Aaron the Librarian

Here I am in the ALA WO, once again; this time as a voluntary observer of what has been billed as a Dialogue on Government Information and Beyond.
Why are we here?  What happened that this meeting was deemed necessary?
Here’s my understanding:
A while back some GPO Regional Depository Libraries wanted to do a joint-Depository model due to space and budget issues.  GPO requested comments. GODORT & COL (Gov Info Subcommittee, I think) worked up a draft set of comments and followed the processes outlined to get an official letter of comment approved by Council.  Meanwhile other groups also felt impacted by this and worked up their own letter of comment.  The GODORT/COL version got waylaid somehow(?), the other groups’ version did not get approved by Council. (Then the other groups’ comments went to GPO under ALA header anyway?)
Result: everyone involved felt betrayed, angry, and/or disillusioned.  COL chair, Camila Alire, requested a meeting to discuss this and how to improve the internal process for getting to decisions.

I think this meeting is an experiment on getting involved, affected parties to sit down and get the affected groups’ ideas on how the process could be improved.  My impression is that people who have hit the rough spots in a process often see ways processes can be improved.

I’ll post a summary of the meeting later today…
(Funny, the twitter reflex of posting after every sentence or so is very hard to break.)