Here are the latest membership stats for June 2021
Current members: 400!
Lifetime Members: 42
Student members: 111
Delegates: 56
Once again, the annual conference had a big impact on membership – we are at 400 members! Also, a thank you to delegates for spreading the word, and another push to library school students (thanks to Amanda and her group) for this increase.
The SUNYLA LIS Student subcommittee
The LIS student subcommittee last met on April 22nd.
Everyone was reminded to send out conference information to their liaison schools/listservs.
Jocelyn received feedback from her contacts at UAlbany about our survey. We will be applying their suggestions to the survey and sending it out again this fall along with a non-member survey.
We discussed the possibility of having some non-conference webinar(s) or in-person unconference experiences for student members this fall.
• Future Librarians Day (in-person or virtual) - have panels of different types of academic librarians (systems, tech services, access, information lit, etc.) talk about what they do. If anyone is interested in participating in something like this, please reach out to Amanda (amlowe@albany.edu)
• Resume/CV workshop
• Interviewing/Mock Interview sessions
Discussed the creation of a job list where all open SUNY Library positions could be posted - this would not only benefit recent graduates looking for employment but folks looking for other jobs within the SUNY system.
For future conferences, we would like to establish a student buddy system - allowing student members to opt-in upon registration to be assigned a "buddy" for the duration of the conference. We concluded that this would be a good networking opportunity for student members and put them a little more at ease as they navigate what may be one of their first conference experiences. We will discuss this with the conference planning committee for next year and if this is something that we would like to pursue, create a pool of SUNYLA members that would like to be student buddies.
Of note, one of our early student members rejoined as a lifetime member.
Delegate Enhancement Subcommittee
Several SUNYLA delegates met for the Delegate Enhancement Subcommittee. There was much discussion on how to entice engagement with reluctant colleagues. We brainstormed ideas to encourage delegate engagement, including regular communication. This could include conversations with SUNYLA library deans/directors about SUNYLA professional development opportunities, grants, etc.
We scheduled 4 regular meetings each year, open to all delegates and other interested individuals. The coming year's meetings are at 10 am on:
August 13, 2021
October 8, 2021
February 11, 2022
April 8, 2022
Respectfully,
Carol Anne
