President’s Message Andromeda Yelton INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES | MARCH 2018 2 Andromeda Yelton (andromeda.yelton@gmail.com) is LITA President 2017-18 and Senior Software Engineer, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In my last President’s Message, I talked about change — ITAL’s transition to new leadership — and imagination — Wakanda and the archival imaginary. Today change and imagination are on my mind again as LITA contemplates a new path forward: potential becoming a new combined division with ALCTS and LLAMA. As you may have already seen on LITAblog (http://litablog.org/2018/02/lita-alcts-and-llama- document-on-small-division-collaboration/), the three divisional leadership teams have been envisioning this possibility, and all three division Boards discussed it at Midwinter. While the id ea sprang out of our shared challenges with financial stability, in discussing it we’ve realized how much opportunity we have to be stronger together. For instance, we’ve heard for years that you, LITA members, want more of a leadership training pathway, and more ways to stay involved with your LITA home as you move into management; alignment with LLAMA automatically opens up all kinds of possibilities. They have an agile divisional structure with their communities of practice and an outstanding set of lead ership competencies. And anyone involved with library technology knows that we live and die by metadata, but we aren’t all experts in it; joining forces with ALCTS creates a natural home for people no matter where they are (or where they’re going) on the technology/metadata continuum. ALCTS also runs far more online education than LITA and runs a virtual conference. Meanwhile, of course, LITA has a lot to offer to LLAMA and ALCTS. You already know how rewarding the networking is, and how great the depth of expertise on technology topics. We also bring strong publications (like this very journal), marquee conference programs (like Top Tech Trends and the Imagineering panel), and a face-to-face conference. (Speaking of which, please pitch a session (http://bit.ly/2GpGXdf) for the 2018 LITA Forum!) I want to emphasize that no decisions have been made yet. The outcome of our three Board discussions was that we all feel there is enough merit to this proposal to explore it further, but none of us are formally committed to this direction. Furthermore, it is not practically or procedurally possible to make a change of this magnitude until at least 2019. In the meantime, we expect there will be numerous working groups to determine if and how this all could work, as well as open forums for the membership of all three divisions to express hopes, concerns, and ideas. Personally, my highest priority is to ensure that that you, the members, continue to have a divisional home: one that gives you learning opportunities and a place for professional camaraderie, and that is on solid financial footing so it can continue to be here for you in the long term. http://litablog.org/2018/02/lita-alcts-and-llama-document-on-small-division-collaboration/ http://litablog.org/2018/02/lita-alcts-and-llama-document-on-small-division-collaboration/ http://bit.ly/2GpGXdf PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE | MARCH 2018 3 https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v37i1.10386 So, I’m excited about the possibilities that a superhero teamup affords, but I’m even more excited to hear from you. Do you find this prospect thrilling, scary, both? Do you think we should absolutely go this way, or definitely not, or maybe but with caveats and questions? Please tell me what you think. You can submit anonymous feedback and questions at https://bit.ly/litamergefeedback. I will periodically collate and answer these questions on LITAblog. You can also reach out to me personally any time (andromeda.yelton@gmail.com). https://bit.ly/litamergefeedback mailto:andromeda.yelton@gmail.com