When I first joined professional associations (ALIA at first, later ALA and others) ,before I volunteered for things, what I valued most were the publications. At the time I was working in a special library and had acesss to little professional literature.
Over time, as Open Access became more widespread, and volunteering became a more valuable member benefit, journals seemed to become less relevant. It is often repeated that membership in an association is not about getting a magazine, it is about participation. Over the last few years this has definitely been the case for me.
Recently, I recycled nearly 7 years of journals that I had amassed through various memberships that were taking up a large amount of room in my house. Titles included:
InCite
Australian Library Journal
ACRL
ACRL News
Progressive Librarian
American Libraries
IFLA Journal
PS: Political Science and Politics
Public Policy Journal
Perspectives on Politics
Plus a bunch of newsletters. So many of these are now available online, or are no longer relevant to my work (for example, I cancelled my APSA membership so I no longer get the politics titles). I am contemplating asking for an online-only copy of some of the titles I still receive. I have also cancelled memberships to associations in which I do not have an active role.
I think many other people are doing much the same as me. They are weighing up the value of their membership and participation and making hard cuts. In addition to this is the growing trend towards smaller participation events, like conferences, and new models for participation (eg virtual committee memberships).
All of this will lead to a change in how associations and conferences traditionally support themselves and how they work. The small/specialised conference trend has not yet hit Australia, perhaps because of our much smaller population or enormous geographic distribution. Would I like to attend events like Code4Lib? You bet. Would it be possible to do so in this country on a reasonable budget? Probably not. So while I agree with Dorothea that small conferences are a good thing, I do wonder how they can work here.
Some comments on small conferences - I’m a health librarian, and know that my colleagues are still lamenting the demise of the Specials, Health & Law Librarians’ conference. ALIA Conference is nice, but it’s just not relevant for us, and it’s too expensive to justify where the relevance isn’t strong. For the last four years, Health in NSW have run a mini-conference that has been an astounding success - there’s obviously a real need for a point for people to come together, network, learn and discuss. The vendors also like having one point when they can market and train, as well. I know that Vic Health do a similar thing. The pity is that these conferences can’t attract the big name speakers; but the good thing is that by supplying the venues and committees ourselves, we keep the costs very low. The Health conference at the end of Online was good, but I suspect the low turnout was due to the other conferences I’ve mentioned.
Australia has a geographical (too large) and population (too small) problem to really compare it with the USA; but I’d love to see a genuine discussion about how we can best do conference - I’m not convinced that the models we have at the moment are the best we can do.
Hi Gillian - good point about the conferences for different types of libraries. I think they could be a good model for topic-based conferences too (eg technology conferences - where quality matters more than ‘names’).