Crowds, Critics, and Camaraderie: ALA Attracts 21,000 to Atlanta
ALA Annual Conference in Atlanta,
June 13–19, 2002
Table of Contents
This year’s ALA Annual Conference was supposed to have seen a smooth transition into the Allied Professional Association, a new arm of ALA designed to offer postgraduate professional certification, to advocate for pay equity, and to address other issues related to librarians’ professional status. But instead, procedural squabbling supplanted governance action and stunted the APA’s debut.
The APA’s growing pains, however, had little impact on the overall conference, held June 13–19 in Atlanta and distinguished by the strongest lineup of speakers in recent memory. Most celebrities who address librarians simply append a brief tribute to the profession (usually containing a fond recollection of their childhood librarian) to their standard packaged speech; instead, the three major speakers made libraries and the challenges they face an intrinsic part of their presentations.
At the Opening General Session, art critic Robert Hughes delivered a scathing denunciation of the “patriotic correctness” unleashed in the United States by the terrorist attacks of September 11 and a call to librarians to “guard your liberties.”
“To confine the contents of a library in any way is to commit a kind of vandalism,” Hughes declared. (For the full text of his remarks, see American Libraries, Aug. 2002, p. 48–51).
The Opening General Session also saw the awarding of honorary memberships—the highest honor bestowed by ALA—to E. J. Josey, librarian, educator, and cofounder of ALA’s Black Caucus; and Seymour Lubetzky, cataloging theorist and father of AACR2 (a videotape was shown of the 104-year-old Lubetzky accepting the award at UCLA last February). Other highlights were the screening of excerpts from Loss and Recovery, an American Libraries–produced oral-history video of librarian witnesses to the September 11 terrorist attacks; and the display of an original copy of the Declaration of Independence printed in 1776.
The Opening General Session, as well as ALA President John W. Berry’s President’s Program and the American Association of School Librarians President’s Program, will be video-streamed on ALA’s Web site, a conference first, thanks to $25,000 from Berry’s presidential budget.
Activist and author Michael Moore thanked librarians for rescuing his latest book, Stupid White Men (HarperCollins), which the publisher had slated for cancellation in the face of the patriotic zeal set off by September 11 before an onslaught of e-mails from members of the profession convinced them to release it. The title then went on to top the bestseller lists. In gratitude, Moore announced a number of initiatives he was launching in support of library issues. Newly inaugurated ALA President Maurice Freedman later characterized Moore’s talk as “a revival meeting.”
Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich closed the conference by talking about her research for her recent book Nickel and Dimed, in which she took a number of entry-level jobs to determine whether it was possible to survive on poverty-level wages. Ehrenreich tied her findings to the inadequate salaries paid to many professionals, including librarians. “We cannot let them use our dedication as an implicit excuse for low pay,” she said.
Moore and Ehrenreich appeared in support of Freedman’s Campaign for America’s Librarians presidential initiative and the work underway by his Special Presidential Task Force on Better Salaries and Pay Equity.
Although there is not yet a Chicken Soup for the Librarian’s Soul among the 56 titles in the popular book series founded by Jack Canfield, the popularity of Canfield’s presentation by that name—the first of the new Auditorium Speaker Series—suggested it might be worth consideration. Canfield thanked librarians for “guiding people to the books that will change their lives,” and, with stories from the book series, encouraged audience members to set goals, read an hour a day, and to live to their highest potential.
The more than 2,000 programs and meetings that make up the conference were tracked by general themes: library administration and management, children and youth, collection management, digital libraries, issues and updates, services and programs, and staff recruitment, development, and management. The programs drew 21,130 attendees, including 250 international attendees from 50 countries.
Conference Services Director Deidre Ross said revenues will be down 8% from the 23,000 projected attendance, “but we’re not going to lose money.” Ross said Atlanta never expects to draw as well as San Francisco, where 26,593 ALAers met last summer.
ALA Council and Executive Board both grappled with the Association’s 501(c)(6) Allied Professional Association, whose bylaws were established in January to advance the salaries and benefits of the librarians and workers who staff the nation’s libraries. “They give libraries their vitality and value and should damned well receive pay commensurate with their education, experience, and skills,” said Freedman at his inauguration in Atlanta.
Council passed several resolutions urging unrestricted access to government information in connection with presidential records, the Federal Depository Library Program, and the Office of Management and Budget. The body also approved a long-awaited interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights related to privacy and a resolution deploring the destruction of Palestinian libraries and archives.
In two hotly debated actions, Council also voted to make two major changes in the way ALA members participate in the governance of the Association. One was to lower the quorum required for Membership Meetings from 1% of the total membership to one-half of 1%. The other was to shorten the term of treasurer from four to three years. Both actions will eventually appear on the annual election ballot for approval.
The ALA Executive Board grappled with the APA as well, but got bogged down in fiduciary responsibility, concluding that a business plan would be the next logical step.
Although the temperatures in Georgia never reached the scorching levels some expected, attendees found other things to steam about, including the remote location of many hotels and the rather slim dining and entertainment pickings of downtown Atlanta.
“I knew I was an adult when I stopped wanting clothes for Christmas and started wanting books,” said Emily Saliers, who along with her partner Amy Ray makes up Indigo Girls, the Grammy-nominated singing duo that sold out the annual Scholarship Bash. Emily’s mother, Jane Saliers, a librarian at the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, influenced the duet to donate their talents to the ALA conference. “How many librarians out there?” Saliers asked. The crowd roared, the noise swelled, the room rocked, and proceeds flowed into scholarships for the librarians of the future.
A “good ol’ girl” is one who knows that “big hair and a big heart do not mean a small mind,” author Lee Smith instructed the crowd at the extremely popular “Songs and Stories from Good Ol’ Girls” musical performance, also part of the new Auditorium Speaker Series. Smith, author Jill McCorkle, and musicians Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman delighted the audience with funny, touching stories and songs about the trials and tribulations of true good ol’ girls.
Most exhibitors reported good to heavy traffic, and long lines formed for many autographing sessions at publishers’ booths. Although lavish vendor receptions seem to have gone the way of all cash, at least one exception was the Fretwell Downing soiree at the top of the Westin, complete with splendid food, generous libations, and a spectacular view of Atlanta from a revolving lounge.
Sales at the conveniently located ALA store, according to ALA Graphics Director Kathryn Leide, were equal to last year’s conference in San Francisco and constituted the highest-ever per-attendee dollars spent.
The charity silent auction raised nearly $19,000, with items supplied largely by exhibitors. All net proceeds will benefit the ALA’s scholarships, including the Chris Hoy Scholarship Fund.
Freedman Rallies the Troops for Salaries
Maurice J. Freedman, director of the Westchester Library System in Ardsley, New York, took office as the new president of ALA at a Tuesday evening inaugural banquet, where incoming division presidents and Executive Board members were also in the spotlight. The ceremony ended with a speech after outgoing President John W. Berry took a fond look at his year and passed the presidency on to Freedman.
Explaining his decision to become a librarian, Freedman said that after three uneven years as a graduate student in philosophy, he recognized three things about his life: “I loved to read. I loved to be with people. And, I certainly didn’t want to be a graduate student in philosophy any more.
“Thirty-eight years later, I’m surer than ever that I made the right decision,” he said. “Librarianship has given me a good life. I’ve met interesting people, made wonderful friends, and traveled more than this poor kid from Newark ever imagined possible.”
He talked about plans for his presidential initiatives. “I ran for president of ALA—as a petition candidate who probably would never have been nominated officially—with a promise that as president I would try to do something about the pay of people who worked in libraries. Tonight we kick off the Campaign for America’s Librarians, an intensive effort that will advocate better salaries and pay equity for all library workers in all types of libraries—school, university, and special as well as public.
“We know that everyone loves libraries,” said Freedman, “and we have often said that libraries can’t live on love alone. Librarians are worthy of love, too, as well as respect, and just and fair compensation as well. We also know from survey after survey that professions whose members are predominantly men consistently pay more. And so long as the pay equity issue—or should I say, inequity—continues to prevail, our advocacy must continue.
“I am here tonight to tell you that once and for all, we must take a stand. Personally and collectively, we must say, ‘No more!’” Freedman admonished. The mission of his Special Presidential Task Force on Better Salaries and Pay Equity, he explained, is “to empower library staff to better promote their worth by providing the tools, the training, and encouragement to help us work individually and collectively to improve their pay.
“We are talking about fairness now!” Freedman asserted. “We can no longer afford to give complicit approval to the implicit statement: Your lack of money is a valid reason to discriminate against me. We have to stop routinely donating our work to our employers by accepting truncated paychecks. We must also, here and now, dispel the myth prevalent in the world and perpetuated in many of our lives that we chose librarianship instead of choosing to be fairly compensated. My friends, we chose librarianship and we want equitable compensation!
“I love being in a profession that I don’t value just for the size of its paycheck,” he said, “but that does not mean that libraries should be forced to choose between paying seasoned and knowledgeable professionals the salaries they deserve and adding to their collections, hours, and online capacity to meet ever-growing public demand.
“As your president, I pledge to speak out at every opportunity,” Freedman promised, “but ultimately, pay equity must be pursued at the institution or community level. That means that we, all of us here tonight and the many who aren’t, must personally pursue this issue in our state chapters, in our libraries, our towns, our schools, our corporations, and on our campuses.”
Freedman closed by saying, “Librarians should and must be paid 21st-century salaries if Americans are to enjoy 21st-century library and information services. It won’t be easy, but I am confident that by working together and using our collective power we will succeed!”
Moore: A Librarian Saved My Book
Michael Moore’s latest book, Stupid White Men, has been high on the New York Times bestseller list ever since it came out in February, but its publication came perilously close to being cancelled altogether. As the author/activist explained at “A Morning with Michael Moore,” the work’s success “would not be possible without a particular librarian who saved this book.”
Although 50,000 copies of the book—which characterizes President Bush as the “Thief-in-Chief”—had already been printed but not yet distributed, following the September 11 terrorist attacks publisher HarperCollins asked Moore to rewrite up to 50% of its contents in light of Bush’s lofty approval ratings. When Moore refused, his editor told him that the entire print run would be pulped.
The day after Moore got the news, he related the situation to an audience that included Ann Sparanese of the Englewood (N.J.) Public Library, who spread the word on several online discussion groups. Two days later, Moore said, the publisher told him, “We’re getting hate mail from librarians.” Moore replied, “That’s one terrorist group you don’t want to mess with.” (The “Shhh” sound is “just the steam coming out of their ears,” he explained.) Two days later, HarperCollins caved and released the book in its original, uncensored form.
Moore congratulated the audience on ALA’s recent victory in its lawsuit challenging the Children’s Internet Protection Act, saying he’d received letters from kids who couldn’t read his Web site at the library because it had been blocked. “You should never be able to read the words ‘blocked’ or ‘censored’ and ‘library’ in the same sentence,” he declared.
Addressing the mission of the Task Force on Better Salaries and Pay Equity—which, along with Epixtech, sponsored his appearance—Moore observed, “If you were men, you’d be making more, and this has got to stop.” He pledged to organize a group of his fellow authors to advocate for library issues, particularly pay equity. Moore also announced that he would endow a scholarship for minority library school students, purchase 1,000 copies of his videos and make them available to libraries through his Web site, and add a page to his site encouraging people to support their local libraries.
Moore said he was taking these steps “so that you receive the pay and the benefits and the respect that you deserve for everything you have done for this country,” adding that “you really are on the front lines of the people who are going to preserve and save this democracy.”
Ehrenreich: Librarians Nickel and Dimed
As a freelance writer, Barbara Ehrenreich depends on libraries-public and academic-as places to do research. But her latest book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (Metropolitan Books), was “the one book I have written in my life that didn’t require library research,” the author told the audience at the early-morning closing session June 18. Instead, Ehrenreich used some old-fashioned investigative journalism to learn whether it’s possible to make a living on entry-level wages. The author left her home and tried to support herself in three cities working jobs that averaged $7 an hour, including waitress, housekeeper, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart sales “associate.”
It was altogether “a humbling and sometimes humiliating experience,” Ehrenreich said, adding that she learned “no job is really unskilled; every job takes intelligence, concentration, and stamina.” She also concluded that, even working two jobs and with her advantages—having health insurance and no child-care costs, and being white and English-speaking—she was still unable to make her rent.
The problem is not the American work ethic, she said; that ideal no longer holds true if you can work to the point of exhaustion and not make enough to live on. “The problem is employers don’t have a very strong pay ethic.”
Yet it is not only nonprofessional workers who suffer from underpayment, Ehren-reich said, listing three examples: Adjunct professors, whose lack of benefits and job security is the “biggest scandal in academia today”; freelance writers, for whom “the pay is often pathetic and the benefits nonexistent”; and, of course, librarians, whose average starting salary of $34,000 “doesn’t sound too bad until you put it in perspective.” The Economic Policy Institute calculated in 2000 that a bare-bones budget for a family of three is $30,000. And of course, Ehrenreich noted, many librarians earn much less than $34,000. “I could have done all the research for Nickel and Dimed in a library after all, by getting a job there,” she said.
Ehrenreich said her hope is that “whatever you do, you won’t forget your low-paid coworkers”—library clerks, pages, and students—in the struggle for higher pay. “They need you and you need them.”
“We can’t let our love of our work and dedication be used as an excuse for low pay,” Ehrenreich said. “We love our work but we love our families too.” When we’re asked to work for less than we can reasonably live on, we are, “in effect, being asked to be philanthropists,” to donate our time and energy. We have to stand up for what we’re worth and “end the system of involuntary philanthropy that underlies so much of the American economy.”
King Addresses Awards Breakfast
Approximately 700 people heard Coretta Scott King, the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., address the 32nd annual awards breakfast named in her honor. The program, sponsored by the Coretta Scott King Award Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table, was also the occasion to honor six 2002 African-American authors and illustrators for their contributions to literature for children and young adults.
After an introduction by her sister-in-law, Christine King Farris, King acknowledged the late Glyndon Flynt Greer, the former director of children’s services at New York Public Library, who approached her about naming the award after her. “I resisted Mrs. Greer’s request for quite some time, partly because I didn’t feel worthy of such recognition,” King explained. “She never gave up, and I finally said yes out of desperation.”
“I have watched the growth and development of this award over the years and commend the task force for an outstanding job in developing and promoting this award,” King said. “As I travel around the country, I have found that this award is very well known and very well respected.”
In a special message to the award winners who received their awards during the breakfast, King said, “I commend all of you for your commitment to provide strong direction in children’s literature. With your dedication and the love of children, you have demonstrated, in your craft, the enriched literature available to our precious young people, and you have inspired your fellow authors and illustrators to strive for even higher levels of excellence. Children’s literature is so important, not only as a means of encouraging young people to become readers, but also for providing guidance in their journey to maturity and helping them to develop positive values.”
A special video presentation honoring the late author Virginia Hamilton was shown to the crowd. Hamilton chaired the Coretta Scott King National Public Awareness Campaign from 1999 until her death from breast cancer February 19. Her semi-autobiographical final novel, Time Pieces: The Book of Times (Scholastic), completed shortly before her death, will be released in the fall.
Members Take No Action
Both scheduled Membership Meetings lacked the required 589 members—1% of the Association’s personal membership as of August 31, 2001—meaning no official business was taken up.
“We have been working for five years to try to get the Membership Meeting in the same hall as the Opening General Session, thinking that it might work, and I’m very disappointed to say that apparently it hasn’t,” President John W. Berry said before declaring Membership I informational only.
Nancy Kranich, chair of the ALA/Allied Professional Association (APA) transition team, and Leslie Burger, a member of the team,discussed the formation of the APA body and the proposed implementation plan. She said the ALA/APA would address two issues—certification of professionals in specializations beyond the initial professional degree and salaries—through the Campaign for America’s Librarians.
“I’m a little concerned about the self-dealing aspects of an elected governing body, where people may run not understanding the nature of the difference of the responsibilities they are assuming, exchanging money back and forth from one pocket to the other,” said Gordon Conable. “Enron, to get around the pesky Internal Revenue Service code, set up some offshore accounts where they lent money to themselves, and they got nailed big time.”
Discussion of a proposed resolution deploring the destruction of Palestinian libraries led the topices at Membership II. (Due to the lack of a quorum, the resolution could not be acted on, but only discussed.)
The Palestine resolution, introduced by Thomas Twiss of the University of Pittsburgh, was challenged by several members who claimed it was inappropriate and included unverified information. Twiss maintained that information included in the resolution was based on reports by Western news sources. (ALA Council passed its own resolution on the issue.)
“We won. We won big. We won everything we hoped to win.” That was how Judith Krug, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, began her report on the recent federal court ruling in ALA’s challenge to the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). She said the decision ruling the act unconstitutional was well researched and comprehensive and should serve libraries well in the Supreme Court appeal.
Krug said libraries with filters installed on all computers may have a “serious liability” and should seek legal counsel. An advisory document is posted on the OIF Web site.
Money Talks at Information Session
ALA policy dictates that Council and the Executive Board hold an information session for membership separate from Council’s three formal meetings. Ostensibly to offer an open look at the activities of the Association’s leadership, the meetings are generally attended, as was the Atlanta session, by councilors and board members and a handful of rank-and-file members.
Presided over by President John W. Berry, the session focused on Association finances and included reports from Patricia Smith, chair of the Budget Analysis and Review Committee; Rick Schwieterman, senior endowment trustee; and Nancy Kranich, chair of the ALA/Allied Professional Association transition team.
Smith said budget deferrals early in FY 2002 “may have saved ALA from an extraordinarily difficult year.” Savings in salaries, travel, and taxes will balance less-than-projected revenue from the Atlanta conference, she said. Smith also applauded the recent donation of $1.95 million from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, which will provide “$250,000 annually in cold hard cash to support the Campaign for America’s Libraries,” but she warned that the Association cannot continue to drain its reserves to pay for the CIPA court case and whatever challenges may be “next on the horizon.”
Schwieterman said $700,000 was withdrawn from the endowment in 2000 to pay for the CIPA lawsuit, the Spectrum Initiative, and the Campaign for America’s Libraries. On a positive note, he added, “over the last 10 years there has been approximately a 15% rate of return” on endowment investments.
Contrary to Kranich’s wishes, the group decided to discuss the APA transition as a whole, rather than break into small groups to chat at round tables in the hall as she suggested. Since it was mostly councilors who spoke, the discussion was a prelude to the concerns and confusion expressed at the formal Council sessions that followed.
Councilor Bernard Margolis, a vocal opponent of the APA, said, “I fear that we are indeed growing a monster here. I was very supportive of the idea of the APA when its task was focused on certification. . . . Now that we have moved to advocacy being its primary purpose and are beginning the process of moving that away from being a core function of ALA, I think we are moving down a road with great dangers.”
Other speakers, though less adamantly opposed to the APA, expressed concern that the transition plan lacked strategic vision, that revenue streams were not clearly defined, and staffing directives were vague. Freedom to Read Foundation President Gordon Conable said that the people who ran for and were elected to ALA Council did not run for election to the APA Council, yet they will have fiduciary responsibility for a loan from one to the other. Kranich corrected Conable, saying that the board had voted to make itself the governing body of the APA, and that fiduciary responsibility rested with the Executive Board.
Unappeased, Conable called for “a written legal opinion that specifically addresses the issue of a conflict of interest when two organizations made up of the same people lend each other money.”
Librarians Can Lead Literacy War
“If our field wants leadership, it must accept the risk, and reach out and grab it,” urged Robert Wedgeworth. “Librarians are prepared for this leadership role; all we have to do is act on it.”
Wedgeworth, president of Laubach Literacy International and former ALA executive director, served as keynote speaker in the third of ALA President John W. Berry’s series of conversations about librarians as gatekeepers. He also led a panel discussion with Robert S. Martin, director of the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services; Toni Garvey, president of ALA’s Public Library Association; and Loriene Roy, professor, University of Texas/Austin School of Library and Information Science.
With the exception of First Amendment issues, Wedgeworth said, librarians have always addressed social issues from the sidelines. “We are involved in education, but are reluctant to call ourselves educators,” he pointed out. “We provide services to ethnic and disadvantaged communities, but are reluctant to accept that our institutions are part of the social services framework serving these communities.”
Wedgeworth maintained that librarianship has historically developed in close alignment with communication technology. “The structure of human knowledge, how humans know what they know and how knowledge differs in its nature, structure, and form across different fields of inquiry, must be at the core of librarianship,” he said. “We must understand the distinct characteristics and norms of different cultures that support libraries and information services if we are to develop the kinds of institutions that serve the needs of those cultures.
“Once we understand how literacy—more important, the lack of it—undermines basically every major social problem our generation faces, it becomes evident that promoting literacy is one of the most important things we can do to bring about positive change,” Wedgeworth told the crowd. “Although literacy poses significant obstacles to address social-equity issues, the social program intended to address these problems in developing or advancing countries seldom includes a literacy component.”
For the most part, Wedgeworth charged, the library community has not been in the forefront of literacy services. He maintained that embracing literacy would have a “liberating effect” on the profession and “facilitate the transition, already taking place, from bibliographic instruction to a broader range of information literacy skills and will stimulate greater harmony among the profession.” Wedgeworth added that the combination of facilities, collections, geographic distributions, and professional commitment make libraries key to improving the culture of literacy.
“It has been said that the most dangerous weapon in the world is the alphabet,” Wedgeworth noted. “Yet, there are millions across the globe who go out each day unarmed. Make no mistake-education is political. Someone always stands to lose something if the oppressed people of the world learn to become advocates for themselves in search of a better life.”
Exploring Options for
Controversial Exhibits
Librarians contemplating hosting a controversial exhibition were given a formula for thought in dealing with community concerns at “Ethical Dilemmas and Academic Libraries: An Analytic Model Applied to the ‘Without Sanctuary’ Exhibit,” the inaugural program for the newly formed Association of College and Research Libraries’ Committee on Ethics.
John Banja from the Center for Ethics at Emory University in Atlanta discussed how, through a series of community forums and other methods, the decision was made to host the first southern public viewing of the “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America” exhibit at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. Copresented by Emory and the King National Historic Site, the exhibit, which runs through December, includes approximately 80 graphic photographs, postcards, and related materials that document the story of American lynchings from the 1880s to the 1960s. Most of the images are taken from a collection owned by Atlanta natives James Allen and John Littlefield.
Banja said the university adapted the principlist model, normally used in the medical community, in making determinations about where and how the exhibit would be presented to the community. The model includes four basic moral sensibilities—autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice. Banja discussed the significance of these principles as they relate to ALA’s Library Bill of Rights. “The principles are very helpful tools in clarifying the ethical sensibilities of our society,” Banja explained. “They are, however, not enough in that their application does not necessarily resolve ethical dilemmas because they are not self-explanatory or self-interpreting, are occasionally vague, and are in need of prioritization when they conflict. Moral agents are needed to determine the principles’ contextual meaning.”
Banja called ALA’s language—which says “a publicly supported library may limit use of its exhibit space to strictly ‘library-related’ activities provided that the limitation is clearly circumscribed and its viewpoint neutral”—“good, but naïve.” “There are no value-neutral positions on library/exhibit materials that have social content,” he explained. “Not taking a valuative position can itself be morally irresponsible.”
Deciding to show or not show an exhibit, according to Banja, requires a point of view on its worth or significance. How the exhibit is designed and placed is also a major factor in community acceptance. “The exhibitor must decide what the exhibit means, otherwise you would have no explanation for why you decided to show it,” he explained. “Therein lies the library’s accountability.”
Censorship in the Name of Children
In 1996, Marjorie Heins, director of the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Free Expression Policy Project, was working on the legal challenge to the Communications Decency Act. As she told an ALA audience, she discovered that in this and similar censorship efforts, “the justification was oh-so-predictably the need to protect children from harm.”
This led Heins to write Not in Front of the Children: Indecency, Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth, which traces the history of the “harm-to-minors” argument, from Plato’s defense of censorship to recent battles over sex education and media violence.
Heins noted that efforts to protect minors produce two kinds of fallout: censorship laws enacted by government and private censorship (sometimes known as “industry self-regulation”). She observed that the Supreme Court has responded to the concept of protecting children in two ways: by developing the harmful-to-minors concept (“Known to some in the legal trade as obscenity lite,” she quipped) and allowing the Federal Communications Commission free rein in applying indecency standards to radio and television.
Heins stressed that in writing the book she didn’t intend to minimize the issue of harm to children, but rather wanted to show how the idea of what’s inappropriate evolves with time. The answer, she concluded, isn’t more censorship laws, but education.
The program was sponsored by the Intellectual Freedom Round Table, which presented Heins with its 2002 Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award for the best published work in the area of intellectual freedom.
Copyright Has Clout in Trio of Programs
Among the myriad topics addressed by this year’s Annual Conference programs, the threats to copyright in the electronic age seemed to stand out, with three major sessions devoted to the conflicts between information users and owners.
A session presented by ALA’s Washington Office opened with David Bollier, author of Silent Theft: The Plunder of Our Common Wealth (Routledge), which deals with the commons in American life that are being rapidly privatized and commercialized. “Libraries, like so many other commons, are under siege these days,” he declared.
Bollier enumerated the key issues in the current battle over copyright: the 1998 Copyright Extension Act, which extended copyright by 20 years; the sweeping 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); the recently introduced Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act; the state-level Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act; and recent database legislation and trademark law. He said libraries—“one of the few if not the key institutions defending public access and sharing of information for all citizens”—are in a good position to fight these abuses.
Warning that “the cloak of copyright is expanding to the point that everyday activities are declared as illicit,” Bollier said the concept of the commons is a useful mechanism for defending our rights. “We need to have this language to rebut the Pat Schroeders of the world”—referring to the president of the Association of American Publishers (AAP)—“who say that the sharing of information is piracy.”
Warning that “fair use, while not quite dead, is dying,” Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Copyrights and Copywrongs (New York University Press), called the DMCA a failure, adding that it has not only caused more harm than intended but has been ineffective to boot.
In developing a strategy to bring these issues to the public, we need to avoid couching them in terms of property, said Vaidhyanathan; instead, we should warn users of copyrighted material that acts they’ve taken for granted are now threatened. “Copyright need not end if we can rehabilitate it and rehumanize it,” he concluded.
“This is one of the great issues of our time,” declared University of Wisconsin/Madison Library Director Kenneth Frazier. Although many believe that the big commercial concerns have the resources to bend Congress and the White House to their will, he cautioned against fatalism and pessimism. Frazier said librarians can fight by informing ourselves on the issue and talking and teaching about it, and by looking carefully at the licenses we sign and communicating our concerns to administrators and state attorneys general. “We can make real trouble in this,” he suggested. “Let’s make this a publicity problem for publishers.”
Avast, ye swabbies
“There is underway in this country a campaign to destroy copyright by undermining the public domain,” charged L. Ray Patterson at “Pirates on the Commons,” a panel sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Copyright Committee. The University of Georgia law professor said the “copyrightists”—the copyright holders and their accomplices, such as the AAP—are waging a stealth campaign where they visit bookstores and libraries to threaten legal action.
The copyrightists have succeeded, said Patterson, because they’ve convinced judges that their material is property in the traditional sense. However, he cautioned, the constitutional policies of copyright cannot work if copyright is viewed as ownership. Patterson concluded by encouraging ALA “to engage in an aggressive campaign of education of the American people” on threats to fair use.
Following a reprise of Bollier’s earlier presentation, Mary Case, director of the Association of Research Libraries’ Office of Scholarly Communication, discussed efforts by her organization and others to promote open access by creating a scholars’ commons. “Copyright can be used to lock up content and it can be used to free it,” she advised, recommending that scientists leverage copyright ownership of their writings to increase their control.
Our position on copyright is the right position, Carrie Russell told the audience. “Our interest in copyright is not self-serving,” said Russell, the copyright specialist for ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy. “Our responsibility is to represent the public.”
Pointing out that copyright aggregators are very successful at controlling the message, Russell said, “If people believe they don’t have rights, they will behave like they don’t have rights, and so will everybody else.”
Russell reprimanded librarians for not engaging in the debate over copyright. “Librarians, who are the most responsible people for the rights of the public, aren’t doing enough,” she chided.
Lessig is more
One of the most vocal and influential figures in the current copyright controversy headlined another Washington Office program. Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, author of The Future of Ideas (Random), pointed out that the technology of the Internet massively increases the copyright owner’s power to regulate, since every use involves making a copy. “Never in the history of our culture have fewer people exercised more power over the development of our culture than now,” he said.
Lessig, who’s heading a legal challenge to Congress’s recent extension of copyright terms, noted that with previous technological advances, such as cable TV and the VCR, the law was rewritten to fit the technology; but now the federal courts are being asked “to make the new technologies fit themselves to the last copyright’s law.”
You are now targets,” Lessig told the audience. “You who make culture available as the neutral platform of your libraries.” The debate is not about theft, he asserted. “The debate is about the core values of freedom that have defined our tradition since we liberated ourselves from England.”
LAMA Encourages Creativity, Longevity
Two Library Administration and Management Association/Buildings and Equipment Section programs offered examples of successful, creative ways to approach building projects, including facilities that incorporate elements of sustainable design.
“The Politics of Space: Strange Bedfellows Make New Libraries” highlighted several innovative building projects in which libraries partnered with other types of libraries or with community groups in the planning and construction of joint-use facilities.
Jane Light, director of the San Jose (Calif.) Public Library system, described the collaboration of the city library with San Jose State University on the new Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library—scheduled to open in the fall of 2003—as “a marriage, not a merger.” The project between a major city and a major university arose from a need for more space in both libraries, and ultimately will provide the community with a center for lifelong learning, give patrons of all types access to better collections, and offer greater collective staff knowledge in a flexible, high-tech building, Light said.
The partners will share costs in proportion to use of the building, and the facility will be comanaged by the city library director and the university dean. Merged units and collections will likewise be comanaged; yet the library and university will maintain separate budgets and staffs. In spite of some early worries—making already-scarce resources more so by opening them to a wider community, for example—careful planning has made the project into a “poster child,” Light said, setting the stage for more joint projects with the city.
The Children’s Learning Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, came about not only because both the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte and the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County needed more space, but because the two groups discovered they shared a desire: to bring stories to life for children, said Melanie Huggins, the library’s youth services director. The children’s center, scheduled for completion in 2004, will be more than just a library/theater combination; it will be an entirely new organization, taking up an entire city block and housing an auditorium, performance spaces, and interactive exhibits.
In “Going Green without Going Broke,” Multnomah County (Ore.) Library Director Ginnie Cooper said that incorporating environmentally responsible products and features—such as low-toxicity carpeting and increased bicycle parking—can conserve energy, protect human health, and increase a building’s value. But doing so, she advised, “does cost more money and time.”
The system’s new Hillsdale branch will be the county’s first facility to seek the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification—a rating system that awards points to projects meeting environmentally responsible criteria. Some greater initial costs will mean other benefits, however: The library expects to save 20% in energy costs, and the project has generated substantial community interest. “We believe it’s well worth it,” Cooper said.
Architect Ralph DiNola acknowledged that there are more design costs in the beginning of a sustainable design project, “but it will pay off,” he promised, noting that the earlier you start including green elements in the planning process, the greater results you will get for your money.
DiNola also pointed out that there are often incentives—state and sometimes federal—that can help cover some of the costs. And don’t forget to seek out sponsors or partners who could help, he added.
Alan Locke, principal of a consulting engineering firm, presented an overview of conservation strategies, urging those planning new facilities to “keep it simple” when it comes to technology, to make the systems easy to maintain, and to know the difference between value engineering and simple cost-cutting. Libraries should be built to last 50 to 100 years, so make them adaptable and flexible, he said.
PR in a Crisis and as a Brand
A pair of programs sponsored by the ALA Public Awareness Committee examined library public relations as they apply to both extraordinary circumstances and ongoing efforts.
“Bad things can and do happen to good libraries,” affirmed Bryan Specht, director of Weber Shandwick Global Crisis Management, at a program titled “Crisis Communications after 9/11 @ your library.”
Specht identified a communications crisis as “a sudden or rapidly developing problem that threatens or damages an institution.” In the cases of issues such as funding cuts or protests over Internet policy, there are generally early warnings; however, he warned, a true crisis such as the September 11 terrorist attacks or a natural disaster “comes out of nowhere.”
In mobilizing a rapid response, Specht said providing facts openly and quickly to the public is key, as is accepting responsibility when you are at fault and showing you care. He identified three “Crisis Rules to Live By”: Be part of the solution (especially if you are part of the problem); be prepared; and honesty is still the best policy.
Strike up the brand
How do you build a brand? In a word: “focus.” That was the message delivered by Al and Laura Ries at “Strategies from the Experts on Branding @ your library.” The marketing gurus and father-daughter team have authored such books as 22 Immutable Laws of Branding (HarperCollins) and The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding (HarperBusiness).
“Narrowing the focus is a laser into the mind of a consumer,” explained Laura Ries. The pair cited Chevrolet, IBM, and Everready as examples of “burnt out brands” that lost their market leads by “trying to be all things to all people.” The leading companies succeed because they have a clear focus easily identified by the public: e.g., Target stands for “cheap chic”; FedEx means “overnight.”
Al Ries urged that libraries find a focus and stick with it—one that targets what is unique to them and pits them against their “hottest” competition—the Internet. He suggested that focus be the librarian. “The best thing about a library is the help you get finding what you want. And you can get it both ways-help on the Internet and all the rest.”
When asked what should be done about the stereotype of the librarian with a bun, Al Ries shot back, “Nothing. Forget the negatives.” Asked what focus might attract more students to the library, he suggested, “You can do it at home, but you’ll get more at the library.”
Library Support Staff Rally for Better Pay
“Library support staff are chronically underpaid, sometimes to the point that federal or state assistance in the form of food stamps, housing assistance, or heating fuel subsidies are required,” said Library of Congress cataloger Gene Kinnaly at “The Role of ALA in Supporting Library Workers’ Salaries.” The program was hosted by the Library Support Services Interest Round Table.
Kinnaly, coordinator of 2002–2003 ALA President Maurice Freedman’s Task Force on Better Salaries and Pay Equity Support Staff Working Group, was part of a panel that included Freedman and Donna Mandel of the Oakland (Calif.) Public Library.
According to Freedman, “Starting salaries for men with professional degrees in male-dominated professions earn an average $81,000, while their counterparts in female-dominated professions earn $36,000.
“We have to overcome the stereotypes of the librarian as the selfless, dedicated, devoted worker who is in the profession to do good and will accept any pittance of pay because he or she loves their work,” Freedman said. “We have been discriminated against in a variety of ways, the paycheck being one of the most fundamental of them.”
Kinnaly, who shared a number of stories from an online discussion list for support staff, said these workers suffer from outdated job descriptions and that job titles and positions lack consistency, making salary determinations difficult. He added that the nature of support staff positions has changed and clarifications are needed.
“There is a strong connection between salary and responsibility,” Kinnaly pointed out. “Support staff, who are graying at the same rate as librarians, do important work, but don’t feel valued. If there is one single issue that can unite all librarians and library workers, it is pay equity.” He added that with the formation of the Allied Professional Association, “the time is now for some kind of national certification for library support staff.”
He recommended that ALA modify its annual salary survey to include data for support staff and suggested the Association provide scholarships and financial assistance to support staff seeking higher education in the field.
Mandel, task force Union Working Group coordinator, provided examples of how unions have helped library workers at some libraries. She reported that between 17% and 21% of library workers are unionized. She said union librarians make 47% more money that nonunion librarians and union support staffers make 42% more.
“Unions are not the solution to every problem,” Mandel noted. “The bottom line is when library workers work together to improve their working situation, they have a much better chance of succeeding.”
Is Porn in Libraries Sexual Harassment?
Can the display of sexually explicit materials on Internet terminals by library patrons create a hostile work environment for library staff? Panelists at the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Intellectual Freedom Committee program, “Pornography in Libraries: Sexual Harassment?” addressed that question and other issues surrounding the case of seven Minneapolis Public Library employees who filed a sexual harassment suit with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against MPL in May 2000.
Betsy Williams, MPL’s humanities division manager, described the three years of “escalating tensions” at MPL that led to the filing, in which the complainants maintained that patrons’ frequent display of sexually explicit images on Internet workstations had created a hostile work environment.
L. Camille Hebert, law professor at Ohio State University/Columbus, said that while she didn’t believe sexual harassment occurs every time a patron accesses sexually explicit material on an Internet terminal, the MPL case “appears to be more than a few patrons looking at dirty pictures. . . . If this conduct was occurring in any other workplace, it would be sexual harassment,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s possible—or maybe even appropriate—to make sure no employee ever sees anything sexually explicit on a terminal,” she said. But she added that there are significant actions that can be taken to avoid the situation MPL found itself in, including installing privacy screens or recessed monitors, restricting printing, enforcing child obscenity laws, and ejecting patrons who violate rules of illegal conduct. The goal is “to find a balance between providing access and also creating a work environment where employees are not subject to hostile acts.”
Undoubtedly, the Internet has created issues that require policies that never existed before, acknowledged Robert Corn-Revere, a partner at the law firm Hogan and Hartson. And if the question was whether MPL made mistakes, he said, “I think the answer is yes.” But, he pointed out, “If Title VII [the statute forbidding employment discrimination] applies to what patrons view on library terminals, it means it applies not just for sexual harassment or gender harassment, but for all of the categories of Title VII,” and could be applied to material such as insensitive jokes, hate-speech sites, and sites about national origin or religion.
“It’s important that in the setting of the library, while we cope with the resources of the Internet through a variety of lesser restrictive means, that we not . . . limit what access patrons can have to information on the Internet. There are problems to be dealt with, but there are better ways” to do so, Corn-Revere said. “Once you open the door of Title VII for applying what patrons are viewing on computer screens, then all it takes is one or two bad cases for this to turn into a terrible area of the law.”
Staying Connected in a Digital Age
Although we live in a time of unbelievable electronic connectedness, we are simultaneously experiencing an increase in interpersonal disconnectivity, psychiatrist Edward Hallowell warned the audience at the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services’ President’s Program, “Cultivating the Human Moment in a Digital Age.” The challenge over the next decade will be to manage this paradox: to find ways to promote efficient communication while preserving the “human moments” that come from face-to-face contact and the subsequent social and psychological benefits they bring.
Although the feeling of disconnection is widespread, it is “vastly unacknowledged,” Hallowell said. The effects, however, are measurable, causing a loss of energy, a tendency to get sick more, a decrease in productivity, and less physical touch, eye contact, and spontaneous humor.
In our attempt to “get things done,” Hallowell said, “we are missing the point of life: To connect, share humanity, give warmth, be real. . . . Social isolation is bad for us in every measurable way,” he said. Yet “everyone tries to ratchet up productivity,” which often has the unintended effect of making us more and more disconnected.
Libraries, however, are “well-situated to be great places of connection,” Hallowell pointed out. In many communities, libraries are one of the central arenas in which people can connect or not. Making a conscious effort to send patrons the message “I’m glad you’re here” can make a significant impact, one we desperately need. It’s “potentially paradise,” Hallowell said. “Don’t trivialize it.”
Referring to e-mail as a “dehydrated telephone call” and text messaging as the “most debasing” form of communication, panelist Michael Gorman, dean of library services at California State University/Fresno, agreed that many modern technologies fall short as vehicles for connection, and pointed out that face-to-face reference service is essential today. He also suggested that some of the anxiety we suffer stems from information overload: Deluged with facts, we have “more information, less knowledge, and no context.” Information is not getting digested, but merely repeated.
In response to an audience member who expressed concern that the “human moment” might become the next buzzword librarians will have to go to seminars to learn about, Hallowell stressed that it is “not a process that can be soundbitten. . . . Connectedness lies at the heart of whatever is rewarding or sustaining,” and we must try consciously and deliberately to achieve it, he said.
IMLS Recruitment Plan Probed
Questions about diversity, partnerships, paraprofessional education, and accreditation eligibility, especially for school librarians, were posed by participants in the last in a series of informal hearings hosted by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) on the proposed $10-million “Recruiting and Educating Librarians for the 21st Century” grant program announced earlier this year by First Lady Laura Bush.
Under the proposed program, to be implemented in fiscal year 2003, grants ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 will be awarded to nonfederal U.S. public, school, academic, archive, and private nonprofit libraries. Special and research libraries, institutions of higher learning, library agencies, library consortia, and library associations that meet certain guidelines will also be eligible to apply. The program also includes grants for research related to library education and library staffing needs.
IMLS Director Robert S. Martin said the initiative is designed to address libraries’ human-resources shortages, to tackle the needs of underserved communities, and to attend to the geographical disparity of access to library and information science education—especially in the areas of children and youth services, school libraries, and cataloging and other technical services.
“While it recognizes the value of other segments of the profession, we must restrict this program to recruiting and educating individuals who will work in libraries,” Martin maintained. “We must support education at the doctoral level as well as the master’s level to ensure that there will be faculty to teach in library and information science programs.”
Several priorities have been outlined for the program’s first year. They include increasing the number of enrollees in ALA-accredited graduate library programs; boosting the number of enrollees in doctoral programs—particularly programs that will prepare faculty to teach master’s students who will work in school, public, and academic libraries; encouraging parapro- fessionals to begin preprofessional education or training programs to prepare them for master’s-level education; and establishing baseline data and evaluation of current library-education programs.
Martin said the proposal now goes to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for review. It will be posted in the Federal Register, and an official comment period will allow librarians to again pose questions and express concerns. The full proposal is available on the IMLS Web site.
Reporting for American Libraries are Gordon Flagg, Pamela Goodes, Amy Jordan, Leonard Kniffel, and Linda Wallace. Photographs by Oscar and Associates or Curtis Compton (unless otherwise noted) courtesy of Cognotes, the conference news daily.
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The Indigo Girls strum to raise scholarship cash.
