Windy City Wrap-up

ALA Annual Conference in Chicago,
July 6–12, 2000

• Introduction
• Kozol Inspires at President’s Program
• Studs Terkel Maps the Route to a Moral Inner Life
• Reaching Out with Jean Coleman
• Programs Strum the Strings Attached to Free Speech
• MARC No Longer the Gospel
• ACRL: From Shtick to Substance
• New Ideas for a New Generation
• Are Libraries a Barrier to Free Trade?
• How to Assess Success in Outsourcing
• Mousing Our Way to a New Multiculturalism
• Opening the Reference Desk Anytime, Anywhere
• Searching for Ways to Help Kids Learn to Search
• New Digital Copyright Law Challenges Libraries
• Who Should Advise Kids about Internet—or Life?
• Registration totals

AL Online has already recapped some of the high points of ALA’s 119th Annual Conference, held July 6–12 in Chicago. That brief overview, however, omitted the real substance of the conference: the hundreds of programs designed to further librarians’ professional development.

In this summary, the AL editors bring you their accounts of a relative handful of the conference programs. The selection is designed to reflect the diverse subject matter offered in Chicago, from the libraryland standbys of intellectual freedom and technology to the relatively unexpected topic of the World Trade Organization. Reporting are George Eberhart, Gordon Flagg, Beverly Goldberg, Chris Kertesz, and Carol Kristl.

Kozol Inspires at President’s Program

Addressing ALA President Sarah Ann Long’s theme of “Libraries Build Community,” author and activist Jonathan Kozol delivered a passionate speech at the President’s Program, focusing on the subject that has consumed him since the 1960s: the social inequities that afflict the nation’s urban youth. Bringing his audience to tears with accounts of his recent work with children in the poorest section of the South Bronx, Kozol decried the “virtual abandonment by New York City of school libraries staffed by real librarians,” part of “an intellectual assault waged by the city’s politicians and financiers on the children of the poor.”

In addition to the time he spends with children at a church afterschool program that he wrote about in his latest book, Ordinary Resurrections (Crown, 2000), Kozol brings them donated books he gets from his publisher. “Anything I bring the kids will read,” he said. “They’re hungry for books.” But he asked why the children’s welfare should rely on handouts. Observing that “Philanthropy is terribly selective,” depending on whim and chance, Kozol declared that “Charity is not a substitute for justice.”

Kathleen de la Peña McCook of the University of South Florida School of Library and Information Science followed Kozol’s presentation with a perspective from the profession on “ways librarians can transform broken and violated communities” such as the South Bronx. “Like schools, hospitals, and places of faith, libraries have been built in the poorest of communities,” McCook said. “They open their doors to all.”

Noting that librarians have learned to utilize computers in amazing ways in the past decade, McCook warned that the recent emphasis on technology “pulls us away from the personal work that has made people use libraries.” She added that it seems that money can always be found for an additional computer “more easily than to add a children’s librarian and pay her an adequate salary.” She concluded by urging librarians to become involved in community-building efforts underway across the nation in an effort to end poverty.

Studs Terkel Maps the Route
to a Moral Inner Life

In a spellbinding series of vignettes about the people he has interviewed and the effect of literature on his worldview, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Studs Terkel offered attendees at the Opening General Session his insight into the dependence of human compassion on the presence of self-esteem.

After describing the influence of Huck Finn’s decision not to turn in runaway slave Jim on his own moral development, Terkel shared the “most revelatory interview I ever had,” which was with C. P. Ellis, former Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan in Durham, North Carolina. A poor white man “who had more troubles than Job could ever dream of,” Ellis joined the Klan because “the robe made him feel like somebody,” albeit “at the expense of somebody else.”

But a strange twist of fate led to two life-changing epiphanies for Ellis: The first comes when he discovers that he is “in the same boat” as African-American activist Ann Atwater after they are selected to co-chair a committee on integrating the Durham schools. Both their children are taunted because of their parents’ collaboration and Ellis “sees the local big shot who used to praise him crossing the street to avoid him.” Then Ellis “realizes his calling in life is to be a labor agitator” after getting hired as a custodian at Duke University.

In a complete turnaround, Ellis organizes the campus’s first integrated janitor’s union and helps African Americans get Martin Luther King Day recognized in Durham. “Now I feel like I’m somebody,” Terkel recalled Ellis saying about his accomplishments, leading Terkel to conclude that “Hope never dies.”

Reaching Out with Jean Coleman

“A quiet fighter who did a lot behind the scenes” and was “very caring of everyone who didn’t have the blessing of libraries and literacy”: This is how the late Jean E. Coleman, first director of ALA’s Office for Literacy and Outreach Services (1973–1986), was remembered by those who came to hear the first annual Library Outreach Lecture, sponsored by OLOS and named in her honor. The lecture series is a tribute to her work in enabling all citizens—particularly Native Americans and adult learners—to have access to quality library services.

Barbara J. Ford, assistant commissioner for central library services at the Chicago Public Library and 1997–98 ALA president, gave the lecture. Defining “outreach” as the process of extending library programs to nontraditional users, Ford said that this includes 21st-century literacy, one of ALA’s key action areas. “Being able to read is a survival skill in our information society, but people also need computer skills,” she affirmed. “Libraries must be places where children, parents, and grandparents can learn to live, work, and govern in a society that is being transformed by technology.”

Ford warned that with only 12% of all Internet users living in developing countries, the 21st century could well be a Dark Age for poor, undereducated, and unconnected people. “The commercial sphere may be the arbiter for who is connected,” she said. “Libraries can’t afford to let that happen.”

Finally, Ford reminded the audience that “outreach is the responsibility of the entire Association.” Noting that outreach librarians “feel on the periphery of ALA agendas,” Ford urged them to “challenge library schools, libraries, and professional associations to provide support, programs, and funding for outreach.”

Programs Strum the Strings
Attached to Free Speech

“Remember when we wished that libraries received more public attention, when we wanted prominence and recognition for making a difference?” Freedom to Read Foundation President Candace Morgan deadpanned at “Risky Business: Legal and Liability Issues Related to Internet Access,” sponsored by the Public Library Association and the Library Administration and Management Association. “Well, Internet access has given us much of what we wished for. We have national media coverage. We’re regularly on talk shows.”

Morgan and four other panelists advised the surprisingly sparse audience about minimizing their liability in case patrons or staff are unwillingly exposed to sexually explicit material online. Cautioning that pornography is constitutionally protected speech and that what is obscenity can only be determined in a courtroom, Morgan recommended writing (“with significant community participation”) and posting a policy that prohibits accessing illegal material and that “holds the user liable for such behavior, not the library” in case of a lawsuit about an offensive screen display. She also suggested decentralizing printers so that staff won’t inadvertently become “part of the transaction” by handing over a print job containing an obscene image.

Jenner and Block attorney Theresa Chmara said administrators could minimize their library’s risk with an anti-harassment policy to which employers adhere “with no deviations, even if the complaint is frivolous.” Chmara also emphasized that libraries must withhold Internet log files unless served with a search warrant and recommended extending patron-privacy policies to include history logs. Larry Worrall of First Media Insurance Specialists said that libraries should be careful to negotiate into their insurance policies coverage of injunctive damage and defense costs through final court judgment of a case.

Declaring that he’d lived through “everything that people here have talked about,” Loudoun County (Va.) Library Director Doug Henderson shared “controversy management” tips he’d learned while riding out a federal lawsuit his board ultimately lost over its draconian filtering policy. Henderson emphasized that he confined his role to “informing the board and insulating the staff,” adding that the key “is not to personalize the situation,” but to stand behind your role as a “government actor” in upholding the law.

Also speaking was Pat Scales of the South Carolina Governor’s School for Arts and Humanities in Greenville, who urged librarians to teach children their First Amendment responsibilities as well as rights.

Scales offered similar advice at “Why Does ALA Say Kids Should Have Unrestricted Access to Information, Images, and Ideas in Libraries?” sponsored by the Intellectual Freedom Committees of ALA’s three youth divisions. Milton Hershey (Pa.) High School Librarian Carrie Gardner agreed, reminding colleagues it was up to them to educate parents about the Internet since it will take 20 years for today’s young surfers to become the world’s first generation of cyber-savvy parents.

Arguing that the library profession “has achieved total consensus” on age-neutral access “because we protect everyone’s right to decide for their child,” Charles Harmon of Neal-Schuman Publishers conjectured that 100 years from now unfettered Internet access “will seem like a short and unremarkable debate.” Also professing an anti-filter preference was Sara Ryan of Multnomah County (Oreg.) Library, who revealed that she nonetheless respects her library’s recent decision to offer a filtering option on children’s machines. “Intellectual freedom is also freedom of choice,” Ryan said. “Some of our patrons very, very much want filtered access.”

Other panelists were C. James Schmidt of San Jose State University library school, who gave a historical overview of the events leading up to ALA’s addition of age-neutral access to the Library Bill of Rights in 1967, and Lisa Champell of Monroe County (Ind.) Public Library, where unfiltered children’s-area browsers default to a homegrown family-friendly menu.

Noting that her institution also offers an age-appropriate starting page, Heather McNeil-Nix of Deschutes Public Library in Bend, Oregon, asked during the question-and-answer session for advice regarding a disturbing incident. She said that “a caring parent who did all the right things” by accompanying her 7-year-old to the library had approached Nix “visibly shaken” after the mother and child had stumbled upon a terminal whose browser was pointed to an image of three people having anal sex. “That’s why we have a negative image,” Nix asserted, avowing that she nevertheless believes “idealistically and totally” in intellectual-freedom principles.

“In a horrible way,” Carrie Gardner replied, such dilemmas are opportunities: Librarians can encourage parent-child dialogue on how children should process information their parents see as “wrong or inappropriate.”

MARC No Longer the Gospel

Perhaps because it sounded too much like a reference question they might have to answer, only a handful of public-service librarians showed up for a Reference and User Services Association session called “Is MARC Dead?” But nearly all the other seats were filled with technical-services people who came to hear the latest diagnosis on whether the aging MARC format could limp along another few years.

Joe Matthews, vice president of the information-systems company EOS International, explained that MARC’s tragic flaw lies in its ties to obsolete cataloging practices. “It’s time for a change,” he pronounced. “AACR2 is too book-oriented, it perpetuates library jargon, and it’s not reflective of the online environment.” Overhaul AACR2, he advised, then revive the MARC format to reflect reality.

Martin Dillon, who had just retired July 1 as executive director of the OCLC Institute, countered that “MARC and AACR2 will be significant tools for scholarship as long as paper is significant for scholarship,” and cited industry trends that give “no indication that books are in decline.” Ask instead, he said, is a full-featured bibliographic system like MARC appropriate for describing online resources? Simplify MARC, he recommended, by making it work with OCLC’s Dublin Core.

Jerry D. Campbell, dean of university libraries at the University of Southern California, proclaimed that “MARC was stillborn from the outset,” and that nothing short of a technical-services revolution is needed to create an alternative. “The information dot-coms are taking the place of libraries as data aggregators,” he said, “and the reference function is passing over to search engines.” Throw out both MARC and AACR2, he urged, and get back in the business of serving users effectively.

Matthews agreed, saying that libraries are losing customers because they refuse to change. Dillon replied, “It’s not that we don’t care, but we lack visionaries. We need a younger version of Fred Kilgour.”

As it turned out, library visionary and OCLC founder Fred Kilgour, 86, was in the audience and could not repress making his own prediction: “In another 30 years, there won’t be cataloging systems as we know them. The ability of the computer to do what we can’t will override everything you’ve been discussing.”

ACRL: From Shtick to Substance

Posing as a Mel Brooks-like “2,000-year-old librarian,” Earlham College Librarian Emeritus Evan Farber led off the Association of College and Research Libraries’ President’s Program by recalling how annoying it was to go to a restaurant with Melvil Dewey: “Not only couldn’t he spell, but every time he ordered a potato, he’d write down ‘641.3.’ If it was mashed, he’d write ‘641.35.’ With gravy, ‘641.352.’ I told him, ‘Mel, why not let the Library of Congress do this?’”

ACRL’s theme was “Celebrating Our Successes, Confronting Our Challenges” as academic libraries enter the 21st century. Farber said that one of the profession’s less obvious successes was the changed perception of the role of college librarians in the teaching process: “From 1900 to 1960, the librarian’s role was to support education; from 1960 to 1990, it was to enhance education; and since 1990, librarians have become advocates for electronic education.”

Carla J. Stoffle, dean of libraries at the University of Arizona, thinks the core challenge for academic libraries will be acquiring the ability and determination to compete as education providers. “Librarians have not been major players in the networked environment or in the learning process,” she said. “To compete, we have to become partners with the faculty, not just afterthoughts.” Quoting University of Southern California librarian Jerry Campbell’s “10 Axioms of Librarianship,” which include “Imagine the future you want and make it real,” she ended with Stoffle’s Axiom: “The future is purchased by the present.”

Purdue University Library Dean Emily Mobley offered a bleak list of future trends that academic libraries will have to deal with, among them:

• the privatization of government information;
• intolerance for new or different ideas;
• the rise of contract law in place of copyright law;
• the commercialization of intellectual-property rights; and
• attacks on the value of information as a public good.

“Libraries will have to shift these trends before they hit us too hard,” she said. “We have to influence people outside our usual sphere of operation. That way, we won’t be blind-sided by the future.”

New Ideas for a New Generation

“Hell, no, we don’t need to reinvent the public library,” said Queens Borough (N.Y.) Public Library Director Gary S. Strong. “We need to change it, keep up with new technologies, and then let a new generation take over and show us how to do it again.”

Serving Generations X and Y was a major theme of a Public Library Association session on “Reinventing the Public Library.” Strong stressed the need for the public library as a physical place in an inner-city context, where librarians can make a difference in the lives of people who have limited resources.

But users living on the other side of the digital divide need to be stimulated in new ways, advised New Jersey Institute of Technology Library Director Richard Sweeney. “It’s a revolution, folks,” he said. “The needs of a new generation are not being met by our public libraries.” But there is a way out: “Think outside the box, until there is no box anymore.”

Sweeney rattled off dozens of ideas designed to exceed the minimalist library expectations of jaded Gen-Xers:

• computer-activated pickup lockers for book delivery;
• ILL requests via the Web;
• cell phones in the library;
• different OPAC interfaces for seniors and whiz kids;
• library branches in gyms, daycare centers, and malls;
• Saturday night Gen-X socials;
• video-game competitions; and
• Web scavenger hunts.

Inventing new services, new structures, and making use of new skills and knowledge is essential “to make this community passionate about libraries,” Sweeney enthused. “And when they are ready to vote, libraries will survive and thrive.”

David Carter, director of the Web-based Internet Public Library hosted by the University of Michigan School of Information, concurred: “You have to go where the users are. If you’re not letting patrons e-mail their reference questions, why aren’t you?”

Public libraries as places may no longer exist, according to Carter, who sees them primarily as a state of mind in the information economy. “Librarians are the coolest people on the planet,” he said. “This is your time in the sun. You should be leading the charge up the hill and bringing information literacy to the masses!”

Are Libraries a Barrier to Free Trade?

The panel at “The WTO and Libraries: Perspectives on Globalization” had their work cut out for them: convincing some 75 curious attendees that their livelihood and professional principles could fall victim to the multinational, for-profit juggernaut of the World Trade Organization. But by the end of the session, which was sponsored by the International Responsibilities Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table, no one in the room seemed to have any doubts to the contrary.

“Under WTO laws, libraries could disappear,” Fiona Hunt of Zayed University Library in Abu Dhabi declared. Moderator of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment List for Librarians (majordomo@interchange.ubc.ca), Hunt explained that under the WTO’s little-known General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) provision, the U.S. and other member nations are finalizing an agreement to open for commercial bid such public-sector functions as library service. GATS classifies tax-supported public services as “a nontariff barrier to trade,” Hunt explained. So, governments might well curtail funding for public libraries and other services to avoid abiding by a GATS treaty clause mandating that nations level the playing field for foreign firms entering a market by extending them the same tax subsidies enjoyed by domestic organizations. The scenario, she said, is “not so far-fetched” with the emergence of Internet-based reference firms such as Ask Jeeves and Webhelp (AL, May, p. 66–69).

Hunt also contended that libraries’ ongoing experimentation with budget enhancements through “fee-for-service schemes” could backfire by further “opening the door for competition”; as proof, she revealed that the Canadian government in 1999 sent its public libraries a questionnaire “asking where they might have export interests.” Officials would rather “drum up support for the GATS” than “focus on what most citizens are concerned with, which is the protection of social services,” she said.

“When you cram everything into the dialogue of trade and commerce, those other social values just naturally become secondary,” agreed Rick Weingarten of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy. Emphasizing that he was not officially representing Association policy, Weingarten cautioned that the U.S. content industry has been “forum-shopping” to weaken fair-use provisions in the international arena ever since ALA managed to get a strong fair-use statement inserted into the World International Property Organization treaty (AL, Feb. 1997, p. 34–36).

Emphasizing that ALA’s Washington Office is committed to “following the issues” into whatever venues they veer, Weingarten encouraged attendees to “think globally and act domestically” by voicing their opposition to privatizing public-library service. Hunt agreed. “The main issue is protecting sectors that members don’t want opened to liberalization,” she said, urging librarians to educate themselves on the issues and then “make some noise” by offering public programming to raise patrons’ consciousness.

Offering a case in point on noisemaking was Jonathan Betz-Zall, former children’s librarian at the Sno-Isle Library System in Marysville, Washington. Betz-Zall gave an eyewitness account of the WTO protests in Seattle last December), including how the downtown library’s Business and Science Department disseminated updates on where demonstrations were scheduled along with bibliographies on world trade from its vantage point at the WTO information table.

How to Assess Success in Outsourcing

As outsourcing has become a way of life in technical services over the past 10 years, the importance of assessment was emphasized in the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services program “Evaluating the Outsourcing of Technical Services: How Do You Know You’re There If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going?”

Organizational-development consultant Maureen Sullivan described the process of evaluation: You need to be clear about your purpose at the start and you need to create a vision of what you want to accomplish. One question to ask is “What data do we need to collect to determine whether we’re successful?” She said librarians too often rely on intuitive judgment rather than collecting real data to assess the success of projects.

Outsourcing was crucial to the 1997 startup of a new library in a new university, as described by Carolyn Gray, director of library services at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU). With no staff, the decision was made to outsource the opening-day collection of 120,000 volumes. Gray said she looked for a vendor “who would be willing to outsource with other vendors.” Dealing with so many groups led to a “complex situation in evaluating the process.” Three years later the library has a small staff that is developing standardization and increasing supplier expertise. “Outsourcing continues to yield positive results for FGCU,” said Gray.

Most libraries don’t have the luxury of a fresh start. Elaine Albright, director of cultural affairs and libraries at the University of Maine, described the one-year cataloging backlog that confronted her when she came to the university in 1983. Although it was cleaned up by 1987, staff cuts prompted by an economic downturn across New England forced her school to join with the University of Vermont in a contract with Yankee Book Peddlar. She noted the importance of knowing your goals at the outset, pointing out that “staff goals were different than the director’s goal.” Albright revealed her recipe for outsourcing success: “We knew what we wanted, we worked with a vendor we had confidence in, we regularly monitored our processes and their output, and we corrected any problems immediately.”

Mousing Our Way to
a New Multiculturalism

“We can’t afford to do occasional multiculturalism,” Canadian Library Association President Stan Skrzeszewski asserted at “Technology and Multicultural Library Service: A Vision for the Future.” Declaring the days of “add-on” outreach to underserved ethnicities over, he explained that technology was ushering in an “increasingly borderless” world where people communicate across cultures as a matter of course and expect to receive service in their preferred language.

Offering library service in such an environment, Skrzeszewski said, will entail multilingual automated systems, advocacy for “fee-free universal access to information” around the world, the training and promotion of librarians as “global and cosmopolitan information professionals,” and cooperation with other nonprofit institutions. “I still find it mind-boggling that interlibrary loan refers only to the library down the road,” Skrzeszewski said, calling for the establishment of a global library foundation to fund the vision he described.

The other three speakers on the panel sponsored by the Public Library Association outlined the steps their respective organizations had taken along the road to a global society. VTLS Sales Manager Katya Moos updated attendees on the Unicode standard, a multilingual interface that promises to allow users translated access to data in a multitude of languages and alphabets at library workstations. Queens Borough (N.Y.) Public Library Director Gary Strong recounted how his staff developed WorldLinq, a multilingual Internet catalog that links to some 1,000 international foreign-language sites in answer to search requests asked in Chinese, French, Korean, Spanish, and Russian.

Lin Ko of Richland County (S.C.) Public Library detailed the low-tech human psychology she utilizes to promote library services to newly arrived Chinese immigrants. Develop programs about “real-life problems,” she recommended, adding that she runs research workshops on topics ranging from house-hunting to medical problems, bilingual education, and financial planning. She also suggested teaching in the students’ native language, which “only helps” newcomers adapt to a new culture; non-English-speakers “find it easier to read than to make a verbal request,” Ko underscored. Above all, she urged colleagues not to “ignore” a population group because they constitute a small cluster in the community. “If there are only five families in town, it’s hard for them to know where to go for help,” Ko explained.

Opening the Reference Desk
Anytime, Anywhere

As more patrons are finding their research answers on the Internet, “reference anxiety” among librarians continues on the rise, as evidenced by a ballroom filled to the max to hear panelists talk about “Reference 24/7: High Touch or High Tech” at the Reference and User Services Association’s president’s program.

Although the “number of questions is slightly decreasing, the questions are getting harder,” according to Joe Janes, professor at the University of Washington School of Information and Library Studies. “The days of ready reference are ending,” he said.

All the panelists deplored the quality of Internet reference. “No single search engine covers more than 16% of the Internet,” said Diane Kresh, director for public service collections at the Library of Congress. Kresh reported on LC’s pilot program, Collaborative Digital Reference Service, an international, digital network of libraries and related institutions that uses library resources in addition to Internet resources. The program entered its second phase June 19, adding more partners and handling more questions.

Offering a view from the trenches was Sara K. Weissman, a reference librarian at Morris County (N.J.) Library, which has received recognition for its exemplary service from the Virtual Reference Desk Project. Reminding librarians that they have to be fluent and flexible in a fluent and flexible medium, she also advised them to try their own service “to see what it’s like to be on the receiving end.”

Roy Tennant of the California Digital Library Project offered his impressions of digital reference, noting “If it is successful, there will be no going back.”

During the question-and-answer session, one audience member asked the question that many librarians have probably asked themselves as patrons increasingly turn to online resources: Why didn’t we come up with Yahoo? “It’s an open scandal,” conceded Janes.

Searching for Ways to Help
Kids Learn to Search

A roomful of savvy librarians searched out a lively discussion of “How Children Search: How Savvy Librarians Respond,” presented by the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services’ Cataloging of Children’s Materials Committee.

Most 10-year-olds don’t understand Library of Congress headings, said Virginia Walter of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Science. Describing the Science Library Catalog she developed there, she found that kids have trouble broadening and narrowing a search, and they’re very literal. “Younger, more na‹ve users will do better with a browse mode,” she said, noting that for them “the computer is not a tool, but a toy.”

Another problem that confronts kids comes from the use of old headings. A child understands the term shyness but not bashfulness, or talkativeness instead of garrulity, said Mark Gauthier, editor of the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. “Indexers have to beware of archaic terms,” he said, rhetorically asking why such headings are tolerated for adults.

Kids don’t like to see a lot of text on the screen, said Sharon Morris, a former librarian at the Denver Public Library and now project manager for Carl Corporation’s Kid’s Catalog. She reminded the audience of how a typical bib record for something like Cat in the Hat looked 10 years ago: two pages of gray text. “I’m all for rich bibliographic records, but they can be intimidating for kids,” she said.

Gail Junion-Metz, president of Information Age Consultants, stressed the importance of age-appropriate computing, noting that K–3rd-grade children aren’t ready for keyword searching. She said that one of the best indexes on the Web is KidsClick. Noting that it was created by librarians who work with kids, Junion-Metz said KidsClick! allows you to search by reading level and contains graphics.

New Digital Copyright Law
Challenges Libraries

Concern for the challenges that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has imposed on higher education prompted a panel discussion by the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Copyright Committee.

Copyright specialist Carrie Russell of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy said the DMCA has created a “muddled and problematic” environment for libraries since it was signed into law two years ago. Calling the law a “dramatic shift in copyright policy” that tips the balance in favor of the copyright holders, Russell said “the origin of the copyright law was not based purely on economic interest. We should not get to the point where we put shareholder interest above the purpose of the copyright law—which is to advance learning.” Stating that it will take a few years for the courts to make sense of the new amendment, Russell advised librarians to let their principles of social responsibility guide them.

Peggy Hoon, scholarly communication librarian at North Carolina State University Libraries, provided an overall view of the DMCA, including a discussion of section 1201, which goes into effect in October. This section deals with the circumvention of copyright management systems and she urged the audience to consider what classes of works to petition for exemption.

The DMCA mandated the U.S. Copyright Office to conduct a six-month study on distance education and to make recommendations on how to provide equal exemptions for in-class and distance instruction, according to Elizabeth E. Kirk, electronic and distance education librarian at Johns Hopkins University. After extensive testimony the office recommended extensive changes and clarification of fair use in May 1999, but Kirk said no legislation has yet been passed.

Lorre Smith, librarian for digital library initiatives at the State University of New York/Albany, discussed variations of compliance in electronic reserves copyright policies. She noted that although many electronic reserves policies are subsets of university policies, a number of electronic reserves librarians are “actively asserting their fair-use rights within a very considered context.”

Who Should Advise Kids
about Internet—or Life?

Librarians are probably closer than anyone to young people who are struggling to make sense of the “enormous upheaval” of today’s technology and the emerging culture of the Internet, author and cyberjournalist Jon Katz told a session sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association.

“Kids have almost created a parallel world, and they have no one to talk to about it,” said Katz, whose latest book is Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho (Villard Books, 2000). “Who’s supposed to be guiding the young people—or the rest of us? So far no one has seriously considered the consequences of this revolution, much less stepped forward to take a leadership role. The media are doing a lousy job of informing us about this, and the politicians don’t want to talk about it.”

In fact, society often reacts fearfully to significant change such as the advent of rock ‘n’ roll or the Web, but the fear now seems more panicky than usual, Katz said. “When I was a kid and somebody got hold of a copy of Playboy, the city council did not go into executive session,” he said.

Consequently, librarians now find themselves having to grapple daily with issues that have broad implications for society: Who should have access to what is on the Internet? Where are young people supposed to get the direction we want them to have? In an age when almost anything can be downloaded, what is happening to the concept of intellectual property rights? (“We either have to redefine ‘copyright’ or do away with it,” Katz said.)

“The library is a place where kids can consider these issues in the presence of people who have their best interests at heart—and who are not their parents,” Katz told the audience. “There aren’t many places like that . . . but it puts a great responsibility on you.”

Annual Conference
Registration Totals

Registration revenue totaled $1,707,917, compared to $1,544,000 last year in New Orleans.

The ALA Store realized $165,000 in total sales.

Placement Center Statistics:
Job openings      1,004
Job seekers           481