ALA Keeps Cool in New Orleans:
Annual Conference Is Big and Easy
ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans,
June 24–June 30, 1999
Table of Contents
As expected, New Orleans temperatures soared to sweltering levels during ALA’s 118th Annual Conference, June 24–30. What wasn’t so predictable was how temperate things would remain inside the conference meeting rooms.
Although there was no shortage of hot topics, from Internet filtering to outsourcing, they were largely examined in program sessions rather than prompting heated discussion in the air-conditioned Council chambers.
Attendance figures were even higher than the sweltering temperatures: Although the 22,598 total registrants failed to match last year’s record-breaking 24,884, the regular paid figure of 11,915 beat the 1998 number by 116. However, many of those attendees had to struggle to reach New Orleans, and numerous canceled flights and involuntary bumpings did get more than a few passengers hot under the collar.
Blame it on the laid-back charms of the Big Easy, but this year’s Annual Conference was the mellowest of meetings. Even the small band of protesters demonstrating against keynote speaker Gen. Colin Powell failed to spark much of a blaze; the crowd at the Opening General Session gave his markedly uncanned comments a warm reception. Many objected to his $70,000 speaker fee, however, even though it was subsidized to the tune of $50,000 by the Library Corporation (AL, May, p. 6).
President Ann Symons’s theme of “Celebrating the Freedom to Read! Learn! Connect!” was reflected throughout the week in programs designed to shed more light than heat on the sometimes-fiery topic of intellectual freedom. Her President’s Program, “A Conversation on the First Amendment,” brought together Playboy Enterprises CEO Christie Hefner, ACLU President Nadine Strossen, and attorney Bruce Ennis for two hours of lively discussion from what Symons called “a perspective we hear from our own members but not from those on different front lines.”
Symons and ALA Executive Board member Sally Gardner Reed hosted a celebration for the release of their new book, Speaking Out! Voices in Celebration of Intellectual Freedom, from ALA Editions (AL, June/July, p. 72–75). The book is a collection of essays on selected quotes from history and literature and features prominent library leaders as well as celebrities such as U.S. Rep. Barney Frank and actor Edward Asner.
Some 4,500 tickets were sold to a “Scholarship Bash” fundraiser and about 3,000 people showed up to hear the Neville Brothers’ simmering gumbo of rhythm-and-blues, jazz, and funk. Initiated by Symons and sponsored by Bell and Howell Information and Learning (formerly UMI), the event raised over $100,000 for the Spectrum Initiative and other ALA scholarships, and was so successful that plans are under way for a follow-up next year. In addition, ALA’s Public Library Association announced a $50,000 pledge to Spectrum.
Between a busy schedule of programs and chairing much of three Council and two Executive Board sessions and two attempts at Membership Meetings, Symons still found time to frolic in Mardi Gras costume at the Scholarship Bash and to deliver “Born to Read” gift bags to new mothers whose babies were born during conference week in a local hospital.
ALA said many good-byes to retiring Washington Office Director Carol Henderson, none more touching than the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies reception in her honor, where Henderson was presented with letters of appreciation from the state librarians of all 50 states.
Receptions are the order of the day at Annual Conference, and among the most notable this year were the American Library Trustee Association’s “Evening on the Riverfront” at the Aquarium of the Americas, Ameritech’s soirée at the New Orleans Museum of Art, and a Library of Congress party at the elegant French Quarter home of Lindy Boggs, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.
It was no surprise to anyone that the two Membership Meetings scheduled for the New Orleans Conference failed to attract a quorum and again devolved into gripe sessions. The first began with reports from Symons, the Budget Analysis and Review Committee, the Endowment Trustees, and Executive Director William Gordon, and ended with prolonged grumbling over Colin Powell’s fee and the behavior of convention-center security. The second turned into a confrontation between Councilor S. Michael Malinconico and Gordon over the way the demonstrators were treated.
Malinconico asked why the police had been called and a patrol wagon summoned. Gordon explained that picketing was not permitted in the convention center, and the police were summoned when the demonstrators were told by security that they had to go outside in the rain but refused.
The wet weather also got to Phaidon Press, whose booth suffered $15,000 in damages after the roof above sprang a leak. Other vendors suffered minor damage.
The increased global presence noted at last year’s Annual Conference in Washington continued in New Orleans, with a celebration of the 50th anniversary of ALA’s International Relations Round Table and a gala reception for international visitors atop the city’s World Trade Center, where a delegation of Chinese librarians from Taiwan announced a $2,000 gift to the Spectrum Initiative.
Over 800 people attended the Coretta Scott King Award breakfast, where actress Della Reese led a rousing rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and author Virginia Hamilton kicked off a three-year national awareness campaign for the award. Reese appeared courtesy of Jump at the Sun, a division of Hyperion Books and publisher of her book God Inside of Me. The ever-popular Newbery/Caldecott Banquet also drew some 1,100 people who paid $78 a ticket to see the coveted medals presented to author Louis Sachar and illustrator Mary Azarian.
Among the other prominent speakers appearing throughout the conference were public-radio talk-show host Terry Gross, filmmaker David Grubin, former congresswoman and Association of American Publishers President Patricia Schroeder, and poet/author Andrei Codrescu, who fired up the New Members Round Table orientation with his acerbic remarks on topics ranging from his distrust of cyber-technology to his revulsion over the fee paid to Colin Powell.
At conference end, Sarah Ann Long was inaugurated as ALA’s new president, kicking off her year with a sumptuous banquet of New Orleans cooking and the dancing sounds of Rockin’ Dopsie. A reception for ALA award winners preceded the banquet.
Annual Conference news from the 1,400-booth exhibit hall, and ALA Council and Executive Board also appear on this Web site. A roundup of awards is scheduled for the September issue.
In the final analysis, it is the plethora of programs that makes an ALA Annual Conference. Below, AL editors report on selected events representative of the over 2,000 programs and meetings that compose an “ALA.”
Libraries Are Safe Havens,
Affirms Colin Powell
While a handful of attendees at the hall entrance to the Opening General Session protested his appearance with signs denouncing “U.S. militarism” and his $70,000 speaker’s fee, retired General Colin Powell told an enthusiastic crowd of several thousand that “it was soldiers who got us the First Amendment in the first place.” Acknowledging that his appearance at ALA was “a source of some irritation at all points of our public and political spectrum,” Powell also dismissed the on-air exhortations by radio-talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger that he boycott to protest libraries’ open-access policies (AL, June/July, p. 9–10), remarking, “Let there be no doubt that you care about the safety of our children as much as any American.” As for detractors who criticized his credentials for being an ALA keynote speaker, Powell noted that he had run “one of the largest library systems in the country” as the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and that his wife, sister-in-law, and their Aunt Vivian are all librarians.
Although he had come to ask “librarians to be partners with me” in his volunteer-based “America’s Promise: The Alliance for Youth” project (AL, June/July 1997, p. 26), Powell devoted most of his speech to describing what he did after receiving 2,000 anti-ALA letters within a week of Schlessinger’s broadcast. Powell said he read the letters as well as congressional testimony about pending filter-mandate legislation, and then talked to people on all sides of the issue, including Senate bill sponsor John McCain (R-Ariz.), “my friends at the Library of Congress,” and his own son Michael, who as a Federal Communications Commission member would be among the regulators of any law linking e-rate eligibility to the deployment of blocking software. He concluded that “the First Amendment doesn’t protect only banal speech but outrageous speech. That’s what the Founding Fathers intended.”
Nonetheless, Powell said, it “may not be inappropriate to have constraints” on Internet access for children, predicting that a federal filter mandate “won’t destroy the First Amendment rights of children” since pending bills don’t “tell communities how to program filters.”
Hefner, Strossen, Ennis
Discuss First Amendment
Upwards of 700 people showed up to hear a chat between Playboy Enterprises CEO Christie Hefner, ACLU President Nadine Strossen, and attorney Bruce Ennis, who argued the successful challenge to the Communications Decency Act before the Supreme Court in 1997. The program proved that there is no better formula for success than getting a group of smart people to to engage in conversation.
Seated in easy chairs, with Norman Robinson of WDSU-TV in New Orleans moderating, the trio shared storcies about the life experiences that convinced them the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment cannot be taken for granted.
Hefner said her devotion to First Amendment principles is rooted in her “fundamental faith in people’s ability to make the right choices if they have enough information.”
Motivated by early school experiences with the empowering ability of knowledge, Ennis observed that the Constitution “assumes that none of us really knows what ‘the truth’ is” and therefore “you cannot impose majority will on dissenters.”
Remembering how she was denied the information she wanted as a teenager, Strossen asserted that depriving students of their rights will cause even more of the social problems people fear. In the wake of Columbine, “censorship is not the solution,” she said.
Robinson asked the three to respond to the charge that much of the content of major media is “pandering to the baser instincts for commercial gain.”
There’s truth in the charge, said Ennis, but a society has to decide who decides, individuals or a government entity. “The line between entertainment and education is far too elusive to be defined in courts of law,” Strossen added.
The speakers agreed that the Internet poses new challenges to the First Amendment. As Ennis put it, “the government doesn’t have a clue how to regulate an international medium.” Hefner asserted that technology is going to force better law and public policy, and Strossen maintained that there are civil and cyber libertarians all over the world.
The program left ample time for questions from the audience, which were gathered throughout the discussion then vetted by Robinson, whose witty and provocative approach helped crystallize the issues.
Hefner was asked how she reconciles the rights of women with exploitation of women represented by her father, Hugh Hefner, and the Playboy empire he built. “I disagree with the characterization of Playboy as contrary to opportunities for women to advance themselves,” she said, decrying the view that sexual freedom and images of sexuality are a negative force. Strossen chimed in, “You cannot have women’s rights without robust freedom of speech.”
CyberAngels Compare
Safe Surfing Notes
The provocatively titled program “Kids Have Rights/Parents Have Responsibilities/Librarians Have Ulcers!” drew an overflow crowd, as well as a C-Span TV crew. Cosponsored by the Intellectual Freedom Round Table and the ALA Council and division intellectual freedom committees, the program offered a spectrum of approaches to striking a workable balance between parental concerns and kids’ educational needs, with local control the maxim of every panelist.
Declaring that kids consider chatting with strangers to be “the whole fun of the Internet,” Parry Aftab, executive director of the online safety group CyberAngels, reminded ALAers, “You can teach people how to deal with dangerous drivers without exposing them to dangerous drivers.” Aftab urged librarians to help create “an informed parent pool” who will partner with them in teaching children that “stranger danger applies online.”
The U.S. coordinator of UNESCO’s Innocence in Danger initiative to foster safe Internet experiences for children, Aftab also emphasized the need for librarians and concerned parents to exchange ideas instead of “separating into camps.” Still, she emphasized, there are limits to what overscheduled parents can do, a view with which the audience apparently agreed. When she asked, “How many people think parents are going to go to the library with their children and supervise what they do on the computer?” the room remained silent.
Dismissing across-the-board filtering since “I don’t even know a Supreme Court justice who can sit there and only censor illegal materials,” Aftab instead favored SmartCard technology that could encode a child’s library card so that a youngster wouldn’t be able to surf unfiltered, or at all, without parental permission.
A reactor panel of three librarians described a range of local solutions their libraries employ. “Problems arise when people think they are anonymous,” Pam Klipisch of the Hayner Public Library in Alton, Illinois, said, explaining that her library’s small-town setting precludes the need for filters. That approach didn’t work for Glendora (Calif.) Public Library, according to Jill Patterson, who countered that her library installed blocking software for minors because “the problems we have are with patrons we know very well—now much better than we ever wanted to.” The Tampa-Hillsborough County (Fla.) Public Library also filters now at the behest of county commissioners, explained Susan Oliver, who worked with Patterson on the industry-critical Internet Filter Assessment Project in 1997.
Admitting that librarians sometimes have “an idealized notion of what parent’s skills should be,” Intellectual Freedom Committee Chair Steve Herb nonetheless urged the profession to bear in mind that “children are citizens of this country too” when they craft policies. Asserting that nothing “protects children better than emergent literacy,” he proclaimed—in a not-too-veiled allusion to Dr. Laura—that anyone that discourages people from supporting libraries “because of a stance ALA has taken on filters is no friend of children.”
Later in the week Herb also addressed an Association of College and Research Libraries program on the perils of open Internet access in academic settings. Among the pitfalls: authentication and privacy issues (“anonymity is disappearing rapidly,” Herb noted); access policies (Herb urged librarians to ensure limits on terminal use are based on management of time rather than content); reliability of information (we must be sure that “we haven’t lost our ability to evaluate materials just because they’re not print”); and the temptation to charge fees for added new technologies.
He urged librarians to develop partnerships to let teaching faculty know that “the issue of access to online material has as much to do with academic freedom as any type of material.”
Librarians Go Hear Alice Director
Defend the Site
“Some of you are probably wondering if I’m Alice. I’m not, but you can call me Al,” quipped Jordan Friedman, director of Columbia University’s controversial Go Ask Alice health education Web site, at the Intellectual Freedom Committee’s Issues Briefing Session. Asserting that “there is no such thing as bad publicity,” Friedman revealed that shortly after radio personality Dr. Laura Schlessinger began attacking ALA on April 15 for linking to Alice, “Henry Holt and Company called to say, ‘Why isn’t anyone talking about the book?’” (The “Go Ask Alice” Book of Answers: A Guide to Good Physical, Sexual, and Emotional Health, 1998). He also said that visits to the site have skyrocketed from an average of 1.3 million per month to 1.4 million a week.
Noting that the question-and-answer teen-health service has received “positive feedback from teachers, parents, young people, and even clergy,” Friedman characterized as an “aberration” the hundreds of negative letters Dr. Laura fans wrote to Columbia University officials. “Our best response [to the criticism] is, we’re continuing to do exactly what we’ve been doing for the last six years,” he explained, namely “to answer questions that are written in from all over the world because our mission is to provide information that will help our readers make healthy choices.”
Dramatizing just what that entails, teen conference-goers Jamie Griffin and Jacob Brogan read from recent queries to Alice. The topics ranged from teen pregnancy to diagnosing alcoholism, leaving prostitution, and banishing unwanted thoughts of murder. Ideally, teens should be able to “raise these kinds of issues” with their parents, teachers, or health-care providers, Friedman said. “Unfortunately we don’t live in an ideal world, so for the time being young people go ask Alice” because the service is anonymous, factual, and nonjudgmental.
Observing that some 50 studies have documented that young people who receive “explicit sex education” tend to delay their first sexual experience, Friedman recommended that librarians educate their trustees and governing authorities regularly about such findings, especially during the respite between materials challenges. “When a trustee gets a letter saying, ‘You’re a godless institution and you’ll rot in hell,’ he can’t help but wonder, ‘Is this true?’”
Front-Liners Share Tips
on Defending Access
Filter-mandate legislation, which has been sprouting around the country in recent years “like a weed,” will continue to crop up for the forseeable future, cautioned David Horowitz of the Media Coalition at “Continuing Efforts to Legislate the Internet: Updates on State Legislation.” Cosponsored by the Intellectual Freedom Committee and the Committee on Legislation, the program offered an eye-opening overview of pro-filtering efforts at the state level.
Although nine states passed laws requiring libraries to establish youth policies for acceptable Internet use, the fact that only one filtering mandate passed so far this year “is a testament to the people [on the panel],” Horowitz said. But because “the fear over what’s available on the Internet crosses all barriers,” he predicted that fall legislative sessions will see more efforts to restrict violent content or the posting of bomb-making information, in addition to perennial efforts to limit access to sexually explicit materials.
Legislators may fail to grasp “why we object to restricting content on the Internet” since the libraries they frequented as youngsters limited them to books in the children’s room, speculated Tucson-Pima (Ariz.) Public Library Director Agnes Griffen. Her state association was unable to stop passage of a law mandating filters on public-school computers, and arguments about filters’ ineffectiveness “cut no mustard” with lawmakers, she said.
Noting that the language in the Arizona law was “virtually the same” as South Dakota’s new acceptable-use-policy statute for schools and libraries, Griffen concluded that such initiatives probably stem from “a coordinated campaign out of groups like Focus on the Family.”
“Point out local policies are flexible and easily changed,” Rockbridge (Va.) Regional Library Director Linda Krantz recommended. “Ask your state legislator how easy it would be to change state law.” Although Virginia librarians anticipate filtering legislation will be reintroduced, Krantz said the state library association is encouraged by the rapport it established with lawmakers and the Virginia State Library Commission in educating them about the effectiveness of existing acceptable-use policies there.
“Get help, get organized, get more help,” urged Arlington Heights (Ill.) Public Library Director Kathleen Balcom, crediting the Illinois Library Association’s ongoing coalition-building efforts and preemptive Public Policy Committee for killing an eleventh-hour filtering-mandate bill this spring.
Trustees Caught in the Crossfire
Of course, it isn’t just librarians who find themselves on the intellectual-freedom hot seat, as attendees of the American Library Trustee Association town meeting soon discovered. Representatives from the Metropolitan Library System in Oklahoma City and the Medina County (Ohio) District Library told of their continuing struggles with—and late-night phone calls from—local pro-censorship groups over demands to curb Internet pornography and establish adults-only book sections.
Straightforwardly, former trustee Sharon Saulmon told conferees that “the local Family Friendly Libraries group” supported the mayor’s election in exchange for ousting her from the Oklahoma City library board for steadfastly opposing their assaults on the library’s open-access policies. “You can put up with it easily when you remember what you’re defending—the First Amendment,” Medina County District Library trustee Ian Haberman said, noting that most ALA members “are mothers and grandmothers” and far from antifamily, as some social conservatives contend.
Former MCDL Director Bob Smith and MLS Executive Director Lee Brawner described receiving hundreds of similarly phrased letters that condemned age-neutral access. They agreed that a library’s first defense is the ongoing education of legislators, trustees, and staff.
Such a campaign “could happen to you tomorrow,” Smith warned. Brawner estimated that some 60% of what his library received came from “bogus” addresses, theorizing that the missives must have been generated by “letter-writing sections” of groups based in churches and elsewhere.
Also speaking was Jennifer Weil Arns, a PhD student at the University of North Carolina library school, who summarized her findings from an ongoing survey of how trustees cope under intense community pressure. Among her early observations: Board appointments and decisions “may become increasingly political.”
E-Rate Concerns Dominate
Legislative Update
The e-rate—in particular, legislation that would require schools and libraries that receive the federal subsidies to install Internet filters—dominated the Committee on Legislation’s Legislation and Policy Update.
Despite the filtering bill and other attacks on the e-rate, K. G. Ouye, board chair of the Schools and Libraries Division, which administers the program, marveled at the idea that the government has made a $4-billion commitment to wire schools and libraries without using tax dollars. “Let’s think of what has been accomplished and not lose that,” she urged.
“We are definitely in the big leagues now,” observed Ouye—not just because of the huge sums involved, but because libraries are now a political target. The bipartisan nature of both those who support and oppose us demonstrates that both parties are trying to claim responsibility for technology, she noted.
Following the shootings at Columbine High School (AL, June/July, p. 26–28), congressional action was split between those who wanted to control guns and those who wanted to control information, observed Attorney Leslie Harris, consultant to ALA’s Washington Office, noting that the filtering mandate has been attached to the juvenile-justice bill passed in the wake of the event. Harris stressed that the battle over the mandate is far from over, pointing out that every major school organization is opposing the legislation.
Kate Moore, chief executive officer of the SLD, announced that over one-third of the first-year funds in the e-rate program have been authorized for disbursement, and that the Federal Communications Commission has approved funding authority to cover 100% of the priority-one services requested in year two. The agency plans to approach the FCC with proposals to streamline the application process for year three, notably an “evergreen” application form that would eliminate the need to reapply every year.
Several of the participants in the Legislative Update (which was taped by C-Span for later broadcast) noted the imminent retirement of Washington Office Director Carol Henderson. Praising Henderson’s style and effectiveness, Ouye lauded her ability to “communicate a sense of urgency without panic.”
Trustees Treated to Tips
on IF and Filters
Trustees, librarians, and intellectual-freedom advocates met to share ways in which library boards can justify Internet policies to the public, the press, and local politicians. “X-Rated in the Library?” sponsored by the American Library Trustee Association, featured a panel that stressed the importance of the board and the library speaking with one voice on intellectual-freedom issues.
Baltimore County (Md.) Public Library trustee Patricia Fisher said that “all prospective board members are asked what their policy is on First Amendment issues.” In turn, trustees try to attend “retirement parties, summer reading club, and other activities so the library staff gets to know us better.”
Though its board policy is one of access to all, BCPL Director James Fish explained that the main library maintains one Internet station with filtering software that can be enabled or disabled. “It’s reassuring to some parents that this is a viable option,” he said, adding that the feature is usually off since it interferes with such legitimate searches as “Superbowl XXX.”
ALA Library Advocacy Now! Subcommittee Chair Patricia Schuman read off a practical set of 12 rules that trustees can follow when faced with hard questions from the media. “The goal is communication, understanding, and support for the library’s position,” she said.
During a question period, one trustee in the audience complained, “You’ve given me nothing on what’s intellectual about pornography. Do filters work?” ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom Director Judith Krug replied that the simple answer is “no” and predicted that software filters will become obsolete in the next 24 months. “Filtering will be accomplished through search engines,” she said, adding that frustration levels go higher as filtering increases: “Sometimes it takes eight overrides to get to the front page of a local newspaper.”
The Book Made Me Do It
Much of the discussion at a standing-room-only panel presentation by the Intellectual Freedom Committee on “The Book (Movie) Made Me Do It: Is There a Causal Link between Reading and Viewing and Copycat Behavior?” centered on the “hit man manual” case of Rice v. Paladin Enterprises.
According to panelist and University of Virginia Law Professor Rodney A. Smolla, in 1993 a contract killer murdered three people in Rockville, Maryland, after reading the book Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contracts published by Paladin Enterprises. A federal appeals court ruled in 1997 that Paladin was also liable for the murders in civil actions, making this the first case where a book has been legally blamed for an act of violence.
Paladin appealed, encouraged by amicus briefs by the Freedom to Read Foundation (AL, Mar. 1998, p. 83) and the Association of American Publishers among others, but agreed to settle the suit in May in the wake of reaction to the Littleton shootings.
Smolla, who represented the family of the deceased, said that the case may be an extreme exception to First Amendment protections: “If it really is a murder manual, and the publisher intended it as such, then the First Amendment should not protect the publisher.” He said that libel law is analogous, since the intent to lie or damage someone’s reputation must be present. “Paladin actually admitted in court that it intended criminals to use the Hit Man book to commit crimes.”
Smolla suggested a distinction between this case and copycat crimes inspired by violent films like Natural Born Killers, where “someone misuses an intellectual product by taking the information and emulating the behavior, when the author did not intend such a reaction.”
When asked by an audience member whether a library might be found liable for loaning such a book, panelist and University of California/San Diego Political Science Professor Peter Irons said it was unlikely, though the law was murky. “In obscenity cases, the distributor (not the creator) has been sued. However, librarians are rarely sued for libel, since intent would be difficult to prove.” He added, “There’s also a cybermodel, whereby Congress has immunized Internet service providers for content. You can sue the creator, but not AOL.”
Smolla said the most incriminating part of the Hit Man case was that the book was first submitted to Paladin as a novel, but the publisher asked the author (a woman) to revise it as a murder manual instead.
Copyright Viewed as a Barrier to the Disabled
“Even with the best intentions, copyright law is a barrier to access to information by disabled people,” said ALA President Ann Symons as she opened the President’s Program of the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies, where disability advocates and librarians addressed the dilemma.
Disagreeing that copyright is a barrier, U.S. Register of Copyright Marybeth Peters maintained that “what we need is to find appropriate exemptions” to permit wider access. Citing the difficulty of amending international conventions, she advised listeners to address their activities toward developing model legislation and urging individual nations to adopt it.
However, James Sanders of the World Blind Union disagreed, stating that “the only way we’re going to address this is through a worldwide collective action.” Noting that only 5% of the world’s literature is available in alternative formats, he said that legal exemptions allowing translations can eliminate the cost and delays of obtaining permission “that is always granted anyway.”
Yerker Andersson, president of the World Federation of the Deaf, said that if copyright laws were modified to allow translation of written and spoken material into sign language, deaf people would gain not just greater access to information but greater integration into society.
Observing that past legislation has focused on the rights of copyright owners, Hiroshi Kawamura of the Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities said that future efforts should define their responsibilities. He called for local library associations to get involved, because “except for libraries, which institutions stand for access to information for people with disabilities?”
A contingent of worldwide library leaders responded to the panel’s remarks. Ross Shimmon, recently named secretary general of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, pledged IFLA’s resources to develop a model law that is countenanced by the Berne Convention and the World Intellectual Property Organization, and suggested that librarians forge alliances with other concerned parties. Danish Library Association President Mogens Damm, Canadian Library Association President Loraine McQueen, Library Association of China-Taipei President Margaret Fung, and Australian Library and Information Association President Craig Anderson also voiced their views.
The ABCs of Partnering for—
and with—Children
Although the conference focus on preserving intellectual freedom for all ages kept the library needs of young people at the forefront of many programs, youth services specialists devoted the bulk of their continuing-education offerings to showcasing replicable initiatives that fuel young people’s interest in the printed word by meeting them at their developmental level.
Appropriately enough, a mother-daughter team presented several children’s services efforts whose successes hinge on youth volunteers at “Shorter Librarians, Read Aloud Partners, and Information Incubators.” The program was sponsored by Reforma, the national association to promote library and information services to Latinos and the Spanish-speaking.
Denver Public Library Senior Librarian Beckie Brazell emphasized the multiple benefits libraries reap by deploying young-adult volunteers in the children’s area. “Little kids eat it up” when they are teamed up with “big-guy volunteers” as reading tutors and library guides. Equally important, such programs are “a great way to recruit children’s librarians,” she asserted, adding that she chose librarianship, in part, because of her library volunteer experiences when she was a middle-schooler.
Following enthusiastically in her mother’s footsteps, teenager Rachel Brazell explained that her work as a DPL “resource ranger” entails providing docent service to children who gravitate to “people more like them.” Rachel and her teen colleagues help orient youngsters to the kid-friendly space, as well as assisting with craft and science projects and conducting storytelling activities.
The key to using teen helpers in any setting, the Brazells noted in a top-15 list of tips, is “balancing responsibility and leadership with freedom,” offering comprehensive training and copious thank-yous, and “feeding them.”
At “Young Children and the Arts: Making Creative Connections,” a panel of performing-arts advocates encouraged librarians to coax emergent literacy in pre-schoolers by partnering with local artists. Featured at the Association for Library Service to Children’s President’s Program was Miriam Flaherty, education director of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, who asserted that librarians’ mission with young children is to ensure that they don’t “disconnect with literature.”
Flaherty, who cochaired a national task force on the role of the arts in the lives of young children, offered some do’s and don’ts on nurturing kids’ literacy through their creative juices. Of paramount importance is tailoring children’s arts experiences to “where they are developmentally” instead of expecting a three-year-old to remain attentive throughout a 90-minute children’s-theater performance. Characterizing librarians as “at the center” of the arts experience since visual and performed works “revolve around books, language, and literacy,” Flaherty urged youth specialists to ask local artists to help kids “get the story off the page” by designing multisensory presentations. Offering a demonstration, she led attendees in a finger-waggling interpretation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.
Offering a personal testimonial of how art informs literacy was Ballad of Dinosaur Bob author William Joyce, who credited his artistic career to a Louisiana children’s librarian who introduced him to Sendak’s work because she “knew a wild thing when she saw one.” Noting the decimation of arts programs in schools nationwide, he insisted society shouldn’t be leaving “up to luck” whether children learn “how to fill the void between reality and imagination.”
“We really do represent connections,” District of Columbia Public Library Children’s Coordinator Maria Salvadore said, telling of the insight she saw an inmate get from a prison-outreach program that used children’s literature to “model” family issues. The man told everyone in his usually intimidating fashion that “all parents should be forced to read [Kevin Henkes’s] Owen because it reminds you of what it feels like to lose something you love.”
Also speaking was Carol Hampton Rasco, who directs the Department of Education’s America Reads Challenge.
Gay Activism and the Lessons of History
Barbara Gittings, one of the early movers and shakers of ALA’s gay task force, moderated a panel called “Daring to Save Our History: Gay and Lesbian Archives.” Reflecting on over 40 years of activism, Gittings remarked, “The ALA task force was the most fun I’ve ever had. I consider ALA my main home in the movement.”
Gittings observed that great progress has been made in libraries, that young people searching for validation and the understanding that their lives and feelings have value can now acquire the knowledge they need from materials in most public libraries—“a major accomplishment.”
Jim Van Buskirk, director of the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center at San Francisco Public Library, talked about the library’s efforts to save the “crumbling paperbacks” and other endangered fragments of gay history. Much has been lost because preserving such material has not been viewed as a priority by public libraries, including San Francisco, he said, but “cooperation is now the name of the game.” Van Buskirk touted the open access that public libraries practice and emphasized the importance of collecting the papers of important contributors to the gay-rights movement.
Lucinda Zoe presented an overview of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn. Founded in 1974 and staffed by volunteers, the archives raised $500,000 in 1992 and bought a building. She emphasized that the archives focuses on the lives of ordinary women and is successful “not because one or two women gave thousands of dollars but because thousands of women gave a dollar or two.”
Also on the panel were James Carmichael of the University of North Carolina/Greensboro Department of Library and Information Studies, who talked about the dangers of “revisionist history” and what he called “mothball outings”; and Robert Ridinger, information resources manager at Northern Illinois University, who talked about Chicago’s unique Leather Archives and Museum and how it documents the history of fetishism in the gay community.
Some 100 people attended the program, which marked a turning point for the group’s ALA history: Almost 30 years after its founding, the task force became the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table of ALA at the New Orleans conference.
ALA’s International Body
Marks a Milestone
Global librarianship past and future was commemorated at a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the International Relations Round Table (founded in 1949 as the Round Table on Library Service Abroad).
Although promoting library activity throughout the world was among the goals proposed in ALA’s charter, it wasn’t until after World War II that the Association’s international activity became widespread, noted Louise Robbins of the University of Wisconsin library school. Robbins recounted ALA’s involvement in a controversy in 1953, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s subcommittee questioned titles and authors selected for overseas libraries maintained by the International Information Administration, a new government agency.
Representatives from ALA testified before the subcommittee, and the Association’s Freedom to Read Statement resulted from the controversy. Although Robbins noted that caution in book selection still pervaded the IIA even after it became the U.S. Information Agency, ALA’s stand against McCarthy gave American librarians “a strong reputation as defenders of an essential democratic freedom, the freedom to read.”
Robert Wedgeworth, university librarian at the University of Illinois/Urbana–Champaign, noted that various surveys have shown that although ALA members consider international involvement to be important, they fail to rank it among the Association’s most fundamental activities.
Wedgeworth observed that while American librarianship is distinguished by a long-standing tradition of university-based education for the profession, the tradition in the United Kingdom has been one of extramural continuing education. He called for greater harmonization of library education worldwide “so there is a common core of understanding that we can share throughout the world.”
Nancy John of the University of Illinois/Chicago library focused on the future of international librarianship. She cited five areas of change that bode well for the future: greater access to information; international standards, laws, and regulations; convergence (“the difference between libraries is shrinking” and cooperation is spanning national borders); technology; and personal contacts.
Despite the increasing—and distressing—amount of information that is becoming the property of the private sector, John feels that when another 50 years have passed, “only the information in the hands of librarians will have survived.”
Protecting Libraries from Privatization
What are some of the warning signs of imminent outsourcing? Some 50 people attended “Resisting Outsourcing and Privatization,” a program cosponsored by the Reference and User Services Association and the Social Responsibilities Round Table, to find out.
Aided by input from audience members, Kerry Korpi, director of research and collective bargaining for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, listed several: management consultants are hired; a study commission or “legislative initiative” that requires increased cost-effectiveness is announced; complaints about the service and attitude of public employees are on the rise; a general restructuring proposal is made at the highest level; and positions are not refilled when employees leave.
Korpi warned that the arguments for outsourcing a library are not always demonstrably true: that it’s cheaper and more efficient, employees can be hired and fired more quickly, the private sector can always do it better than public sector. “Reality is different,” she said. “For example, there is a hidden high cost in low wages in turnover and quality of work; it may cheaper for one pocket, but not for another.”
Similar issues were addressed earlier at a joint program of the Federal Librarians and Armed Forces Librarians round tables. Indiana University library school Professor Emeritus Herbert S. White said that military librarians should not be outsourced any more than U.S. fighter pilots. “However, Congress has the idea that to save money there should be gain without pain. It’s no pain to cut the library,” he explained. “Therefore, we will see in the next millennium the Library of Congress and the White House libraries up for outsourcing.”
Authentication, Authorization:
The Upcoming Struggle
The growing concern over how to safeguard both digital resources and users prompted the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services to offer a program examining the issues of authentication and authorization.
“This is one of those places where technology and policy come together in some interesting and complex ways,” observed Clifford Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information. Lynch’s sweeping overview provided definitions of authentication (“who you are”) and authorization (“what you are allowed to do”), described the two fundamental approaches (credentials-based, such as user i.d.’s and cryptographic certificates, or proxy-based, where the institution makes machines available only to legitimate users), and raised such policy issues as privacy, patron accountability, and gathering of statistics.
Nina Davis-Millis, information technology librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spelled out some of the real-world problems faced by librarians who want to provide access to users at low cost with an easy interface. Because our environment is so open, she said, we often can’t comply with the security measures in vendors’ contracts. Urging librarians to keep the pressure on both systems people and vendors to comply with our needs, she warned that “The way the digital library develops today will shape what our services are, what our policies are, and who we are as professionals and individuals.”
Donald J. Waters, director of the Digital Library Federation, focused on the authentication of digital content rather than that of the user. Although we are rapidly reaching the limits of current models of assuring authenticity, Waters said new technologies such as digital watermarks (detectable using special techniques) are turning out to be highly vulnerable. The challenge, he concluded, is for librarians to work with technologists to determine what features of authentication are most needed, and to craft a social organization and mechanisms to bring them about.
|
New Orleans 1999 |
Same Day
Washington, D.C. 1998 |
| Regular Paid |
|
|
| Advance |
10,627 |
10,494 |
| Paid On-Site |
1,288 |
1,305 |
| Total |
11,915 |
11,799 |
| Exhibit-Only Passes |
|
|
| Advance |
682 |
978 |
| On-Site |
1,777 |
3,211 |
| Total |
2,459 |
4,189 |
| Other |
|
|
| Exhibitors |
6,063 |
6,632 |
| Exhibitors Comp. Passes |
1,097 |
1,438 |
| Guests & Press |
823 |
599 |
| Staff |
241 |
227 |
| Total |
8,224 |
8,896 |
| Grand Total |
22,598 |
24,884 |
|
Protestors objecting to the presence of Colin Powell included Michael Malinconico and Mark Rosenzweig, who confronted a New Orleans police officer as he asked them to move outside.
Christie Hefner talks about First Amendment issues such as censorship and government regulation.
