LibraryTechtonics

And everyone is kinda confused about it.

I’m sitting the ALA Council meeting, and Aaron Dobbs wanted to contribute to the conversation. At the beginning of every ALA Council meeting, the “rules” for the meeting are read to the representatives, which includes:

RECOGNITION

(4) A non-Councilor may speak only if granted permission to do so by Council or by the Presiding Officer.

Heidi Dolamore, Councilor-at-Large, after consulting with Michael Golrich on how best to proceed in allowing Aaron to speak in relation to the rules of the meeting, properly requested a “suspension of the rules” to allow for Aaron Dobbs to make a comment on the discussion at hand.

Loriene Roy put the request to a Council vote (although she has the power to grant this request *without* the OK from Council), and the vote was no. Aaron left, somewhat loudly, but came back shortly, with the intent to blog his experience. Not long after, there was a break in the meeting, and people started to trickle over to where we were sitting.

Wow, was everyone confused. A member was trying to speak to Council, with the aid of a Council member, following protocol. The simple fact is that there were few people listening to what was really being requested, and the request was not properly grokked, so people voted no, but ended up not understanding what they had really done. Several people noted that, if they had understood what was going on, they would have voted differently. Some argued that maybe this wasn’t the place to allow members to participate at all. Yet more wanted to know what the protocol was to actually present a member for comments in a debate. And advice was given to Heidi on how this should have been presented, that her best bet was to request to have Aaron recognized, as opposed to requesting a “suspension of the rules,” when either request should have been sufficient, possible flash interpretations aside.

The net result: a member wasn’t heard. The request could have been worded better, granted, however, the request was placed (using pretty technical language, given what the rules say), and the member was turned away. Council should have been listening better, and should have seen and granted the uncommon (I wouldn’t say rare, because it happens, but still, it’s not-so-common) opportunity to open participation to the few members who actually pay attention to these meetings, especially since the proper protocol of being presented by a Council member was followed.

If you’re a member of ALA, you should start paying attention, too.

Tags: ALA