Interest Groups | The American Library Association Archives

Name: Interest Groups

Historical Note:

In 1986 the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) became the first ALA Division to create Interest Groups (IG) to serve the interests of its members (1). Under the organizational structure approved by the membership in Fall 1984, Sections were replaced with Interest Groups (2). Interest Groups facilitate flexible programming around "cutting edge" topics (3) and can be phased out when a topic is no longer of interest to members (4). Interest Groups continue to function as the Discussion Groups they were before reorganization by holding less formal discussion session at the Annual Conference (5). Function statements for each Interest Group are found in the ALA Handbook of Organization.

Interest Groups Year Established

Artificial Intelligence/ Expert Systems 1985

Program Planning (Subcommittee) 1986

Publications (Subcommittee) 1988

Authority Control LITA/RSTD 1985

Consultant/User 1985

Distributed Systems 1986

Electronic Mail/Electronic Publishing/Electronic

Bulletin Boards 1986

Emerging Technologies 1987

Human/Machine Interface 1986

Library Microcomputer Templates 1985

Microcomputer Users(originally a Discussion Group) 1984

On-Line Catalogs(originally a Discussion Group) 1980

Optical Information Systems 1986

Programmers/Analysts(originally a Discussion Group) 1981

Retrospective Conversion, LITA/RSTD (originally a

discussion group) 1980

Serials Automation, LITA/RSTD 1986

Telecommunications 1985

Vendor/User 1985

Video and Cable Utilization 1985

1. The ALA Yearbook of Library Information Services (Chicago: American Library Association, 1987), p. 182.

2. The ALA Yearbook of Library and Information Services (Chicago: American Library Association, 1985), p. 174.

3. Ibid., p. 186.

4. Ibid., p. 174.

5. The ALA Yearbook of Library and Information Services (Chicago: American Library Association, 1988), p. 191.