Members from last year’s Emerging Leaders ‘07 Cohort and EL ‘o8 met together today to discuss how ALA can engage young and new librarians into the American Library Association (ALA). The format of the discussion was the World Cafe facilitation model, which I found to be highly engaging. The key is to ask the right questions. A lot of concrete suggestions and bigger questions were brought up about how to change the structure of ALA to be more inclusive, transparent, and utilizing the creativity and talents of its members. A charge was made by ourselves to ourselves to be the change we want to see, and to engage in “strategic complaining”. I have pictures of some of the brainstorming sheets that I will post as soon as I can download them.
I’d like to see how this method could be used in a virtual environment.
Update: Ellieheartslibraries gives a much more detailed description of the process and how it worked out for this cohort.
Filed under: conferences | Tagged: ALAMW08, conferences, EL08
[...] dev.librarian wrote about the experience also and promises to share pictures as well. [...]