SALIS Committees: Membership & Outreach

Co-Chairs: Tom Krawczyk, Center for Prevention Research and Development, email: tomkraw@uiuc.edu and Diane van Abbe, Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, email: diane_vanabbe@camh.net

Members: Jessica Hinkson Desmarais, Eric Helmuth, Tom Krawczyk, David Man, Julie Murphy, Diane van Abbe, Meg Brunner

History & Purpose: The Membership and Outreach Committee tackles issues such as membership recruitment, participation, and retention, in an effort to help keep SALIS strong. Through 'outreach' we can contact and communicate with other organizations that share goals similar to those of SALIS, to make them more aware of our goals and achievements.

Our first action was to re-name the committee, which is a combination of the former Membership and Education & Outreach committees.

Communication: The committee meeting regularly by conference call to discuss current and future actions.

Projects & Activities:

• Membership recruitment and retention: send out renewal notices, contact lapsed members
• Created a "What is SALIS?" Talking Points
• Organize fun activities at the SALIS conferences, e.g. committee members wear stickers on their name badges to stir up conversation and entice others to join the committees.
• Explored Web 2.0 as a vehicle for enhancing SALIS visibility and outreach: Recommended to Executive Board the creation of SALIS Facebook and LinkedIn "group pages," as well as a SALIS Wikipedia entry.
  

Future Goals:

• Examing membership structure to determine if it should be revised;
• Survey current membership for categorizing into types of libraries or people (webmasters, mental health, prevention, research, alcohol, harm reduction).
  
• Identify new members and mentor them.
  
• Survey former members to gather ideas about why they have left the organization, and address those concerns.