One thing you may not know about ALA’s Emerging Leaders program is that every year, new cohort members get to choose a project from a list submitted by various round tables and committees to work on during their cohort year. The project I chose is “Driving Engagement: Developing a Marketing Strategy for NMRT”. The New Members Round Table (NMRT) primarily serves members of ALA who have been involved for less than 10 years and who want to be more involved in ALA as a whole. The way NMRT seeks to achieve this is with various programmatic offerings for its members. You have a lot of different options to get involved, including but not limited to committee assignments, mentorship matches, a resume review service, and even programs centered on how to attend ALA conferences!
Now comes the ask: part of the work is identifying how folks find out about NMRT’s services and programs. The end goal of our project is to make a list of marketing strategies. Our hope is that by gathering answers from communities that cross paths with NMRT, we can create a strong portfolio of marketing materials and strategies for NMRT to use when discussing their bevy of offerings.
You can find the survey link here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Q3SM9LN
As ALSC’s Emerging Leader this year, this project was at the top of my list. One of my personal values is making sure that folks feel welcome in library spaces. My work with youth means that I practice this everyday in different ways; from helping to pick out books to meet someone’s reading level or finding everything about a special interest, inclusion is something I care deeply about. I chose this project because NMRT focuses on welcoming and including new members. While we as youth services staff focus on making our spaces welcoming, NMRT focuses on making ALA a welcoming space for us! My group has been amazing to work with and I sincerely hope that our work will help NMRT get the word out about what a useful resource they are for new professional organization members.
If you are interested in the outcome of our project, we will have a poster session on Friday afternoon to talk about our work at ALA Annual in Chicago this year. My group and I would love to see you and discuss our work! In the meantime, gichi miigwech / thank you in advance for taking the time to read through this and answer our survey. We’ll look forward to seeing you at the end of June!
Today’s guest blogger is Allie Genia (Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians). Allie is ALSC’s 2023 Emerging Leader. They are a Children’s Librarian at the DC Public Library and are a 2020 Spectrum Scholar. They can be reached at allie.genia@gmail.com or online at their book blog, MziniganMshiiken.blog.