ALA Midwinter 2011: The LITA Streaming Controversy: How Open Is an Open Meeting? [UPDATED]
By David Rapp Jan 18, 2011A disagreement regarding an attempt to broadcast over the Internet a meeting of the American Library Association's Library & Information Technology Association (LITA) Board of Directors at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Diego has sparked controversy anew over the implications of ALA's open meeting policy in the digital age.
Jason Griffey—head of library IT at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, a member of the LITA board, and a 2009 LJ Mover & Shaker—attempted to livestream a video of a meeting of the board on January 8, without informing other members of the board that he would be doing so.
One of the first items on the meeting's agenda [PDF] was a talk by a hired consultant, Paul Meyer, president and co-CEO of Tecker Consultants, about "the attributes of successful associations" and other issues. However, before Meyer was able to begin, one of the board members asked Griffey to turn off his stream.
As can be seen in the streamed video (now viewable on Griffey's Ustream channel), Griffey refused, taking the position that he should be allowed to stream an open meeting. Other board members countered that the board was not consulted beforehand. Members also said that the consultant's report was copyrighted material, and thus should not be streamed.
On the video, Griffey tells the board members: "I would like to say that I believe that the discussion that we're having directly impacts the membership, and that making this a truly public discussion—allowing members that are not allowed to be here, for whatever reason—I believe that making this available online to them is valuable, and that removing the stream would be something that would be a detriment to people who aren't here."
The disagreement soon led to a vote by the board for Griffey to turn off the camera. Griffey, along with board members Cindi Trainor and Aaron Dobbs, voted against stopping the streaming, but were outvoted. Griffey turned off the stream soon after the vote, after saying that turning it off was "a mistake."
Update 1/18: Reached for comment, Griffey told LJ: "I'm looking forward to the LITA Board reaffirming LITA's commitment to being the technology trend-setter within ALA."
Update 1/19: LITA president Karen Starr, in an email today to LITA members (now online), wrote that a dedicated LITA Content Streaming Task Force would soon be formed to address streaming issues. (The full story is available here.)
Librarian reaction
Attendees of the meeting, and librarians nationwide, later weighed in on the controversy on blogs and on Twitter.
Michelle Boulé, who watched the argument unfold as she watched online, weighed in on her A Wandering Eyre blog: "I think (and this is speculation on my part) that Jason [Griffey] may have tried streaming this without warning the board to demonstrate the issue at hand, which it clearly did. The issue is that we should be streaming meetings and there is some disconnect about the why and how."
Griffey later commented on Boulé's blog post that she was "correct in her guess that I didn't warn the Board...but in all honesty, it never entered my mind that I needed warn people to stream an open meeting. I wasn't attempting to 'show up the board'...I'm a member of the Board. I feel like it is a service to the division that the meeting be streamed, and just did it. To say that I was surprised by the result is putting it mildly."
Maurice York, head of IT at North Carolina State University Libraries and a member of the board, tweeted: "The issue is not whether or not we should stream a Board meeting. We paid a consultant to talk to a Board, not hundreds of people."
Board member Cindi Trainor, coordinator for library technology and data services at Eastern Kentucky University Libraries, similarly tweeted: "Clarification: the [LITA board meeting] stream was stopped because of the paid content that is being presented."
But other librarians weren't persuaded. Librarian Karen Schneider, who was present at the meeting, wrote on her Free Range Librarian blog that that consultant explanation "assumes that there is some middle ground for open meetings where they are open to the people in the room but not to ALA members elsewhere. The policy does not establish or even mention such a middle ground, though it is one that has been long-assumed by some members."
Schneider also pointed out, however, that according to the ALA's meeting policy, open meetings are not open to the world at large: "I'm not defending the wording, but as it stands, meetings at conferences are open to registered attendees."
Librarian Meredith Farkas, on her Information Wants to Be Free blog, also rejected the consultant argument: "First of all, that consultant was paid with money that came from our dues. Why we are any less deserving of access to that report is beyond me. Second of all, the LITA Board meeting was not 'closed doors.' It was an open meeting—open to anyone attending ALA Midwinter, so the report couldn't have had any confidentiality tied to it."
However, she added: "I do agree that Jason should have broached the subject of streaming the meeting with the other members of the LITA Board prior to the meeting, but I'd bet that he'd have been turned down and we'd never have heard about it."
Librarian Bohyun Kim, on her Library Hat blog, had a different perspective: "If someone is going to sit down and watch a board meeting for three hours discussing policies and bylaws not even physically attending the meeting, I would say that that someone should be commended."
