Plans

A volunteer community of bloggers will be recruited from the LITA membership to report on LITA and ALA programs, and on library conferences and news of interest to the LITA community.

The first objective of the LITA blog is to provide member-generated coverage of LITA programs and events at ALA and LITA conferences. Other objectives, such as between-conference news coverage, may be developed in the future.

Policies and Procedures

1. Blog managers

A volunteer steering committee composed of LITA members and/or staff will be responsible for overall blog administration.

2. Bloggers

Bloggers must be members or staff of LITA, or invited guests such as Top Technology Trends experts. Each Interest Group and Committee chair will be invited (but not required) to appoint a blogger. Categories will be created for each interested IG/Committee. Other blog categories may be established by the steering committee/blog managers as needed.

The blog may have ongoing bloggers, as well as bloggers who are provided access to the blog for specific conferences or events.

Regardless of experience, all bloggers will have their posts edited by the Steering Committee. This will consist mostly of the posts being published by the Committee, correcting for spelling, grammar, and format only.

If an individual account is not used for one year, it will be downgraded to subscriber and that individual will not have access to the back end of the blog. This policy is in place to keep the number of people who have access to the blog down to a reasonable number for security and technology reasons.

3. Acceptable Use

The blog is a LITA-sponsored tool for use within LITA and for outreach beyond LITA. Lively opinion and commentary are welcome in blog posts. However, it is expected that blog postings will be professional and reflect well on LITA. Bloggers are strongly encouraged to check facts, cite sources, present balanced views, acknowledge and correct errors, and check spelling and grammar before making a post live.

Ad hominem attacks are not allowed, and bloggers are encouraged to put a “best foot forward” on LITA activities. All LITA bloggers acknowledge receipt on registration of LITA blog acceptable use and copyright guidelines. LITA reserves the right not to post any blog post or to later remove it.

Links to related posts are encouraged, but bloggers should post original content rather than reposting entire items from other blogs or lists. Blog posts should not repeat announcements distributed to discussion lists read by LITA members.

3. Comments

Comments are open to all but may be moderated by the blog steering committee. Commentary, opinion, and reaction to posts are welcome. Comments should be relevant to the specific post they are attached to. Spam, flaming, personal attacks, and off-topic comments are not permitted. LITA reserves the right not to post any comment.

Blog managers and/or bloggers will establish procedures for managing and moderating comments.

4. Pages

Frequently requested information, informational pages, etc. will be placed on blog pages.

5. Blogroll/links

Links to ALA and LITA and to other ALA-affiliated websites and blogs will be provided. Other links to notable websites or blogs may be added to Links or Blogroll sections if the consensus is that they would be useful to readers.

6. Copyright

Content on this blog is governed by a Creative Commons license.