IFRT Membership Needs YOU!

Martin Garnar, mgarnar@regis.edu

As the ALA grassroots organization that's dedicated to intellectual freedom, IFRT is uniquely positioned to serve as a national forum for sharing ideas, materials, and alerts related to intellectual freedom. We'd like to see the IFRT electronic mailing list become an active bulletin board that lets members both send and receive information. To accomplish this, we need your help. We're looking for volunteers to serve as liaisons from each state library association. These liaisons would post information on the IFRT list about what's happening in their state, whether it be an IF challenge or information on an upcoming program. Likewise, liaisons would forward information from the IFRT list to their local library lists to help us get the word out about IFRT activities and programs. We'd estimate that this would require a commitment of 15 minutes a week, so we're not talking about an undue burden.

In addition to sharing information within IFRT, we need ambassadors to connect with local and regional library communities. These ambassadors would be IFRT's visible presence at state and regional conferences, and at LIS education programs. We're in the midst of developing a promotional packet that will be give our ambassadors all they need to know about IFRT and provide all the materials you need to sign up new members. The largest part of the time commitment is directly related to time spent at your local conference and can range from dropping off materials at a literature table to staffing an information table for all or part of your conference.

If you're interested in serving as a liaison or ambassador (or both!), contact Martin Garnar, chair of the IFRT Membership Promotion Committee at mgarnar@regis.edu or by calling 303-964-5459. To remain a vital grassroots organization, we need the roots to get involved!