In recent years, the Board holds a Strategic Planning and Orientation Session (SPOS). SPOS has been held for two and a half days in the fall (typically Wednesday afternoon through Friday).
The general purpose of SPOS is:
The Board is planning to hold its first three-day, in-person SPOS since fall 2019. The meeting will be held on October 9-11, 2024 in Chicago, IL and will include current Board members, the 2023-2024 ACRL past president and senior staff. The in-person SPOS meeting will seek to identify the needs of the current and future members and will build on the Value of ACRL membership panel, table discussions, and report outs held at the ACRL Leadership Council and Membership Meeting, held on at the ALA Annual Conference on June 28, 2024, from 1:00pm – 3:00pm Pacific in San Diego, CA.
Due to continued budget constraints and plans to hold an in-person SPOS in October 2024, the Board did not hold a SPOS meeting for 2023-2024.
Due to budgeting constraints, a three-day SPOS meeting was not planned for the Board in FY23. In lieu of the three-day, in-person SPOS, the Board held the following strategic planning meetings:
SPOS is currently budgeted in FY22 as a one-day, add-on event for an existing in-person meeting (i.e., ALA LibLearnX in San Antonio or ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC). The staff and presidents will continue to monitor travel and health guidelines and restrictions, ACRL's budget performance, and the preferences of invitees. The Board will be kept apprised of meeting details and plans.
SPOS 2020 was planned for one day in advance of the ACRL2021 Conference in Seattle as a cost containment measure. With the switch to an all-virtual conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board instead held two Priority Setting discussions in June 2021 to identify short-term priorities for ACRL for the next one to two years. The need for priority setting was brought about by significant changes in higher education, academic libraries, and ALA that necessitated identifying and drafting short-term priorities.
SPOS 2019 was held in Chicago, IL, from October 23-25, 2019. The Board will be joined by the chairs of the ACRL EDI Committee and the chairs of the four goal-area committees (New Roles & Changing Landscapes, Research and Scholarly Environment, Student Learning and Information Literacy, and Value of Academic Libraries) for one and half days of SPOS. The full Board will meet on its own for the full day on Friday. Agenda topics include SCOE, ACRL finances, and EDI.
The 2018 SPOS meeting focused on a discussion equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) with the Board, goal-area chairs, and Diversity Committee leadership. The Board and goal-area chairs held a discussion on reviewing the ACRL Plan for Excellence. The 2018 SPOS meeting was held October 10-12, 2018 in Cleveland, Ohio, site of the ACRL 2019 Conference.
