ALTO Board Membership

The ALTO Editorial Board maintains editorial control of ALTO, its XML Schema, and official ALTO documentation. Additionally, the Board promotes the use of the standard and endorses best practices in the use of ALTO as they emerge. The ALTO Editorial Board is representative of important communities of interest for ALTO.

The criteria, expectations, membership and terms, and voting policies listed on this page are guidelines only; exceptions may be made by general consent of the board members.

  1. ALTO Board membership criteria:
    1. Have significant experience with ALTO implementation or ALTO-related tool building either previously or currently
    2. Represent either currently or previously one or more of the following constituencies from the international digital library community:
      1. National, Academic, Archives, or Public Libraries
      2. Information services utilities
      3. Governmental agencies or organizations
      4. Vendors supporting digital library operations
    3. Demonstrate experience with digital libraries or digital repository implementations using ALTO and in one or more of the following areas:
      1. XML or other information encoding languages
      2. Metadata for digital libraries or repositories such as descriptive, administrative, structural, or transport schemas
      3. Tool development and /or use for digital information creation, capture, storage and management, discovery or retrieval
    4. Committed support from home institution for telephone and web conferences calls, face to face meetings when feasible, in-person or online training events, and other Board activities
    5. Demonstrate ability and interest in developing and fostering the use of ALTO within digital libraries / repositories and building a strong ALTO community of implementors
  2. Expectations for ALTO Board member participation:
    1. Makes a serious commitment to meeting the Mission & Objectives of the ALTO Editorial Board.
    2. Participates actively in the work of the Board to maintain and promote the ALTO schema.
    3. Regularly and actively participates in periodic telephone and web conference calls, as well as face to face meetings when feasible.
    4. Prepares for meetings, stays informed about committee and work group activities, and reviews and comments upon meeting notes, committee and work group reports, and ALTO communication media as appropriate including the ALTO listserv and ALTO wiki.
    5. Gets to know other Board members and builds collegial relationships among Board members that contribute to informed and congenial decisionmaking.
    6. Exercises professional judgment about changes to ALTO and the impacts of changes upon current implementations as known by personal experience or by input from other ALTO implementors.
    7. Participates in committee or work group activities, educational training events and other ALTO promotional and fundraising activities.
    8. If a board member misses more than 4 ALTO board meetings in a year, the board member shall be considered inactive and may be removed from the board at the discretion of the remaining board members.
    9. The board shall strive to meet face-to-face at least once each year.
  3. ALTO Board membership:
    1. One of the board members shall be from Library of Congress.
    2. Board membership term shall be 3 years. Board membership terms may begin at anytime.
    3. A board membership term shall expire on December 31 after a member serves 3+ years on the board. For example, if a board member's term begins in June 2015, her/his membership term shall expire December 31, 2018.
    4. In order to ensure continuity in board business, no more than 1/3 of the board member terms shall expire in any year. Exceptions to the length of board membership terms shall be made as necessary to accomodate this policy.
    5. Current board members must approve new board members. New members shall be approved by a voice or email vote.
    6. Board membership terms shall be renewable with the consent of the member whose term is expiring and with the agreement of the board members whose terms are not expiring.
    7. Before December 31 of each year, a Board chair shall be choosen for the subsequent year from amongst current board members. The board shall strive to choose board chairs in fall of each year, and, if possible, at the annual face-to-face meeting. Candidates for board chair include board members whose terms will expire in the current year provided that they will renew their board membership.
  4. ALTO Board voting:
    1. The board shall strive for unanimity in its decisions.
    2. Voting on an issue shall be done by adding ACCEPT or REJECT to a comment on the issue under consideration.
    3. Voting on an issue shall be opened during a board meeting (teleconference or face-to-face). Voting on this issue shall be closed at the next board meeting but in no case less than 2 weeks after voting on the issue opened.
    4. With respect to voting, a quorum shall be no less than 2/3 of the total number of board members.
    5. If unanimity in a decision is not possible, at least 2/3 of the members constituting the voting quorum must vote ACCEPT in order for the proposal to an issue to be adopted.