“We have truly made a difference,” said ALA President Michael Gorman, pointing to some 1,000 volunteers, including registrants and vendors from the exhibit hall, deployed to work projects at libraries all over the city, where they helped renovate and restore facilities made unusable by flood waters.
“God bless you for coming to this city,” said Tania Tetlow, chair of the New Orleans Public Library board of directors, at the June 27 reopening of the Children’s Resource Center on Napoleon Avenue, after yellow-shirted work crews finished the interior of the 100-year-old Carnegie library. It was a sentiment echoed throughout the conference, reinforcing the determination of the Association to “do what’s right,” as New Orleans school-librarian-turned-assistant-city-manager Brenda Hatfield said at the dedication.
First Lady Laura Bush, keynoting a June 26 town hall meeting on the importance of school libraries, praised ALA for coming to the Crescent City and called the convention “an important step in New Orleans’ rebirth.” She cited St. Bernard Parish Schools Superintendent Doris Voitier, saying that her determination got Chalmette High School rebuilt and ready for students by last November, three months after the floods. “I saw the results of Doris’s hard work when I stood in Chalmette’s beautiful new library, which was filled with excited students and lined with brand new shelves awaiting new library books,” said Bush. Noting that Voitier was in the audience, she added, “Let me tell you, too, that Doris didn’t wait till she heard from FEMA; she just billed FEMA after she rebuilt her school.”
Conferees who ventured beyond the convention area and French Quarter to participate as volunteers got a first-hand look at the monumental devastation that has turned many parts of the city into a wilderness of debris and ruin, kept under control by the deployment of National Guard troops two days before the conference began. At a kick-off press conference June 22, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco greeted conference-goers with the hope that New Orleans would be “rebuilt even better than before.”
Noting that libraries played a vital part in the post-Katrina recovery, ALA President-elect Leslie Burger, who ascended to the presidency at an inaugural banquet June 27, said she envisioned “a world in which no one will ask, ’Do we still need a library?’” She called upon her colleagues to join her in “a world in which libraries transform their communities.”
Among the other major conference speakers were Madeleine Albright, Cokie Roberts, and Anderson Cooper. Keynoting the Opening General Session, Albright congratulated librarians for keeping the faith with the people of New Orleans. She called libraries “the laboratory of freedom” and “the biggest bargain on the face of the earth.”
A detailed report on the conference is scheduled for the August issue of American Libraries.
Posted June 28, 2006; modified July 4, 2006.