“You go in. The door shuts behind you. You ask to know, and you are shown,” said author Robert Hughes keynoting the American Library Association’s annual conference, held June 13–19 in Atlanta. His interpretation of this simple concept behind libraries unfolded into 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.”
While Hughes extolled the role of libraries in American democracy, the ALA Council and Executive Board 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 new ALA President Maurice Freedman at his inauguration in Atlanta.
Also among the dozens of authors who appeared were Barbara Ehrenreich, who closed the conference with a talk about how she researched her book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by attempting to live on poverty-level wages; and Michael Moore, who credited librarian Ann Sparanese of Englewood, New Jersey, with changing the minds of HarperCollins editors who were reluctant to publish his book Stupid White Men: And Other Excuses for the State of the Nation in the face of the patriotic zeal set off by September 11.
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, several thousand of whom filled the house to standing-room-only for a scholarship fundraiser featuring the Grammy-nominated Indigo Girls.
A complete report on the conference is scheduled for the August issue of American Libraries magazine.
Posted June 24, 2002.