SALIS Committees: Advocacy

Chair: Andrea Mitchell, SALIS Executive Director, email: amitchell@salis.org

Members: Andrea Mitchell; Christine Goodair; Clare Imholtz; Sheila Lacroix, Barbara Weiner, Nancy Sutherland

History & Purpose:

The Advocacy Committee was created informally in 2004 with the fight to SAVE ETOH, the NIAAA Alcohol Science Database. It was formally approved by the Board in 2007 at the Strategy Planning Meeting in Reno, Nevada.

It's purpose is to:

• Promote matters of common interest and other information issues of the Alcohol and Other Drug Libraries and Information Centers.
• To make these issues known in the larger alcohol and drug field.
• To promote the need for digitization and preservation of alcohol and other drug materials and literature currently owned by our member libraries.

Communication: The committee communicates by email and phone.

Projects & Activities:

The Advocacy Committee has been monitoring the downsizing and elimination of ATOD libraries and databases. It endeavors to increase awareness of this situation in the AOD field by making presentations at conferences, and encourages the development of resolutions be made by other AOD organizations to recognize the importance of information collection, organization and dissemination to the strength of the field.

In the past year two presentations were made on the elimination and downsizing of SALIS/Elisad libraries and information centers, one at Kettil Bruun Society (KBS) in June of 2008, the other at the International Society of Addiction Journal Editors (ISAJE) in September, 2008. In addition a third presentation was made at the Elisad meeting in 2008 entitled "Threats to Our Intellectual History" This paper was co-authored by seventeen scientists and librarians, and discusses the larger political and social issues surrounding the elimination of our libraries and their gate-keepers. This paper was originally presented at the 2008 KBS by Dr. Kaye Fillmore.

Future Goals:

A meeting of scientists at the KBS encouraged the idea of digitization of materials which may be lost in this period of downsizing. A group was formed on this issue, and to date a small funding has been received to explore the challenges of co-ordinating a project on aod digitization. Members of Advocacy Committee will meet to discuss this exploratory project at the Halifax SALIS meeting.