“This is cer­tainly not a sil­ver bul­let for the over­all mon­e­tary issues that young or poor librar­i­ans face for ALA event costs, but I think it is a step in the right direc­tion. A struc­tured tier sys­tem for mem­ber­ship and sec­tion fees for the sec­ond year and beyond would also make inroads towards the reten­tion of new mem­bers. I’m sure there will be some grum­bling about this kind of solu­tion, but unless there is a rad­i­cal change of course, there will be very few peo­ple left to grum­ble to. Even now, as a non-member, the ben­e­fits of ALA pre­sented to me do not exceed what I am able to do with Face­book, Twit­ter, and a bit of social apti­tude. As such, for me these free tools are way ahead of an orga­ni­za­tion that I would have to pay $65 just to get through the prover­bial front door.”