Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Should Wikipedia ask WMF to join the American Library Association on its behalf?

This draft RFC is not yet ready for a vote

The American Library Association (ALA) is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members. Most members are libraries, but organization can become a member. It has state, regional, and student chapters and focuses on activities to promote libraries, libararianship, establish library standards, and advocates on issues important to libraries, notably intellectual freedom, privacy, and balance in copyright law. It conducts conferences and events such as Banned Books Week. Membership for a "very large" organization serving more than 500,000 people costs $2000 yearly, plus perhaps a few hundred additionally for division and round table membership.^[1] A membership for WMF or Wikipedia would be above all a symbolic gesture, but carries tangible benefits such as discounts on ALA publications and resources, and possibly most relevant for Wikipedia, "Organizational Members can take advantage of many ALA programs and events to help expand staff skills and services."

This RFC asks two questions:

1) Should en.Wikipedia request that the WMF arrange membership in the ALA on its behalf?

2) If that happens, should en.Wikipedia display an ALA logo and/or the words "Member ALA" on its pages?

The details of these are deferred to those implementing these actions. We can only request this action here, not mandate it. Obviously ALA and Wikipedia are both very large, proud organizations with strong principles and this would be a unique situation to be worked out carefully. The WMF would have to decide on the particulars of membership, and whether it is feasible to seek separate membership on behalf of en.wikipedia and perhaps over time other WMF projects individually, or whether the WMF should be a member as a whole. The former suggestion expresses the hope that en.Wikipedia might directly access ALA benefits and communications without having go through the WMF Office or Meta. Details to be determined for an ALA link include securing permission for display of the standard ALA logo (like the Internet Archive does). It might look nice in the page footer near "a Wikimedia project" or "powered by MediaWiki", but this decision should be up to developers.

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