These are my notes from the Dialogue on Government Information meeting way back on December ~18th (sorry for the oversight)
Summary:
While several participants had differing views on why we all assembled, good discussion happened. ALA has mostly good processes for moving issues to and through Council for offical comment, which can break when stressed by the need for both speed and expertise. Generally, these processes work fine for issues which affect small groups of interest but strain when several large groups of interest have opposing views on an issue needing a swift response.
Suggestions for smoothing the rough patches included: providing mechanisms for year-round, asynchronous, online communication; raising awareness of issues which affect parts of ALA subgroups; identifying which groups are doing what about an issue, and fostering collaboration among disparate groups with similar interests.
Several related problems were identified and some ideas for mitigation/routing around were offered. The impression I got from the participants at this meeting is that ALA needs to specifically acknowledge and encourage the online collaborative tools already in use by ALA subunits *and provide an excellent way to host services which allow for this.* (ALA Communities was indicated as “not acceptable†when mentioned as an existing tool)
For the detailed bullets, please see “Aaron the Librarian | Dialogue on Government Information Notes“.