[Library neepery ahoy!]

As of the ALA Midwinter meeting, I have officially stepped down as a Social Media Liaison for the RBMS web team. I will no longer be responsible for helping to run the RBMS twitter feed or Facebook page.

I have been doing this for just about 8 years. Holy crap! That is a LONG time in internet time. I’m glad to step back and let other folks have a go. I will still be around on Twitter & FB, just not in an official capacity for RBMS.

I am grateful to RBMS (and ALA/ACRL by extension) to have had this opportunity. Most involvement in RBMS requires showing up twice annually. My life and financial situation didn’t really allow for that. The social media liaison role meant that I could remain active in RBMS at a time when I had zero travel funding from my institution. This fed into my tenure portfolio as well–thank you, NIU for recognizing that this role indeed constituted a big service commitment, and giving me credit for same!

I hope that RBMS, ACRL, and ALA will continue to look at ways to make the organization accessible to folks through remote participation like this. Library budgets continue to be slashed across the country, often hitting the institutions that were chronically underfunded to begin with the hardest. Remote participation means that our colleagues in this situation can continue drawing upon  support from their professional community of practice. It also means that our professional organizations are made stronger by not leaving our underfunded colleagues behind.