The forum is a place where people can interact and have discussions about different topics relevant to the library industry. Please follow these guidelines to ensure that the forums have productive conversations. These rules and guidelines are enforced by the LAA’s Board of Directors in accordance with the Library Association of Alberta Code of Conduct policy. Posts that contravene the rules and guidelines may be deleted without warning.

We rely on all forum members to help keep the LAA forums a safe place to share and view information. To do this, we request that all members comply with the following rules when contributing to the forums:

Expectations:

• Share interesting and inspiring content. Post information and ideas that move the sector forward.
• Be respectful and open. Engaging in an online community means benefiting from a variety of perspectives, including some that contradict your own. Constructive discussion and debate are expected and encouraged. Disagreement is normal – use this as an opportunity to clarify and understand new ideas.
• Keep it relevant. Share information that is relevant to libraries and library workers in Alberta and suitable for the format; not all information or discussions are suited to a public professional online space. Be disciplined in your participation: brief, focused, and on topic, leaving space for others.
• Intention matters, but impact matters more. Act with good intentions and assume others are too. However, if you do harm, recognize that matters more than your intention and take responsibility.
• Take care of yourself. You are responsible for your own well-being, which may include disengaging from a particular discussion or content.

Responsibilities:

• Post as yourself. You must use your own name in the LAA online spaces.
• Respect privacy. This is a public space – do not share personal information, whether it is your own or someone else’s. Do not re-share posts without permission.
• Make content as accessible as possible. Follow good accessibility practices, including providing alt text for images, captioning videos and/or providing transcripts, using sans serif fonts and high contrast colours.
• Respect copyright and intellectual property. When posting content that isn’t your own, ensure you’re doing so legally and give credit to creators.

We maintain the rights to remove posts and threads to ensure that material posted in the discussion forums is not potentially harmful. For this reason, we may edit or choose not to publish any post that:

• contains disrespectful or derogatory remarks about any person
• contains advice or content that we believe is damaging, unhelpful or distressing to others
• contains swearing or offensive language, is nonsensical and/or irrelevant
• promotes personal beliefs in a way that is disrespectful of the choices of others
• is racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit or suggestive, abusive or otherwise discriminatory or objectionable
• do not focus on library matters

LAA does not permit

• Harassment, discrimination, or abuse of any kind.
• Commercial messages or promotion of paid events not associated with LAA.
• Job postings that have not been posted on the Partnership Job Board.

Breach of the forum rules and guidelines should be reported by email to communication@libraryassociationalberta.com

Each forum category will have a general conversations tab where members can post their questions and discussion topics. If members would like to see a change in category topics, they can contact communication@libraryassociationalberta.com with a detailed explanation, including how this change will benefit the membership.