ALA Council,
Midwinter 2001
Legislation, Litigation Decisions
Lead to Swift Agenda Wrap-up
Mounting a legal challenge to the Children’s Internet Protection Act was one of several legislative issues that kept ALA Council united and on track for three sessions January 15, 16, and 17 during the Association’s Midwinter Meeting in Washington, D.C. A glowing treasurer’s report, consent on a variety of legislative resolutions, and near-record Midwinter attendance of 13,989 helped bring the proceedings to an upbeat and swift conclusion. The governing body bogged down only once, during a protracted discussion of post-MLS certification.
Freedom to Read Foundation President Candace Morgan asserted that “the freedom to read is the most fundamental of all the values on which this country was founded. Internet policies are no different.” She explained that CIPA and its companion Neighborhood Internet Children’s Protection Act (CD#22) will result in the replacement of local policies with policies mandated by Congress.
Morgan said FTRF believes it is vital that the library profession assume a lead role in a legal challenge to CIPA and suggested a number of factors that should be considered: 1) making ALA’s approach to freedom of speech in libraries the central focus of the challenge, 2) ensuring that ALA’s best interests are served by all decisions made by the legal team, including public statements and the choice of plaintiffs, 3) making decisions that will be favorably viewed by ALA’s constituents and local public library governing bodies, and 4) making choices “that we can afford.”
Committee on Legislation chair Patricia Smith presented a resolution (CD#20.1) in “opposition to federally mandated filtering,” which states that ALA will work with Congress to encourage lawmakers to repeal the portions of CIPA and NCIPA “that usurp and undermine local control” but “will initiate litigation against these acts to ensure that the people of America have unfettered access to information.” The resolution passed unanimously and will be transmitted to President Bush and all members of Congress.
During Smith’s report (CD#20), several other resolutions passed unanimously, urging Congress to fully fund the Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents salary and expense appropriations for FY2002 (CD#20.2) and to enact legislation to ensure permanent feeless public access to government information regardless of format (CD#20.3). Other resolutions reaffirmed the importance of fair use in the Digital Age (CD#20.4) and supported reauthorization of the Library Services and Technology Act at $500 million (CD#20.5).
In addition, Intellectual Freedom Committee chair Margo Crist announced that ALA has endorsed a “Violence in the Media” joint statement (CD#19.3) with several other organizations, including the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Association of American University Presses, and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. The statement asserts: 1) Censorship is not the answer to violence in society. 2) The First Amendment protects the widest range of expression. 3) It is not properly the role of the government to evaluate the merits of expression. 4) Evaluating the worth of expression is subjective. 5) Portrayals of violence in the media reflect a violent world. 6) Individuals, not the government, bear responsibility for determining what materials are appropriate for themselves and their children.
The IFC chair also announced that model privacy policies and best practices will be posted on the ALA Web site. In addition, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and Washington Office have created a Web site with information about CIPA, including an extensive Q&A.
ALA’s Public Library Association and Association of Library Service to Children promptly announced contributions of $50,000 and $25,000 respectively to fund the CIPA lawsuit.
Sweeping disabilities policy
Cheers filled the Council chambers when a sweeping five-page policy on library services for people with disabilities (CD#24) shot through unanimously and with no debate.
Begun at the 2000 Midwinter Meeting, an earlier version of the policy met with some resistance due to its strident language. Prepared by ALA’s Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies, the revised policy now states that “libraries must not discriminate against individuals with disabilities and shall ensure that individuals with disabilities have equal access to library resources.” It goes on to describe the kinds of things libraries can do: extended loan periods, waived fines, library cards for proxies, books by mail, reference service by fax or e-mail, home delivery, remote access to the OPAC, remote access to library resources, volunteer readers and technology assistants, American Sign Language interpretation or captioning at programs, and radio reading services. The full policy is available on ALA’s Web site.
A record year in revenue
In an effort to present a treasurer’s report that addresses councilors’ concerns simply and clearly, Liz Bishoff began her report (CD#13.3) by announcing that for the fifth year in a row, revenue exceeded expenses and that the goal of 60,000 members in 2000 had been met and exceeded, with ALA membership now totaling 61,204. Membership Committee chair Marianne Hartzell reported (CD#38) on hikes in organizational membership dues to benefit the Association’s public awareness efforts.
The treasurer said that ALA Publishing had another good year—$1,922,000 in profit, an increase of 18%. She noted that while associations average turning 75% of revenue into programmatic activities, ALA manages 87%. It was a record year in revenue for ALA, Bishoff said, $40,180,000, enabling ALA to keep membership dues down to 18% of total revenue.
“We are delivering on our promise of wise use of membership dollars,” Bishoff observed, with just a few “harbingers of concern,” among them the fact that “by 2015, 70% of our membership will have retired.” She encouraged recruitment, lauding the Century Scholarship of ALA’s Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Services and the Spectrum Scholarship initiatives.
Councilor Bernadine Abbott Hoduski reminded Bishoff to include information about ALA’s round tables in future reports, but the general praise for her work was perhaps best summarized by Councilor Hannelore Rader, who said, “This is one of the best, most understandable reports from a treasurer that I’ve ever heard, and I’ve been around for a while!”
Hung up on certification
Brought forward by Mary Y. Moore, chair of the Committee on Education, an amibiguously worded request “that Council consider the establishment of a 501(c)(6) organization for the purposes of providing a method by which professional librarians can voluntarily become certified in a variety of post-master’s specializations” left councilors debating for an hour and a half.
Moore said the committee was asking for “approval to go ahead with this plan,” and other councilors rushed to the microphones to support her. Charles Beard said it “should have been done five years ago.”
In fact, Council accepted “in concept” a similar proposal in 1996. What the committee was really seeking was the go-ahead to establish the separate nonprofit. Numerous councilors, however, said that without details about the organization’s governance, officers, and finances, they could not vote for it. Some began to question the need for such an organization, expressing fears that such certification might eventually become mandatory. Others worried that the entire project would undermine library schools.
“This is the first time Council has even had a document in the three years we’ve been calling for this,” said Beverly Lynch, calling the sketchy information in CD#50.1 “really debatable.” She then moved that Council “express its strong support for the development of a post-MLS certification program” but asked the committee to prepare the details of a plan to present to Council 30 days in advance of this year’s Annual Conference in San Francisco. The motion carried.
A number of councilors objected to a resolution presented by Karen G. Schneider, chair of the Special Task Force on Electronic Meeting Participation (CD#23). Over the past year, the task force has held six chat-based committee meetings, evaluated commercial chat tools, and examined policy and procedural issues. They recommended that “we need to be as open as possible to the uses of new technologies to support our ancient tasks of access and service” and Schneider moved “that ALA provide some form of chat-based service to members for committees to work with during 2001.”
When some councilors raised issues about how chat-based meetings might conflict with ALA’s Open Meetings policy (CD#58), Schneider asked if the policy means that “committees may never have a discussion when the entire Association is not present? If we focus on one tool, it’s format bias. This is prior restraint. We need to look at our many methods of communication between conferences and establish guidelines that apply fairly.” Her original motion carried.
Another short but passionate debate occurred when Councilors Elaine Harger and Ruth Gordon brought forward a resolution to permanently move the starting time of Council’s first session to eliminate the time conflict with the Newbery/Caldecott press conference (CD#56). While most councilors felt the high visibility the awards give ALA—arguably the highest of any single Association activity—made it a must for many councilors, particularly those in children’s services, other councilors were less enthused. In the end, however, those in favor of the motion won handily.
Elected to Executive Board
Councilors Barbara Stripling, Patty Wong, and Kent Oliver were elected to positions on the Executive Board. They defeated councilors Pamela Klipsch, Charles Kratz Jr., and Billy Beal (CD#11, #11.2).
Stripling assumed her seat on the board immediately following the election, replacing Robert Newlen, who was temporarily filling the vacancy created by Liz Bishoff when she became ALA treasurer. Wong and Oliver will be seated at the end of Annual Conference this summer.
ALA Vice President/President-elect John W. Berry announced the Executive Board’s selection for Honorary Membership, the Association’s highest award: Arnulfo Trejo, whose many achievements include the founding of Reforma. The honor will be bestowed at Annual Conference in San Francisco.
Action wrap-up
In other actions Council:
- Heard a report from Kent Oliver for the Special Presidential Task Force on Membership Meetings, during which he announced that the task force is recommending that a membership meeting be scheduled prior to the opening general session at Annual Conference, which generally draws a large crowd. “This offers us a shot at a true membership meeting for the first time in a long time,” remarked President-elect Berry. Membership meetings have failed to draw a quorum for the past five years.
- Readopted the current program priorities of diversity, equity of access, education and continuous learning, intellectual freedom, and 21st-century literacy for FY 2002 (CD#13.1).
- Received reports on the implementation of 2000 Council actions (CD#9) and a work force analysis (CD#59) from Executive Director William Gordon, who also reviewed actions of the Executive Board (CD#15); from President Nancy Kranich on her initiatives (CD#21); and from President-elect Berry (CD#29). Beginning with Berry’s term, ALA presidents have been directed by the Executive Board to abandon “tag-line themes” and instead address one or more of the five programmatic priorities.
- Received a report (CD#10) from Awards Committee chair Charles E. Kratz and approved the establishment of the Betty J. Turock Scholarship “to support the education of a principal minority group in an ALA-accredited master’s program in library and information studies,” as well as changes to the Whitney-Carnegie publishing award, including changing the name to the Carnegie-Whitney Award as recommended by the Publishing Committee.
- Decided to continue discussion at Annual Conference this summer on the definition of “privatization” as presented by Sally Reed for the Executive Board (CD#57): “Privatization is the shifting of policy making and the management of publicly supported library services from the public to the private sector.”
- Instructed ALA staff to develop @ Your Library campaign materials in Spanish, in order to target the Spanish-speaking community through Hispanic media (CD#55). Some councilors urged that materials also be developed in Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese. Executive Board member Martín Gómez recommended that ALA needs a policy with regard to doing promotional campaigns for speakers of languages other than English.
- Received reports from the ALA endowment trustees(CD#16) and the Policy Monitoring Committee (CD#17).
- Accepted a report from the International Relations Committee (CD#18, #18.1) that “deplores any restrictions” by the government of Cuba or the United States that would inhibit the free flow of information but recommends no action be taken by Council with respect to the current question of the so-called independent libraries in Cuba.
- Received a report from the Budget Analysis and Review Committee (CD#33, #36), in which BARC recommended the concept of establishing an employer registration fee for a new enhanced employer service at conferences.
—Leonard Kniffel
|
