17 Sep 15 ALA Strategic Technology Directions Update: 2016-2017

The ALA Information Technology & Telecommunication Services (ITTS) has updated the ALA Strategic Technology Directions Report.  The report outlines major accomplishments for fiscal 2015 and plans for 2016/2017 fiscal years.  It provides a good foundation to understand how technology is implemented at ALA to meet the goals of the organization and explains the role of ITTS within ALA.

The diagrams in the report show the complexity of the implemented technologies and how they integrate with each other.  For example, our conference registration companies retrieve iMIS (our Association Management System) data to recognize ALA members and treat them as such, removing the need to re-enter known information.  The ALA Technology Services diagram on page 2 shows all of the integrations between systems.

With only 9.5 employees, ITTS supports software and hardware for our 11 divisions, 20 round tables, 55,000 members, and 25 offices with approximately 240 staff.

On page 3 of the report there is an updated infographic containing 2014 ITTS statistics.  For example, we received 4,048 help desk requests in 2014.  This number is understated because we aren’t able to log every call or hallway conversation.  Help desk requests are usually individual problems, and as such they don’t represent large scale projects.  We maintain 300 databases, 120 virtual servers, and 27 physical servers, in addition to the services we manage that are provided/maintained by 31 different consulting firms. We had 25.3 million pageviews on our website, and 22% of our members use ALA Connect.

A few sections have been redacted from the report because they contain sensitive security information.

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Sherri Vanyek Director, Information Technology & Telecommunication Services

American Library Association