Greetings librarians and information professionals. There are many issues and challenges occurring within our association. In the business world and in life, it is generally frowned upon to present an issue without a plan to address it. So, I am here with a plan to address some of the issues within our association.

I am sure most of you are familiar with the story of the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise and the hare, have a race to see who is faster . The hare starts out at a sprightly pace, decides to take a rest during the middle of the race and is passed up and eventually loses to the slow and steady pace of the tortoise. Our association is like the tortoise. We are in competition with many other organizations who are trying to attract new members. Our association has a slow, sometimes excruciatingly slow, plan (or at least some initiatives that could be formed into a plan) in place and we steadily persevere in our efforts to attract new members. Sometimes it seems that we are standing still or even moving backwards. I believe that like the tortoise, we will eventually succeed, but I would like to propose an initiative that can help us accelerate our movement towards that goal.

It is generally agreed that we must retain our current membership while increasing our new membership. The question I have asked myself, while preparing for today’s talk is: How can I, as Division Chair/Chair-Elect, help to increase membership?

My answer to that question, contains four parts:

Focus

Advertising

Skills

Technology … FAST.

First Focus. As the divisions, in concert with the association, are responsible for program planning, we must create a more focused, segmented program schedule for potential members. Currently, we create a multitude of wonderful programs that appeal to a wide variety of interests. They are even divided into tracks. However, we then present these programs in a large book or Web page and leave it to the individual to sort out what is relevant. Not very user friendly. Most of us, as librarians, can eventually sort out this information overload, however, we are trying to attract information professionals, who may not be as adept or even have the desire to sort through the classic (and still relevant) offerings of Chemical Structure Searching or Marketing for Your Information Center.

I must comment, as a former member of the Conference Restructuring Task Force, that the current process is much simpler than it was five years ago, yet it is still overwhelming. My solution is to create a focused track, within the larger program, and offer just this focused track to a focused group of prospective new members.

This leads to my second point, Advertising. Once we have focused some of our programming, we need to advertise it…a lot! From the division perspective, we must utilize the division Web sites, the division publications and the networks that we have established. We must also garner international interest and support by starting to realize that the whole world doesn’t speak English. We must also get buy in from our chapters and their resources as they have greater potential for interaction with potential members through liaisons with sister organizations. After all, most if not all division members are also chapter members.

My third point is Skills. Just as the tortoise needed endurance to finish the race, we need continuous improvement in our skills to continue this race and attract new members. As division planners, we have created a strong and solid base of offerings for librarians. However, as a non-traditional librarian, it is my perception that we do not do so well when it comes to offerings for non-librarian or non-traditional librarian information professionals. There are organizations out there that are offering programs in these skills, and many of our members are active in organizing and/or presenting these programs. Let’s look at these offerings and use the skills of the members that we already have to attract new members and at the same time create opportunities to improve our own skills.

My final point is Technology. Librarians in general are very technology savvy, information professionals, even more so. Dav Robertson mentioned in his talk last year at this time that we must become “ the leading organization for information professionals when it comes to new technology.” That is still true, and as divisions, we can exert an influence on program planning and create a proliferation of technology programs. We must also continue to encourage our association staff, who has made great leaps in technology upgrades, to now become technology leaders and visionaries.

So, there you have it, my FAST plan of Focus, Advertising, Skills and Technology which can guide a more unified body of divisions in helping our association grow and be vital to its constituents.

Vote early, vote often and thank you for your support.