SALIS Advocacy Committee
Chair: Andrea Mitchell, SALIS Executive Director, amitchell@salis.org
Communication: This committee communicates through a dedicated listserv.
Its Purpose is to:
- Promote matters of common interest and other information issues of the Alcohol and Other Drug Libraries and Information Centers.
- Disseminate these issues within the larger alcohol and drug field.
- Promote the need for access, digitization and preservation of alcohol and other drug materials and literature currently in our member libraries and in private collections.
The committee has members from Australia, Canada, Europe, the UK and the USA. Work centers around two main activities.
SALIS Digitization Project
In 2013 SALIS began building The SALIS Collection, a free, online, digital archive of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug books and documents in partnership with the Internet Archive (IA). Currently there are more than 5,700 items in this online, e-lending library. International in scope, the aim is to include all years and all languages. Items in the public domain or in copyright are available to read online or to download. Items in copyright may be e-borrowed, one borrower at a time.
The Committee manages this growing collection which involves fundraising, promotion, and the project administration: acquisitions, selection, tracking, and reporting.
Monitoring the Loss of ATOD Libraries
The Advocacy Committee monitors the downsizing and elimination of ATOD libraries and databases. Since 2008, it continues to work to increase awareness of this situation through presentations at conferences, and encouraging the development of resolutions by other ATOD organizations to recognize the importance of information collection, organization and dissemination to the field, before valuable resources and expertise are lost. An editorial by committee members outlined the problem and recommended action. “Collective Amnesia: Reversing the Global Epidemic of Addiction Library Closures” was published in 2012 in the journal Addiction. Many researchers responded with letters of support later published in Addiction.
History
The Advocacy Committee was created informally in 2004 with the campaign to Save ETOH, the NIAAA Alcohol Science Database. It was formally approved by the Board in 2007 at the Strategic Planning Meeting in Reno, Nevada. Since then it has taken on other projects described above.