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Web Committee
Forums. Welcome to the new millennium! Our forums have been tested out by our board members and section/committee chairs and it’s time to unleash this amazing information sharing resource on the masses… YOU!
A few simple starters for you:
- What is a user forum? It’s similar to a bulletin board or ListServ. Members can post questions or information content under specific topics and/or subtopics, for example, if you want to post a question about Dress Code you would look under the HR area in the subtopic of Dress Code. In there you might even find that others have been discussing your interested topic. Maybe you want to add on an additional question to an existing thread or maybe you want to start your own! It’s up to you.
- What a user forum is NOT: it is not a place to discuss inappropriate gossip (eg, “Did you see what Richard was wearing today???”). It is not a place to discuss salaries (your own or for any position you might be hiring for) this violates ALA policy and fundamentals. You must also be VERY careful about asking questions about vendors, services or products when it comes to pricing (remember, our opinions shared in a forum like this could affect a sponsor’s business and thus is Anti-Competitive in nature). And the list goes on…but I think you get the gist.
- These forums are real-time! When you post a question or response it is posted live on the forum, no more pre-screening messages and questions. This is a big step forward, but remember our obligations to ALA’s Anti-Trust and Anti-Competition guidelines (wanted to provide a direct link, but it’s behind the login on the ALA site). We’ve posted some reminders around the forums to keep everyone aware and out of trouble. Trouble, that’s right, you are responsible for the content you post. Our section chairs and board members have moderator rights (editing, deleting, temporary holds), but we can’t be everywhere at once. If you see questionable content, please use the “Report this post” button on any page/post.
- These forums depend on you in order to be successful and useful. The more questions and content you post, the more help and hope that gives everyone else. Because we’re starting out with basically empty forums, I encourage you to post your favorite questions. Perhaps questions you commonly see circulated on the current ListServs or that nagging question you’ve been going crazy to ask!
- Speaking of the current ListServs, will the forums replace them completely? Short answer: that is our intention. A bit more detail: we want to be sure these forums are going to be useful, so we’re going to keep the ListServs up and running until the end of December. If something gets sent out on the ListServ the moderator (aka Section Chair) will also post the topic on the forum. Hopefully this will help us transition more easily.
- Excited to get started? I know you are! The forum requires you to register. It’s a very short registration process, probably less than 5 minutes. WHEN YOU SETUP YOUR USER NAME PLEASE USE YOUR FIRST AND LAST NAME, e.g. my user name is RichardWood. Where do you go? www.psala.org/forum we’re working with our developer to add a link at the top of our main site next to Job Bank, but we haven’t been able to accomplish that just yet. If you can’t remember this address there’s also a link to the forum at the bottom of the Site Map (link to the Site Map is at the bottom of every page). We do have to approve registrations, so it might take a few hours for you to become fully activated once you register. Please bare with us as we approve registrations for our 240+ members.
- If you have any issues registering or need other assistance please email Communications@psala.org. We’ll roll out more info and policies as they develop.