Letter from the Editor: The Core Question


Letter from the Editor 
The Core Question 
Kenneth J. Varnum 

 

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES | MARCH 2020  
https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v39i1.12137 

As I write this, the members of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services 
(ALCTS), the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA), and LITA are voting to 
merge into a new consolidated division, Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures. 

This merger is essential to the continuing activities that we library technologists rely on. The 
LITA Board has indicated that if the merger does not go through, LITA will be forced to dissolve 
over the coming year. 

The merger will enrich LITA members’ opportunities. LITA has long focused on the library 
technology practitioner. That has been our core competency, born of a time when technology was 
the new thing in libraries. We technologists know—the entire information profession knows—
that technology is no longer an addition to a library, but is the way society operates, for a huge 
portion of our work and life. Core reflects this evolutionary change. Similar evolutions have taken 
place in technical services and collections development areas; those functions have been forever 
changed by the wave of technologies that we have implemented over the past half century. 

Core brings together the practitioners and technologies that make libraries run, and combines 
them with the library leadership areas that many of us aspire to, or end up taking on, as our 
careers develop. When I joined LITA over a decade ago, I was myself moving from “doer” to 
“manager.” Now that my role is largely project and personnel management, the skills and 
conversations I seek for personal growth are often found in other parts of ALA, and beyond. Yet, 
the focus—the core, if I may—of what I do is still in the center of the Venn diagram of technology, 
people, and data. 

I voted to support Core and hope that all of you who belong to LITA, ALCTS, and/or LLAMA, will 
do the same. 

Sincerely, 

Kenneth J. Varnum, Editor 
varnum@umich.edu 
March 2020 

https://core.ala.org/
mailto:varnum@umich.edu