Hello friends, family and colleagues!
I’m writing this email to let you know about a new venture
I’m in. The American Library Association Annual conference (ALA 2013) is
coming up and I am trying something new to get there. This is the
premiere conference in my industry and due to budget cuts, etc. over the
past five years libraries around the country have cut back drastically on
sending front line staff to not only this industry conference but many
others. For library staff to progress in their careers and become more
valuable to their communities these conferences can be essential.
Last year, I was invited to join my second national
committee; the Library Information Technology Association (LITA) Top
Technology Trends Committee. This was a huge and unexpected honor so I
jumped at the chance. Over the past several months, I have been working
on brainstorming ideas/topics and helping create a panel of Library and
Technology insiders for our program at ALA 2013 in Chicago.
Unfortunately, due to the cost (registration hotel,
transport, etc.), I have not been able to attend since I first became a
librarian in 2007. My fellow committee members and the committee chair
agree that it would be a good idea to have me on site as one of the planners
and liaison to several panelists. They understood not just my financial
issues but also library financial positions however, as tech people, we
thought there had to be a way around this. And, thus, an idea was born.
Conference attendance overall has been slipping gradually;
not because the content isn’t fresh or relative but because library budgets and
staff pay have been cut around the country, and the world and people just can’t
afford the out of pocket costs. We brainstormed and researched and our
committee chair came up with the brilliant idea to start a crowdfunding campaign.
If you’re not familiar with the concept, people will post to a site like Kickstarter or gofundme and ask for donations to help them
reach their goal. Our goal is very similar however unlike other sites we
are exclusive to library staff who want to attend library conferences where,
due to financial barriers, they would not be able to.
We decided that I would be a good test case. I want to
assure you that you will not receive any emails, etc. from anyone else.
The heart of Crowdfunding is to first ask direct family, friends and
colleagues. There has been quite a bit of red tape to go through but we are now
ready to launch. We hope to be offering this to more library staff around
the country and for more library related conferences. The really exciting
part is that we don’t need to raise all of the money on our own. We have
several companies within the library world that have agreed to be sponsors and
match every dollar raised! This means we only need to fund half of what
we need. For example, my campaign will try to raise $945 and then the
sponsors will match that. I’ve already put in all I can. There’s no
“mad money” in there. This covers the conference registration, hotel,
flight, transportation, and other requirements only.
Disclaimer: I am doing
this as a private citizen and not a member/representative of my city or library system.
My main reason for posting this is also so you know my
social media accounts have not been hacked. Since this has never been
tried before it may or may not get the interest of media or association
journals and we will be promoting this heavily by word of mouth as well as
online. Please do not feel obligated to donate although it would be
greatly appreciated.
Here is the link to my crowdfunding campaign. Sorry
for the long post and if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading it :)
Hope everyone is well!
Michael
Librarian
LITA Top Tech Trends Committee
YALSA Legislative Committee
Grand Canyon Reader Award Committee – Tween
fiction/non-fiction
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