American Libraries

ALA Makes Capital Gains
at Midwinter in D.C.

ALA Midwinter Meeting,
January 12–17, 2001

• Introduction
• Legislative Update Offers D.C. Forecasts
• Filter Mandates Raise Unanswered Questions
• Workshop Offers Anti-UCITA Ammo
• Info Session Reveals Financial Security
• Freedom to Read Board Pushes CIPA Challenge
• Outcomes the Issue, Says Telecom Veteran
• Lapham Critiques the Voice of the Media
• Peck, Small Win Newbery and Caldecott
• King Tribute Draws Early Risers
• Industry Leaders Advise on Standards, CIPA
• Midwinter Registration Totals

Public relations and intellectual freedom intersected at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting, held January 12–17 in Washington, D.C. ALA unveiled a new public-awareness campaign while strategizing with attorneys over how to challenge the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) passed by Congress December 21.

ALA’s Executive Board voted to initiate litigation to challenge both CIPA and the Neighborhood Children’s Internet Protection Act, legislation that mandates filtering for libraries and schools that receive federal funding for Internet access.

A session held by ALA’s Washington Office on how libraries should respond to the filtering mandate drew a capacity audience that sought clarity but found that the recently passed legislation raised more questions than the expert panelists could answer.

The Campaign for America’s Libraries’ trademarked
“@ your library” promotion has been launched, in part, to advance the notion that librarians are the best search engines and public libraries remain free and safe places in which to read, and it was the focal point of the convention center. Video monitors displayed new promotional material for the campaign, including television spots with actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. 3M has pledged $2 million to the campaign as a “founding partner.” The firm’s contribution will fund the creation of print and broadcast PSAs, Webcasts, and other publicity.

“Without you there is no campaign, with you every single American will know what ’@ your library’ means,” said Public Awareness Advisory Committee chair Patricia Glass Schuman at the promotion’s first formal training session. The objective, said Schuman, is to make the phrase a household name. The campaign Web site was also unveiled at Midwinter.

The conference was held in Washington the week before George W. Bush’s inauguration, and the capital was already bedecked with red-white-and-blue bunting and other decorations for the festivities. Attendees rushing between hotels for meetings sometimes found themselves delayed by preparations for the inaugural parade along Pennsylvania Avenue. ALA conducted its own presidential politics as three candidates—Mitch Freedman, Ken Haycock, and William Sannwald—squared off at a Midwinter forum, as well as at two smaller gatherings held by the Chapter Relations Committee and the Black Caucus of ALA.

Larry Irving Jr., former assistant secretary of commerce, stressed equal access for all at ALA President Nancy Kranich’s President’s Program, and electronic media came under close scrutiny from Harper’s Magazine editor Lewis H. Lapham at the second annual Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture.

The Capitol Steps, a troupe of congressional staffers-turned-comedians, also performed at Midwinter. Proceeds of the sold-out program benefited the Library Administration and Management Association’s endowment fund. Sponsors were the Gale Group, Ebsco Information Services, and Endeavor Information Systems.

The annual announcement of ALA’s “Academy Awards” of children’s and young adult literature drew the usual crowd of the curious and the congratulatory to a press conference on Martin Luther King Day.

A solemn, spiritual tone was set at the celebration of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. at sunrise on the King holiday. University of Maryland policy analyst Ronald Walters filled in as keynote speaker for his colleague Randall Robinson, president of TransAfrica Forum, who was unable to attend because of illness. The event included hymns and quotations from King’s speeches, and ended with a rousing version of “We Shall Overcome.”

In other actions, the Association’s governing Council passed a sweeping policy on library services for people with disabilities, which includes recommendations for how libraries can further extend open access. ALA Treasurer Liz Bishoff told councilors that FY 2000 was a record year for revenue, at $40,180,000, and a new membership record as well. With a total of 61,204, the Membership Committee surpassed its goal of 60,000 by the end of 2000.

The conference attracted 13,989 people to the nation’s capital, including 6,592 paid attendees, 1,173 exhibits-only passes, 3,819 exhibitors, 201 speakers, and 151 press. Last year’s total was 10,715.

“This is the largest trade show we’ve had at a Midwinter,” ALA Executive Director William Gordon reported at the Council/Executive Board/Membership Information Session. Gordon said the exhibit space jumped from about 74,000 net square feet last year to 89,000.

With a new look and a prime location in the Convention Center lobby, the ALA store hit near-record sales figures for Association publications. Total ALA revenue was $86,867: $43,813 for Graphics; $37,227 for Editions; and $5,827 for Divisions and Offices.

ALA’s TechSource publishing unit unveiled its revamped Library Technology Reports and Library Systems Newsletter and previewed its Web site that offers daily news and other features.

Taking advantage of the Washington meeting, the Library of Congress offered dozens of programs, tours, and workshops. At a dinner meeting in the Members Room at LC, Librarian of Congress James Billington presented certificates of appreciation to ALA and the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies for their “significant contribution toward making the bicentennial celebration a success.”

The Midwinter Meeting went so well that a group of convention-center bartenders-in-training had to be blamed for perhaps the biggest snag of the conference—the long lines that greeted registering attendees on Saturday morning. One of the trainees tripped over the cords connected to the registration computers.

Legislative Update Offers D.C. Forecasts

As a new administration prepared to take the reins of power in the White House, ALA’s Washington Office prognosticated on the future of legislation affecting libraries at its Legislative and Policy Update.

Political consultant and former Republican staffer Vic Klatt outlined the “four Ps” of Washington and outlined what they mean for libraries and other education concerns:

Personalities: As a result of the recent election, “The personalities in this town are changing more than ever before in my lifetime,” Klatt said. In addition to President Bush, who Klatt said brings along a more detailed education plan than any previous president, the new administration includes a whole new set of cabinet, subcabinet, and White House officials, in addition to many new faces in Congress. “They’ll all have to be educated by you,” Klatt advised.

Process will be more important than ever before due to the close makeup of the new Congress, which is nearly evenly split between the parties, observed Klatt. To get legislation passed, “You have to be nimble,” he advised, suggesting such strategies as attaching LSTA to a larger bill.

Policy: Klatt advised library lobbyists to take into account the policy views of those in charge. Testing and accountability are the buzzwords of the Bush administration; “Try to fit them in when you go up there,” he recommended.

Politics: Everyone loves libraries, said Klatt, “but you have to make them important enough to get on their plate” by making it to politicians’ benefit to advance the library community’s political agenda.

In his discussion of threats to fair use of information, Attorney Jonathan Brand focused on the “iron triangle of intellectual property”: the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act, database protection, and copyright law.

Noting that UCITA has already been adopted in Maryland and Virginia, Brand said library groups and others have been battling it elsewhere, and, in states where its adoption appears likely, seeking “carve-outs” to exempt such crucial library activities as interlibrary loan. He urged librarians to fight UCITA in their states, pointing out that we have an advantage at the state level: Software producers are not in every state, but libraries are.

For the past three Congresses, database publishers have been seeking additional legal protections for their products, observed Brand. Although two competing bills—one of them a moderate proposal backed by the library community—deadlocked last year, he predicted the issue would resurface in the new Congress.

In copyright law, Brand noted efforts to obtain exemptions for libraries complying with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, notably regarding such crucial areas as distance education and the first-sale doctrine, which he termed “bedrock for libraries.” “The Napster decision has in many ways changed the landscape,” Brand said, observing that the legal fight over the online music-swapping service “has made people aware of copyright as they have never been before.” The eventual resolution of the Napster case will have an impact on how library copyright issues play out, he predicted.

Filter Mandates Raise
Unanswered Questions

A capacity audience at a session devoted to the recently imposed filtering mandates for libraries and schools that receive federal funding for Internet access discovered that even the experts assembled by ALA’s Washington Office couldn’t answer the many questions raised by the new law. Nonetheless, the panelists were able to offer some informed guesses as to what would come next for the legislation and for the many libraries affected by it.

Washington Office Director Emily Sheketoff warned that when the Children’s Internet Protection Act goes into effect in April “there’s going to be a heightened emphasis in your community on Internet access and libraries,” and that patrons faced with the filters would be likely to complain. She advised libraries to be ready to direct those complaints to Congress by having legislators’ addresses available. “It was hard enough to try to stop this,” Sheketoff said. “It’s going to be much harder to overturn or change it.”

“This law is subject to some serious constitutional questions,” noted attorney Tom Susman in his overview of CIPA. He added that the legislation also lacked coherence, having been cobbled together from three separate bills at the last minute as Congress prepared to adjourn.

After providing a detailed explanation of which libraries were subject to which aspects of the law, Susman noted that the timing and content of the certification process are yet to be determined by the Federal Communications Commission. “Resolution of the ambiguities will await agency guidance,” he concluded.

Kate Moore of the Schools and Libraries Corporation, which administers the e-rate program, gave a timetable for implementation of CIPA: The due date for the FCC’s final rulemaking is April 20, and the due date for libraries to certify that their policy is in place is October 28.

In view of the indeterminate future of the legislation, Moore urged libraries to continue to apply for the e-rate despite the burden of the new regulations. “Don’t cut off your options at this stage,” she said.

The barrage of questions that followed the presentations served largely to indicate the uncertainty of both the audience and the panelists. When one questioner asked whether libraries could use LSTA and ESEA funds to purchase filters, Moore replied that the intent of the legislators who wrote the law indicated that would not be permissible. That view prompted Sheketoff to observe, “This is definitely an unfunded federal mandate.”

Workshop Offers Anti-UCITA Ammo

In an effort to arm librarians battling passage of the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act in their home states, ALA’s Washington Office offered a four-hour workshop on the legislation, which threatens to overhaul the ground rules for the use of electronic information.

As Carol Ashworth, ALA’s UCITA Grassroots Coordinator, explained, UCITA is a proposed state law that would regulate transactions involving computer software, online databases, and other intangible goods to change the rules for purchasing and using digital information. Its primary supporters are publishers and large software producers who claim that it’s needed to promote e-commerce, said Ashworth. In addition to the library community, consumer-protection organizations and some business groups oppose the law.

Ashworth added that UCITA’s restrictions could prevent libraries from providing a product to more than one user at a time or transferring a copy for interlibrary loan purposes. The law’s provisions could even forbid public discussion of a product’s flaws, she warned.

After offering some background on recent developments in libraries and copyright that set the stage for UCITA, Carrie Russell, copyright specialist in ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy, placed the legislation in the context of existing copyright law. UCITA makes non-negotiated shrink-wrap and click-on licenses legally binding, Russell explained, adding that it also links such licenses to content or physical property, such as a book that accompanies a CD.

If UCITA passes, Russell noted, libraries in that state will have to spend more time in license negotiations; vendors may be permitted to shut off computers remotely if they claim an infringement (Russell called this “electronic self-help”); existing copyright law will not apply to digital information products, resulting in no fair use or copying for preservation purposes; and software vendors and publishers will determine how information can be used by patrons. “Library users will have less rights in the digital environment than they had in the print world,” she concluded.

ALA Legislative Counsel Miriam Nisbet pointed out that even though the word “copyright” appears nowhere in the 90 pages in small print that make up UCITA, it restricts uses by libraries that are otherwise allowed under copyright law because contracts are the only way that federal privileges under copyright can be given up.

Info Session Reveals Financial Security

Presided over by ALA President Nancy Kranich, the Midwinter Council/Executive Board/Membership Information Session offered an opportunity for ALA members to hear from Association leaders and ask questions, but barely 100 people took advantage of the occasion.

JoAnn Mondowney, chair of the Budget Analysis and Review Committee, announced that the FY 2001 first-quarter financial reports indicate ALA is in a “great financial position.” She said the committee held a session on multiyear planning and, with ongoing member input, the Association will “stay true to our activities and goals for the long term.”

Endowment trustees President Bernard Margolis reported that 2000 produced “among the worst performances of the stock market in history, and the ALA endowment did experience a decline of about 7.4%.”

“We’re not actually distressed about it,” Margolis said. “We’re unhappy about it, but we think that we’ve done the right things to put our investments in a good position to take advantage of what we think will eventually be an up-market,” although “we are in for a good eight to 12 months of rough sledding.”

“We’ve done what traditional investors do. We’ve moved to lower-risk investing. We’ve rebalanced our portfolio—we had 70% of our investments in stocks, now we’ve reduced that to 60%. We have increased the amount of cash in our portfolio to 10%, and we’ve increased the fixed instruments, the bonds, to 30% of our holdings.”

Although some members questioned the trustees’ ambitiousness, Margolis said they were confident the endowment return should be projected at inflation plus 6%. He also urged that ALA consider using money from the endowment to buy a building for the Washington Office. “We spend a great deal of money every year in rental and lease space here in the District. I think it’s time to think about a permanent Washington presence.”

President Kranich reviewed her presidential initiatives, including a preconference on building information-literate communities and a new advocacy-training handbook. She also noted that “because my theme is focusing on democracy, I’m also looking at different ways we might hold meetings and make sure that we have the kind of discourse necessary to ensure participation throughout the Association and our chapters.”

ALA councilor Herbert Biblo urged Kranich and the Executive Board “to discuss the generally miserable entry-level salaries for librarians.” She replied that the Committee on Pay Equity is looking at the issue and she would take it to the board as well.

President-elect John W. Berry reviewed his forthcoming presidential initiatives, including the creation of three special task forces—on equity of access, diversity and recruitment, and electronic participation. He said he had appointed past president Barbara Ford to chair next year’s Nominating Committee.

ALA Executive Director William Gordon reported on recent activity and staffing changes at ALA Headquarters, including the appointment of Library Administration and Management Association/Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Executive Director Karen Muller to the position of librarian/knowledge manager in the Headquarters Library. He indicated that part of the intention is to make ALA’s library the perfect example of an association library.

Councilor Sue Berlin and others argued that Headquarters Library should be managed by a librarian and the word should not be diluted by the addition of “knowledge manager” to the title. Gordon replied that he had wrestled with the issue and concluded that “it may have been a misstep,” but “for better or worse the term is being used increasingly in library schools and I wanted to be sure that we were casting the net for a librarian who would understand . . . this internal function.”

ALA Councilor Ruth Gordon asked why Cognotes, the conference newspaper, contained an article about presidential candidate Maurice Freedman and not Ken Haycock or William Sannwald. The executive director said he would investigate. The skewed exposure seemed largely to be the result of inexperienced volunteers unfamiliar with accepted ALA election procedures.

The session ended with an update on the Campaign for America’s Libraries and a video featuring actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins as well as the cast of PBS’s Between the Lions. Kranich urged librarians to take home free shopping bags of promotional materials, sign up for the campaign, use the “@ your library” brand, and “join us in the National Library Week celebration in April.”

Councilors Michael Malinconico, Al Kagan, and Elaine Harger found the campaign material too costly, too commercialized, and ineffective at countering the perception that libraries are redundant in a digital age. However, others, including councilor Christine Hage and councilor and AL columnist Karen G. Schneider, called the material “great” and “absolutely terrific.”

As a grand finale, former ALA president Betty Turock highlighted the successes of the Spectrum Scholarship initiative and argued for its continuance. “Spectrum was launched by ALA not only to assist in developing a profession more representative of the community served but also to assist in developing a profession better able to enrich library services through the unique contributions that only diversity can bring,” she said.

Freedom to Read Board
Pushes CIPA Challenge

The board of trustees of ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation discussed legal strategies for a court challenge to the Children’s Internet Protection Act recently passed by Congress. Some 40 people attended the January 12 open session, which after about an hour adjourned to a closed session, where a recommendation was hammered out and later presented to the ALA Executive Board.

FTRF President Candace Morgan reviewed CIPA, pointing out that for nearly four years Congress has been trying to pass a bill that would require libraries and schools applying for federal funding to install Internet filtering software on all their computers. She said the legislation was added to a government funding bill at the last minute in such a way that it “had to pass or the government wouldn’t run.”

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys Chris Hansen and Ann Beeson told the board that the ACLU intended to challenge the bill and offered to represent ALA. Beeson said it is “a violation of the First Amendment to require libraries as a condition of funding to censor the Internet.” She said the ACLU maintains a database of Web sites that have been blocked by filtering software and is trying to force companies to expose their full blocked-sites lists. A law that would force public libraries to allow private companies “with masks on” to restrict information is clearly unconstitutional, she said.

Hansen observed, “This is going to be a hard case,” partly because “we do intend to challenge access restrictions on minors as well.” The fact that CIPA is part of a funding law will also make it harder to challenge and more expensive than the Communications Decency Act or the Child Online Protection Act. The government will argue that libraries have the option of turning down the funding. He advised that the ACLU would probably not seek a preliminary injunction against CIPA because of the time toll that action would take.

Beeson called CIPA “a federal government censorship scheme” and said the ACLU was prepared to fight CIPA in a separate lawsuit but would prefer to do so in partnership with ALA. She also said the case would be more difficult to win if schools were included in the challenge instead of just public libraries.

FTRF member Gordon Conable raised questions about the growing phenomenon of joint-use facilities, where the same building is used as both a school library and a public library, saying the law “will be impossible to deal with in those settings unless schools are included in the challenge.”

Hansen replied that winning the case for schools would be much harder, and “the risk is that we bring down libraries along with schools.”

Elliot Mincberg of People for the American Way pointed out that “even the best software is inherently incapable of complying with the law. We have to subordinate institutional interests and form a coalition,” he said, noting that some companies who might be inclined to support the suit would be “less inclined to join an ACLU suit.”

Judith Krug, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told the ACLU attorneys that ALA would have its own legal counsel and asked if the ACLU was prepared to work with that arrangement.

“We totally don’t think that’s a problem,” said Hansen, “but we would want to be lead counsel.”

The ALA Executive Board voted to initiate separate legal action. Strategy for cooperation with FTRF and the ACLU was orchestrated in closed session.

Outcomes the Issue,
Says Telecom Veteran

“Now that I’m wired, what do I do with it?” was the question posed by Larry Irving Jr. at Nancy Kranich’s President’s Program. Irving, the former assistant secretary of commerce for telecommunications and information, was one of the first government officials to call attention to the so-called “digital divide,” leading efforts to identify and assist communities that lack access to up-to-date communication services.

Although more households (and most libraries) have become connected to the Internet since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Irving said that the issue now is “not the technology, it’s how it will improve people’s lives.” Changing the debate from access to outcomes is a better strategy to get more people logged on, he said, adding that “an uninformed person cannot participate fully in democracy.”

Public libraries are the logical training grounds for the newly wired, Irving noted, ticking off a list of services that could include:

• a training center for small businesses or nonprofit organizations;
• instruction in parental computing skills (“Librarians can help quell many fears in this area,” he emphasized);
• high-speed, broadband access that might not be affordable or available in some areas;
• a site for downloading Palm Pilot freeware (“15 million people use Palms—four years ago, it was only technicians”);
• e-book training and access; and
• the creation of “green spaces” on the Internet, kid-friendly portals that are “the equivalent of public broadcasting.”

“Most people think of libraries as static, not dynamic institutions,” Irving said, explaining that this will change as they address the new digital gaps—the nonprofit–big business divide, the broadband divide, the minority-owned small business divide, and others.

“I would challenge people to articulate the five most important business issues they face,” he suggested. “Then show them how to use the digital tools that offer the answers.”

Irving’s remarks were followed by a panel presentation that continued the digital divide theme. Jorge Schement, codirector of the Institute for Information Policy at Pennsylvania State University, spoke on the necessity for policy incentives to “help migrate Latino businesses online and upgrade their employees’ information skills.”

Karen Buller, president of the National Indian Telecommunications Institute in Santa Fe, spoke movingly on the lack of technology and information resources available to Indians. “There is only one public library on the Navajo Reservation, a plot of land the size of Ohio,” she observed. Telling a story about one young man who went to college and didn’t return to his family, Buller mused, “Maybe if we had technology on the reservation, our children would come home.”

Laurie Lipper, codirector of the Children’s Partnership in Washington, D.C., pointed out shortcomings in online content that local libraries could remedy, especially local information and culturally relevant content.

Mark Lloyd, executive director of the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy in Washington, D.C., emphasized the role of public libraries as custodians of the sacred American tradition of valuing “shared knowledge above commerce, and contemplation and reading above noise and entertainment.”

Lapham Critiques the Voice of the Media

Harper’s Magazine Editor Lewis H. Lapham praised the public library as the “ark of liberty” in the second Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture, held in honor of the former Boston Public Library director. “In libraries I hear instruments being tuned in an orchestra,” he said, “a melodic line too often obscured by the media and too often lost in a parade of fleeting images.”

Lapham, whose most recent book was An American Album: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Harper’s Magazine (LPC Group, 2000), contrasted the linear thinking of great writers with the “symbolist verse” of the electronic media, which “uses parable in place of argument” and discontinuity and pattern recognition as “a series of flash cards that serve as a news broadcast.”

This is good business from the point of view of a consumer society, he remarked, since it moves merchandise. “The media is a corporate mass enterprise,” Lapham said, “made to the measure of prerecorded experience and market-tested dream.”

“The market doesn’t care whether the majority of people wander through the world in a stupor,” he stressed. “Who would then kill the stupid, therefore golden, goose? The answer is—the library.”

Libraries defend the future against the past, he quipped, reminding the audience that the Founding Fathers were avid readers who discovered the blueprint for the American republic in the writings of the past.

“The sound of a human voice in a book is as unmistakable as an oboe or the sound of the sea,” Lapham concluded. “That’s why I go to the library.”

Peck, Small Win Newbery and Caldecott

Winners of the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, considered the most prestigious achievement awards for children’s literature, were announced at a January 15 press conference sponsored by ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children.

Richard Peck, author of A Year Down Yonder, won the 2001 Newbery Award for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. Published by Dial Books for Young Readers in 2000, the book presents a series of vignettes set in rural Illinois during the Depression, when 5-year-old Mary Alice leaves Chicago to spend a year with Grandma Dowdel.

The Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children went to illustrator David Small for So You Want to Be President? published by Philomel Books. Small uses an echo of political cartooning to invest this personable history of the presidency with imaginative detail and wry humor.

Four Newbery Honor Books were chosen: Hope Was Here, by Joan Bauer (Putnam); The Wanderer, by Sharon Creech (HarperCol-lins); Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick); and Joey Pigza Loses Control, by Jack Gantos (Farrar Straus Giroux).

Caldecott Honor Book illustrators were Christopher Bing for Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888 (Handprint); Betsy Lewin for Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type (Simon and Schuster); and Ian Falconer for Olivia (Simon and Schuster).

Marc Aronson, author of Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for El Dorado (Clarion), was named the first winner of the ALSC Robert F. Sibert Award for the most distinguished informational book for children. The book portrays the adventurous life of Sir Walter Ralegh and his search for the legendary city of El Dorado and the fate of his lost colony in the New World.

The new award is sponsored by Bound to Stay Bound Books in honor of its longtime president, Robert F. Sibert.

Four Sibert Honor Books were chosen: The Longitude Prize, by Joan Dash (Frances Foster); Blizzard! by Jim Murphy (Scholastic); My Season with Penguins: An Antarctic Journal, by Sophie Webb (Houghton Mifflin); and Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned, by Judd Winick (Henry Holt).

Also announced at the briefing:

• Coretta Scott King Author Award (administered by the Social Responsibilities Round Table): Jacqueline Woodson, Miracle Boys (Putnam).
• Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award: Bryan Collier, Uptown (Henry Holt).
• King Author Honor Book Award: Andrea Davis Pinkney, Let It Shine! Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters (Harcourt).
• King Illustrator Honor Book Awards: Bryan Collier, Freedom River (Hyperion); E. B. Lewis, Virgie Goes to School with Us Boys (Simon and Schuster); and R. Gregory Christie, Only Passing Through: The Story of Sojourner Truth (Random House).
• Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature for young adults (administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association): David Almond, Kit’s Wilderness (Delacorte).
• Printz Honor Book Awards: Carolyn Coman, Many Stones (Front Street); Carol Plum-Ucci, The Body of Christopher Creed (Harcourt); Louise Rennison, Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging (HarperCollins); and Terry Trueman, Stuck in Neutral (HarperCollins).
• Margaret A. Edwards Award for a lifetime contribution in writing for young adults (administered by YALSA): Robert Lipsyte, author of The Contender (Harper and Row, 1967).
• Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for a substantial contribution to literature for children: Milton Meltzer, author of Brother Can You Spare a Dime? (Knopf, 1969).
• Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in children’s video: Antarctic Antics, produced by Paul R. Gagne, animated by Fable Vision Studios, and directed by Gary Goldberger and Peter Reynolds (Weston Woods Studio).
• Mildred L. Batchelder Award for the best foreign-language children’s book subsequently translated into English: Samir and Yonatan, written in Hebrew by Daniella Carmi and translated by Yael Lotan (Scholastic).
• May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecturer: Philip Pullman, creator of the His Dark Materials trilogy (Knopf).

King Tribute Draws Early Risers

“Become information activists in the way Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. might have done,” urged policy analyst Ronald Walters. “Let information flow freely out of the library doors, instead of waiting for people to come in.”

Walters, director of the University of Maryland’s African American Leadership Institute, recalled that King was wary of technology because it can produce fear and alienate people. But “slave society in the 19th century understood the power of information,” he said. “For them, education was the road to liberation.”

Walters keynoted a sunrise celebration of the life and spirit of the slain civil-rights leader sponsored by the ALA Office for Literacy and Outreach Services, the Social Responsibilities Round Table, and the Black Caucus of the ALA. Organizers had originally planned on Randall Robinson, president of TransAfrica Forum, as lead speaker, but a sudden illness required the substitution.

More than 350 people showed up at 6:30 a.m. on Martin Luther King Day for the event, which was themed “A Challenge to America’s Libraries: Ensuring Information Access for All People.” The program included a diverse group of representatives from ALA units and affiliates, each of whom contributed a favorite and appropriate quotation from King’s speeches and writings.

Virginia Moore, chair of the SRRT King Holiday Task Force, said that Martin Luther King’s goal of equal access for all closely “connects to our profession.” President Nancy Kranich underscored this by quoting from King’s speech in Memphis on April 3, 1968: “And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be.”

A moving rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a hymn written by African-American poet James Weldon Johnson and referred to as the black national anthem, was led by singer Calandra Banks of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Laren Lawson, also of the Ellington School, offered her interpretation of “If I Can Help Somebody.”

The celebration ended with the crowd linking hands and singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Industry Leaders Advise
on Standards, CIPA

This year’s RMG Presidents’ Seminar—the 11th such event held by RMG Consultants at the Midwinter Meeting—boasted a more diverse group of vendors than past gatherings.

RMG President Rob McGee, moderator of the panel, began by asking the CEOs of the three e-book companies represented there what led them to found their respective companies. “The idea behind netLibrary,” replied net-Library’s Rob Kaufman, “is to provide access to Net-based content that is secure. Its core constituency is libraries. The company is exploring the interests of other constituencies, but we have found that libraries do not appreciate a focus on the consumer. Libraries are tough customers.”

Questia founder Troy Williams recounted his experiences as a student at Harvard, where he found that some books were checked out for a year; even when he was able to get hold of a book, he said, it was difficult to find the information he needed within it.

The idea for Ebrary.com occurred to Christopher Warnock when he was an undergraduate. He wanted to build a recumbent bicycle and tried doing library research to learn how to build one, but the research was slow and tedious. He started Ebrary.com to make authoritative information freely available via the Internet to everyone.

Epixtech President Lana Porter noted that although e-books are becoming a major issue, “there are no standards for the devices.” Chris Pooley (sitting in for Thomson Science and Technology CEO Mike Tansey) echoed the importance of standards: “Libraries did not use CDs until the industry got its act together to develop a standard interface.”

VTLS President Vinod Chachra had some pointed advice for librarians: “Libraries need to put their own house in order and offer existing information services more efficiently and cheaply. Do you really need to modify other peoples’ cataloging?” he asked rhetorically.

McGee called on Rick Weingarten, director of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy, to update the group on the Children’s Internet Protection Act, which ties federal funding to the use of Internet filters. After some discussion on censorship and Internet content management, an audience member noted, “We have been sleeping with the enemy for quite a while.” His library uses software that allows patrons to turn off filters, but few users switch off the program. Warnock wondered whether people might be reluctant to turn it off because they have to enter their barcode number, and may have the erroneous perception that they are being tracked.

From the audience, Annette Battier, CEO of the Library Corporation, asserted that “vendors should not be the ultimate arbiters of what patrons can view on the Web. Libraries and people want the freedom to read and see all materials.”

Reporting for AL: George Eberhart, Gordon Flagg, Leonard Kniffel, and David Dorman. Photos by Don Haines, courtesy of Cognotes.

Midwinter Registration Totals

Registration revenue totaled $611,527, compared to $543,732 last year in Philadelphia.

Placement Center Statistics

Jobs: 813 (The highest number, 84, was for general reference positions.)

Job-seekers: 260