I've been fascinated watching how popular Bill Drew's Library 2.0 Network has become in just a few weeks. I've already blogged a little about that, but what I didn't mention is that the same day Bill started the L2N, ALA also started a social network on Ning, except we didn't tell anybody.

Amazingly, that evening we had our first member join (hi, Amy!), without any marketing or notice at all. A couple of weeks later, a mention of it was made on LITA's mailing list and that prompted a few more folks to join. But we still weren't sure what exactly we were going to do with this space, all the while watching great conversations happening over on the L2 side.

So today ALA is taking the plunge and experimenting with a social network, such as it is, on Ning. Find it at http://alamembers.ning.com/, and feel free to join, even if you're not an ALA member. More info about the ALA Network is available on my ALA Members Network blog (RSS feed here). Feel free to come on over, browse around, join, start a discussion, contribute to an existing one, or just lurk.

For the most part, I'll be posting over there about all of the interesting things I see coming out of and happening within ALA as a way to highlight them to our members (there is so much of this stuff that it's been difficult to not blog about it on TSL every day, but that's a topic for another blog post altogether...). I will still discuss here my perspectives about being an ALA staff member, joining the association world, and implementing cool things in our professional organization.

I know I'm not supposed to use the adjective "cool," and I'm sure I'll get written up in some book or blog somewhere and sent to the principal's office for saying it, but cool can be useful and useful can be cool (not everything is both, but some things are, and note that I didn't say that being cool is an end unto itself). For me, in this context, cool equals exciting because it means opportunity, although I hope we reach Michael Porter's goal of fulfillment, too (does that make him "the fulfilled librarian?"). In fact, pretty much every week of the almost eight months I've been at ALA, someone has told me about something cool we are doing that they like and find useful because it allows them to engage with ALA in a new or different way.

And that is the coolest thing of all. :)