aserl-accessibilityig Mailing List: Seeking volunteers to serve on Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA) Action Cmte

[John Burger (jburger]

Good morning, ASERL Accessibility Interest Group colleagues:

As you know, ASERL and the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) have been 
partnering for the past 15 months as the "Library Accessibility Alliance" to 
foster additional testing of library e-resources, developing an online 
accessibility toolkit<http://bit.ly/laatoolkit>, offer informational webinars, 
and other activities.

For the past 15 months, those activities have been driven by a LAA Leadership 
Committee that included three representatives from ASERL and five reps from 
BTAA.  We are now transitioning to a new governance model that we feel will 
facilitate participation by additional consortia.  (<-- More news on that is 
coming soon -- wink, wink!) The new LAA governance model divides 
responsibilities into two groups:

  *   a Steering Committee (1 rep per consortium), and
  *   an Action Committee (3 reps per consortium).

The LAA Steering Committee is charged with setting overall direction and 
policies, reviewing business models, overseeing membership issues, and 
providing bi-annual activity reports.  For the coming year, ASERL's Steering 
Committee rep will be Sara Belmont (Web Developer, William & Mary Libraries).

The LAA Action Committee is charged with implementing the overall goals of the 
Alliance.  It currently has four Working Groups, with others possible in the 
future:
   a)  e-Resource Testing
   b)  Impact Analysis
   c)  Training
   d)  Communication and Outreach
For the coming year, ASERL's reps to the Action Committee are Beth Ashmore 
(Associate Head - Acquisitions & Discovery, NCSU Libraries), Jon Ezell 
(Coordinator of Creative Media & Instructional Design, U-Alabama Libraries), + 
1 vacancy.

HELP WANTED!
We are seeking people with a strong background in accessibility issues to 
round-out our LAA team, to work on various Action Committee tasks.  This is 
expected to be a commitment of 2-3 hours per month.  If you are interested, 
please reply to me with your contact info and a short statement explaining your 
interest in taking on this role and your expertise that you feel would be 
useful in this work.  You are also welcome to reach out to Sara, Beth, or Jon 
to get their impressions of how this group works together.

NEXT STEPS / TIMELINE:  Please submit your expressions of interest to me no 
later than February 10, 2021.  The ASERL Board of Directors makes the final 
selection for this role.

With my sincere thanks for your consideration of this request!



--jeb

John Burger, Executive Director
Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL)
c/o Robert W. Woodruff Library
540 Asbury Circle, Suite 316
Atlanta, GA  30322

404-218-4207 -- cellular