COSWL Cause

COSWL met today at 1:30pm in the Washington Convention Center, room 209A. We had a small number of committee members, but we also had some guests who were interested in getting involved! We began with an introduction of the people who were in the meeting and an introduction of COSWL as a committee. It was also announced that Anita Schiller, a past COSWL member, was named an Honorary ALA member.

The big news about COSWL's current activities focused on our booth in the exhibits area. We're in Booth 745, so if you're at ALA, stop by! This is the first year (that we know of) that we have the booth. We're sharing information about women's issues in librarianship with the people that stop by the booth, and feel that it is helping us fulfill our charge. We're also teaching informal tech workshops in the booth. We think that these introductory one-on-one sessions are helpful as our field is changing, technology is growing, and we want to make sure that women have a voice in this area. If more women joined the blogosphere, there would also be a diversification of voices out there, and a democratization in the issues being discussed.

We also made some tentative plans for the future. We'd like to continue with the booth, and will be looking for partner organizations. We will continue to develop the blog and our new COSWL wiki. We will submit a program proposal centering around the issue of the "care crisis" in which family responsibilities often fall to the female of the family. We discussed a possible resolution for midwinter and the joint research project with FTF on representation in conference programming. We also would like to devote a section of our website to links to resources for women from negotiating skills to introductions to technology to family/workplace issues. Finally, we got a volunteer to start work on a project to digitize COSWL documents. We've put a lot on our plates, but think that it will be useful!

COSWL members, did I leave anything out? Does any COSWL Cause reader think there's something we should be doing that we aren't? Please leave comments... that's the beauty of the blog!