Interested in volunteering?
Contact the Community Board or Committee members via Connect to discuss current opportunities and express interest.
- Select a committee from the list below that interests you.
- Find the names of a Board member or Committee chair on our Current Leadership page.
- Click on their name.
- You will be presented the option to send them an email through Connect.
Why volunteer?
As key Community players – committee chairs and committee members make a significant contribution to the health and activities of the Community. Committee terms are usually one year with possibility of renewal. Short term special tasks are also available. A description of each committee and its activities is available on the Committees page.
Each position will give an opportunity to:
- Build planning and leadership skills
- Make a contribution to the profession (paying back)
- Gain management experience in Community activities
- Acquire new ‘technical’ skills/tools
- Raise your personal profile within SLA and the profession
- Help shape the direction/vision of the Community
- Interact with a group of dynamic committed taxonomy professionals
- Provide a route to Community executive board membership
Taxonomy Community Committees
Archives
The Archives Committee maintains the Community archives.
Bulletin
The Bulletin Committee of SLA's Taxonomy Community publishes the bulletin – Taxonomy Times – every quarter. Taxonomy Times includes Community news and original content that informs, engages and inspires members of the Community.
Membership
The Membership Committee is responsible for encouraging the growth and retention of membership in the Taxonomy Community. It sends welcome letters to new members, reminder letters to lapsed members, and notifies the listserv, bulletin and Web/Connect committee of member changes.
Mentoring
The Mentoring Committee provides career insight and guidance to members as well as coaching related to the creation and application of controlled vocabularies (taxonomies, ontologies, thesauri, topic maps, etc...). The objective is to facilitate the building of mentor/mentee relationships such that they benefit both participants.
Networking
The Networking Committee is responsible for organizing and facilitating in-person taxonomy-related networking activities within the SLA community and beyond, including an open house at the Annual Conference and various local no-host dinners. The goal is to encourage dialog, camaraderie, and knowledge sharing between Taxonomy Community members, the larger SLA community, and non-members interested in taxonomy.
Nominations
The Nominations Committee is responsible for soliciting nominations and producing a slate of candidates for the Community's elected board.
Partner Relations
The Partner Relations Committee is responsible for all relations with partners including soliciting sponsors for Community programs, webinars and general sponsorship to help recover/reduce the cost of division programs and services.
Professional Development
The Professional Development Committee provides continuing education workshops, webinars, and other resources for members of the Community who want to advance and/or share their skills and knowledge of taxonomy and other forms of knowledge organization.
Programs
The Taxonomy Community Programs Committee is responsible for planning the division programs at the SLA Annual Conference. Overall roles include soliciting and selecting topics, speakers and moderators for programs, planning the overall conference budget (e.g., audiovisual costs, food and beverage costs, and speaker fees, if any), and managing the logistics of the program at the conference. Because program planning is an 18-month cycle, there are usually 2 separate program committees – one responsible for the current calendar year's programming and one responsible for the next calendar year's programming.
Public Relations
The Public Relations Committee is responsible for promoting the events and services of the Community by drafting and disseminating announcements, brochures, and online event descriptions.
Strategic Planning
The Strategic Planning Committee triennially creates a plan that sets the direction of the Community. As part of plan creation, the Committee solicits feedback from membership and Board members and formulates it into a plan for what tasks the Community will pursue over the Plan period. In between plan creation years, the Committee facilitates Board development of the annual action plan based on the Strategic Plan, monitors the Community's accomplishments and updates the plan accordingly.
Student Outreach
The Student Outreach Committee provides outreach and services to students interested in taxonomy as a profession, and helps the Public Relations Committee by helping identify communications channels to reach students and Library/Information Science schools with division announcements.
Web/Connect
The Web/Connect Committee is responsible for design, maintenance, and information architecture of the Community's web and social media presence, including managing access lists for the restricted sections of the wiki.