2025-2026

As Chair, I serve as the chief executive officer and primary leader of the organization, providing strategic direction, representation, and operational oversight. Elected by the membership to a three-year progression (Chair-Elect, Chair, and Past-Chair), the Chair presides over the GODORT Steering Committee and Executive Committee, as well as the GODORT 101 session and the general Membership Meetings held during GODORT’s virutal winter and Annual meetings and during ALA’s Annual Conference. Key responsibilities include setting agendas, facilitating discussions and decision-making, appointing committee chairs and members (with Steering Committee approval), maintaining liaisons with other ALA units and external organizations, and serving as the main point of contact with ALA Headquarters and the ALA Washington Office.

I also handle external communications and official correspondence, write the “From the Chair” column for the round table’s journal DttP: Documents to the People, maintains regular reports on activities, and works to advance GODORT’s mission of promoting access to, use of, and bibliographic control of government documents. Organize and often lead the monthly Friday Chats, which are informal discussions, usually held on the first Friday of the month, to allow the community to engage in conversation related to government information. In essence, the role combines high-level leadership, meeting facilitation, administrative coordination, and advocacy to support and streamline the work of GODORT’s committees, interest groups, and task force, and ~500 members.

There were considerable challenges this year, including:

• difficulty communicating with ALA staff regarding financial matters, such as securing payment for our scholarship winner and just getting updated budgetary information.
• the Secretary resigned suddenly right before our October 2025 Steering meeting and I had to find another volunteer for that role.
• the Coordinator for the Help! webinar series resigned in January 2026 and I’ve been assisting with those duties.
• ALA tasked all round tables to evaluate their committees, products, grants, and scholarships and submit our findings using their rubric (see below). Chairs were only given two months to complete this work (rubric listed below, as well as a few emails regarding Steering member’s apprecation for the way I handled this request.
• springing out of the ALA ask, I had a committee formed to careful evaluate GODORT’s structure and am spearheading that reorganization effort to comply with ALA’s ask that we pause or sunset some of our groups, but ensuring that the work done by those committees continues.
• communicate often with GODORT members regarding the upcoming changes to our organizational structure. From July to November 2026, I will be implementing the proposed changes, along with the incoming Chair and new Chair-Elect.

While the past year presented significant challenges, I have received consistent and enthusiastic positive feedback from both GODORT Steering and general membership on my approach to addressing them. Steering specifically thanked me for my work on the rubric evaluation (see email thread below). Additionally, at Annual 2026, one of GODORT’s co-founders personally thanked me for my contributions to improving the organization and expressed that the other founders would strongly approve of my leadership and direction this year.