American Libraries

New Orleans Midwinter Meeting
Marks the Beginning of Two ALAs

ALA Midwinter Meeting,
January 18–23, 2002

• Introduction
• Strong Support for Pay Efforts
• The USA Patriot Act and Libraries
• President’s Program Asks Who Rules Access
• Codrescu Cogitates on Communism
• Park, Wiesner Win Newbery, Caldecott
• Info Session Addresses 501(c)(6)
• Info Execs Look at the Digital Future
• King Tribute Recalls His Life and Legacy
• Communicating During a Library Crisis
• Midwinter Registration Totals

In a move fraught with risks and unknowns, the American Library Association’s governing Council cleared the way for splitting the organization into two separate parts during the ALA Midwinter Meeting in New Orleans, January 18–23, by approving bylaws for a separate allied professional association to offer postgraduate specialty certification, to advocate for pay equity, and to address other issues related to the professional status of librarians.

ALA Council also responded to antiterrorism legislation passed by Congress in the wake of September 11 by unanimously passing a resolution affirming the principle of intellectual freedom in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. However, several other controversial resolutions dealing with the nation’s response to the attacks were voted down. The likely effects of the antiterrorism laws on libraries were also the focus of two well-attended sessions offered by ALA’s Washington Office.

The Midwinter Meeting brings ALA members together to plan the Association’s Annual Conference, update librarians on legislative issues and current topics, and conduct Association business. ALA President John W. Berry presented a program titled “Gatekeepers of the Internet: Balancing Access and Control in a Networked World,” featuring Deborah Hurley of Harvard and James J. O’Donnell of the University of Pennsylvania, who explored the challenges librarians are certain to face over access to information. (For the first time ever, the President’s Program is available as a Webcast.)

Author and radio commentator Andrei Codrescu delivered the third annual Arthur Curley Lecture, on censorship and repression under totalitarian regimes. As MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Codrescu is very nearly at home in New Orleans, where his dark sense of humor earned him and his wife the right to preside as King and Queen of the irreverent and satirical Krewe de Vieux Mardi Gras parade the same evening as his lecture. Those who dared venture into the unseasonably chilly streets got a rare glimpse of Codrescu in a white wig, surrounded by dozens of impish, off-color denizens dispensing beads, fans, and other paraphernalia.

ALA Executive Director William Gordon spent Midwinter recuperating at home in Chicago after surgery December 21 to install a heart pacemaker and defibrillator. Doctors had ruled out travel until at least February. He sent a videotaped greeting to attendees, which was screened at the Council/Membership/Executive Board Information Session.

“One of the things that makes this recuperation more comfortable than it might otherwise be is the quality of ALA staff, led by senior management and Senior Associate Executive Director Mary Ghikas,” Gordon told American Libraries back at ALA Headquarters. Ghikas carried out many of his duties at the Midwinter Meeting. “I am confident the Association’s business will run smoothly during my absence,” he said, and to all appearances it did. Gordon has since returned to work nearly full time though he is also being treated for other health problems. He is scheduled to retire August 31, and a search for his replacement is under way. The search committee met for the first time in New Orleans.

The ALA External Accreditation Task Force gave its final report to the Executive Board, with a far less enthusiastic endorsement of the idea of establishing a new agency for the accreditation of library and information science education programs. With the work of the task force now completed, it is up to the board to decide what the next steps will be. The Executive Board also got a glimpse at a new National Library Week video on the theme “Rediscover America.”

The two nominees for ALA president, Carla Hayden and Katina Strauch, squared off and took audience questions at a Midwinter forum, as well as at a smaller gathering sponsored by the Chapter Relations Committee.

Midwinter Meeting registration totaled 11,853 attendees and exhibitors, of whom 4,314 had registered on-site. ALA Conference Services Director Deidre Ross said the drop in attendance—about 2,500 less than Midwinter 2001 in Washington, D.C.—was expected, since there are fewer large cities near New Orleans.

Few conferees seemed to notice the heightened security procedures that were put in place post–September 11, which required photo identification for pickup of registration credentials and prompted reduced hours at the Internet Café. What did inconvenience attendees, however, were the vast distances they had to cover in the mammoth Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where ALA’s 80 meeting rooms were spread out over a distance of a half-mile.

Ross explained that much of the space originally slotted for ALA was given to the National Automobile Dealers Association convention, which had been hastily rescheduled when its original dates were given to the National Football League’s Super Bowl, which had been postponed after the terrorist attacks. “We were taken aback a little bit,” Ross said of the distances between the rooms. “We didn’t know they were going to be that far.” However, she reported, the convention center compensated ALA for the nuisance by providing extra meeting rooms and additional shuttle buses at no charge and discounting other services.

The additional time conferees spent getting to their meetings may have contributed toward complaints about slow traffic that were heard throughout the exhibit halls. Whether the lack of attendees strolling the halls was a product of the economy or the dandy weather in the Crescent City was a subject for debate. Kathryn Leide, director of ALA Graphics, reported that traffic in the ALA Store mirrored the overall slow exhibit-hall traffic. Sales were down by about 35% from last year but were similar to Midwinter 2000 in San Antonio. “The Graphics products that did the best were the Lord of the Rings posters and the magic pens that say ‘Read—It’s magic!’ and light up when you write,” she said.

The All-Conference Reception—held for the first time on the exhibit floor Friday night—featured mini-mufalettas, red beans and rice, jambalaya, and other New Orleans specialties.

Conferencegoers had an opportunity to participate in another first-time feature—the Bestselling Authors Forum—with Michael Blake (Dances with Wolves) and John Biguenet (The Torturer’s Apprentice). The forum was held immediately preceding the new Friday evening exhibit opening. Authors Rick Bragg (Ava’s Man), Patty Friedmann (Odds), Jim Grimsley (Boulevard, A Novel), Daniel Lenihan (Submerged), and Marge Piercy (Sleeping with Cats) were guests of Friends of Libraries USA at its annual Jazz Brunch.

For the first time, a Korean-American writer, Linda Sue Park, received the John Newbery Medal—considered the most prestigious award in children’s literature—at ALA’s annual announcement of the “Academy Awards” of children’s literature. Illustrator David Wiesner was awarded his second Randolph Caldecott Medal at the conference.

ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children, sponsor of the Newbery and Caldecott awards, also announced a partnership with children’s television network Nickelodeon to promote reading and libraries on Nick Jr., Nickelodeon’s block of television for preschoolers. The project will include a promotional spot starring the 7-year-old Latina cartoon action heroine Dora the Explorer and an accompanying poster that will be distributed to public libraries nationwide.

ALA Council approved the Executive Board’s nominees for Honorary Membership, the Association’s highest honor, for E. J. Josey, former ALA president and founder of the Black Caucus of ALA, and influential cataloging theorist Seymour Lubetzky. The awards will be bestowed at ALA’s Annual Conference this summer.

The Librarians of Color Caucuses also met for the first time to initiate plans for a proposed Joint Conference of Librarians of Color in 2005. The meeting included representatives of the American Indian Library Association, the Black Caucus of ALA, the Chinese-American Librarians Association, and Reforma.

In an effort to boost attendance for the upcoming fourth Annual Conference Scholarship Bash, tickets went on sale six months before the event, which will feature the Atlanta-based singing duo Indigo Girls. 

Strong Support for Pay Efforts

Approval of an allied professional association would be “one of the most active programs ALA has ever done on behalf of librarians,” Patricia Glass Schuman, chair of President-elect Maurice Freedman’s Better Salaries and Pay Equity Task Force, told a standing-room-only crowd at an Assembly and Open Microphone on Low Pay in Libraries.

The forum was sponsored by Freedman’s task force and the Status of Librarians Task Force appointed by Immediate Past President Nancy Kranich. The two groups joined forces to push for a new allied organization that can operate outside ALA’s 501(c)(3) tax status restrictions to deal with issues related to the status and salaries of librarians and other library staff members.

Freedman said there is a potential for doubling ALA membership with the new organization. “What’s new to me, a member of this Association since 1965, is that the administration of ALA is actively interested in promoting this wonderful change,” he added.

“For too many years our beloved Association has been more concerned about libraries and not those who work in libraries,” said E. J. Josey, chair of the ALA Committee on Pay Equity.

Dan O’Connor, a member of the Rutgers University AAUP faculty union, warned the group that librarians’ salaries should not be compared on the basis of men versus women and white with black, but against people with comparable education. “You don’t want to be perceived as a weak field because if you are, no one has to listen to you.”

“I’m not so sure if I want to let ALA off the hook here,” said Edmond C. Fursa, Manhattan representative of the New York Public Library Guild, Local 1930. “In the highest levels of librarianship in the country, we put in nonlibrarians and the American Library Association says nothing about it,” Fursa said, citing a nonprofessional serving as librarian of Congress. “It is extremely symbolic of the profession and tells that the highest levels of librarianship are not available for other librarians.”

Yvonne Farley, reference librarian at Kanawha County (W.Va.) Public Library, said state officials in West Virginia point to lack of money to run the library when asked about increasing librarians’ pay. In addition to dealing with the issues of what she called “salary discrimination,” Farley said the new association should also consider other concerns that deter the advancement of librarians such as support for conference participation.

The USA Patriot Act and Libraries

Addressing the first of two sessions offered by ALA’s Washington Office on recent antiterrorism legislation, Center for National Security Studies Director Kate Martin asserted that the last few months have been one of the hardest times ever for those who fight for civil liberties. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Congress swiftly passed the USA Patriot Act, which expands the government’s powers to conduct electronic surveillance, obtain business and medical records, and detain immigrants without charges.

Martin noted that the bill sent to Congress by the administration contained over 100 provisions, many of which the administration had been seeking well before the terrorist attacks. She added that Congress passed the bill with few changes 20 days later, without time for careful consideration of whether the measure was effective or necessary. Martin called the proceedings “almost a sham of what a legislative process should look like,” with “no analysis of what the law would actually accomplish.”

Following her morning program, which offered specifics on the Patriot Act’s contents and its hasty passage, Martin appeared on an afternoon panel devoted to the measure’s likely effect on libraries. There she stressed that under the law, when authorities seek libraries’ user records, the name of the target must not be disclosed by library staff. She added that other provisions permit the unrestricted sharing of information between domestic and foreign intelligence agencies, and that the new authorities created by the act are not limited to investigations of terrorism or espionage.

“I’m not an attorney and I’m not an expert,” cautioned Gary Strong, director of the Queens Borough Public Library in New York City. “I only direct a library that is in a very sensitive position right now.”

“It doesn’t mean you’re not important if the FBI doesn’t show up at your door,” Strong remarked, “and it doesn’t make you special if they do.” The FBI has shown up at Queens several times, he noted, and it’s always gone smoothly.

Strong’s advice: If you don’t have your own attorney, you need to identify legal counsel you can seek if you’re contacted. You are allowed to ask questions. You need to know your policies on recordkeeping and related areas, and those policies should comply with actual practice. Document your costs if you’re asked to provide data; the law often calls for reimbursement. “Most importantly, check your emotions at the door,” Strong concluded.

Ingratiating himself with a potentially hostile audience, Michael Woods, chief of the FBI’s National Security Law Unit, declared at the start of his remarks, “I would not want to live in a country where there were not groups like this and where there were not groups like the ACLU and the National Security Archive that relentlessly question how we use these authorities.”

“A lot of you remember in the 1980s that we had a little set-to with the [American] Library Association,” said Woods, referring to the FBI’s Library Awareness Program (AL, Apr. 1988, p. 244), when the agency sought information on patrons it deemed suspicious. “That’s not what we’re doing now.” He told the audience that most queries they would get would deal with Internet records, and a search order under the Foreign Services Intelligence Act—the rough equivalent of a criminal subpoena, except that it must be signed by a federal judge—would be unlikely to apply unless the library served as an Internet Service Provider.

Although there’s secrecy involved, said Woods, “there’s a great deal of oversight in the process . . . even though it’s a secret proceeding.” Additionally, he noted, “There’s a vast amount of congressional oversight.”

President’s Program Asks Who Rules Access

“It’s a networked world now,” ALA President John W. Berry remarked at the opening of his President’s Program. “The protocols that enable the Internet to function smoothly have had invisible technological underpinnings. That’s bad news for consumers receiving differential treatment and individuals who don’t care to have their rights invaded by surveillance.” Who will make the rules governing access and control in this networked world? Two keynote speakers grappled with the issues.

Deborah Hurley, director of the Information Infrastructure Project at Harvard University, focused on technical forces. “Every 12 months computing power doubles, while the cost remains constant,” was one law of information processing she cited. Hurley credited the statement to Intel cofounder Gordon E. Moore, adding that it represents a major challenge to librarians, who will have to constantly update their skills as “information editors” in order to help patrons absorb the right information and adapt it to their own lives.

Other laws are equally daunting:

• Gilder’s Law, named after Discovery Institute technotheorist George Gilder, which states that computer bandwidth will triple every nine to 12 months for the next 25 years;
• Metcalfe’s Law, named after Ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe, who proposed that the value of a network increases exponentially as each user is added; and
• the Law of Disruption, expressed by consultants Larry Downes and Chunka Mui in 1998, which states that technological changes are exponential and tend to disrupt social, political, and economic systems that are much slower and incremental.

“Much of this is good news,” said Hurley, “but the bad news is that the intrinsic security of the global network is deteriorating constantly, even hourly.” In fact, the largest number of security breaches in the information infrastructure come from “negligent, ill-trained, or fatigued employees,” she said. “Hackers, crackers, and criminals make up only a small percentage” of the problem.

Hurley predicted that the two biggest unanswered questions of the Information Age involve the ownership and control of this burgeoning sea of data, and the relationship of security levels to the importance of the information. “For example,” she said, “is it necessary to require an iris scan for a $20 ATM withdrawal?”

Cospeaker James J. O’Donnell took a historical approach to questions of the ownership and control of information, but prefaced it by explaining that “what you know is who you are, and whoever else knows what you do is your community. If you control the information, you control the community.”

O’Donnell, who is both a professor of classical studies and vice provost for information systems at the University of Pennsylvania, used the example of the ancient Alexandrian biblical scholar Origen, who “created a place for the interpreter of a text as an authority” with his edition of the Old Testament in Hebrew and Greek. Though his work later served as the basis for Jerome’s Latin translation, 200 years later Origen’s commentaries were criticized by church officials, who branded him a heretic and rounded them up in “the largest single book burning in history,” according to O’Donnell, demonstrating the “instability of the written word unless you tie it down and control it.”

Moving to the present, O’Donnell said, “We live in a moment of time when the holders of the rights of music think they can retain their control over their monopoly.” The music-sharing service Napster has its origins in the community created by the music industry “around the 45 rpm record and radio top-40 lists” where music was “given away for free because it was not copied easily.” It is a networked community, he emphasized, “not a big Xerox machine in the sky cranking out illegal copies of music. . . . Creation of new material is where the action is regarding intellectual property, and it will throw the music industry a curve.”

“In the end,” O’Donnell said, “I believe that there must be heresies, and I believe that history is on the side of the heretics. Libraries are well-served to be the allies of those communities.”

Codrescu Cogitates on Communism

In the third Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture, held in honor of the former Boston Public Library director, writer and National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu offered a glimpse of what life was like under repressive regimes. “I became a writer in a time when censorship was a given,” he said. Under Stalinism, authorities were “always ferreting out subversive ideas, and these changed constantly depending on the interpretations of the state.”

Codrescu, whose most recent book is Casanova in Bohemia (Free Press, March 2002), contrasted the restrictions on free speech in communist Romania with the free-thinking writings of the 18th-century Giacomo Casanova, a first-rate intellect who knew Benjamin Franklin and corresponded and argued with Voltaire and Rousseau. “He also died writing as a librarian,” Codrescu said, adding that in his novel he “intended to rescue Casanova from Fellini.”

“Censorship under communism was the art of adjusting reality to correspond to the worker’s paradise,” he noted, “though it wasn’t until I visited a Wal-Mart that I recognized the world that Karl Marx promised.”

Codrescu was born in Romania in 1946, but emigrated to the United States in 1966 and later became an American citizen. In late December 1989, he returned to his homeland to see what the country was like after the overthrow and execution of President Ceausescu on December 25. Although free speech had triumphed, he said, the newly liberated media were exaggerating the horrors of the final days, “claiming that hundreds of thousands of protesters had been killed, that terrorists were mowing down the crowds, and that ‘the Antichrist died on Christmas Day.’”

Codrescu’s well-known sardonic sense of irony was firmly in place: When his cell phone began ringing during the lecture, he attributed it to the Romanian secret police.

Park, Wiesner Win Newbery, Caldecott

Winners of the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, considered the most prestigious awards in children’s literature, were announced at a January 21 press conference sponsored by ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children.

Linda Sue Park, author of A Single Shard, won the 2002 Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company/Clarion Books, the novel tells the story of Tree-ear, an orphan who lives under a bridge with his wise friend Crane-man, who becomes fascinated with a nearby community of potters.

The Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children went to illustrator and author David Wiesner for The Three Pigs, also published by Houghton Mifflin Company/Clarion Books. In Wiesner’s retelling, the familiar folktale unravels as the pigs are huffed and puffed off the page and into a new world.

Two Newbery Honor Books were chosen: Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath (Farrar Straus Giroux); and Carver: A Life in Poems, by Marilyn Nelson (Front Street).

Caldecott Honor Book illustrators were: Bryan Collier for Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., written by Doreen Rappaport (Hyperion Books for Children/Jump at the Sun); Brian Selznick for The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins: An Illuminating History of Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, Artist and Lecturer, written by Barbara Kerley (Scholastic Press); and Marc Simont, illustrator and author of The Stray Dog (HarperCollins).

Also announced at the briefing:

• Coretta Scott King Author Award to an African-American author (administered by the Coretta Scott King Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table): Mildred D. Taylor, author of The Land (Penguin Putnam/ Phyllis Fogelman Books).
• Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award: Jerry Pinkney, Goin’ Someplace Special (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/An Anne Schwartz Book).
• King/John Steptoe New Talent Award: Jerome Lagarrigue, illustrator of Freedom Summer, written by Deborah Wiles (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/An Anne Schwartz Book).
• King Author Honor Books: Sharon G. Flake, Money Hungry (Hyperion Books for Children/Jump at the Sun), and Marilyn Nelson, Carver: A Life in Poems (Front Street).
• King Illustrator Honor Book: Bryan Collier, Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Hyperion Books for Children/Jump at the Sun).
• Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature for young adults (administered by ALA’s Young Adult Library Association and sponsored by Booklist magazine): An Na, A Step from Heaven (Front Street).
• Printz Honor Books: Jan Greenberg, editor of Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art (Harry N. Adams); Chris Lynch, Freewill (HarperCollins); Peter Dickinson, The Ropemaker (Delacorte Press); and Virginia Euwer Wolff, True Believer (Atheneum Books for Young Readers).
• Robert F. Sibert Award for most distinguished informational book for children (administered by ALSC and sponsored by Bound to Stay Bound Books): Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845–1850 (Houghton Mifflin).
• Sibert Honor Books: Andrea Warren, Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps (HarperCollins); Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, Vincent Van Gogh: Portrait of an Artist (Delacorte Press); and Lynn Curlee, author and illustrator, Brooklyn Bridge (Simon and Schuster/Atheneum Books for Young Readers).
• Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime contribution in writing for young adults (sponsored by School Library Journal and administered by YALSA): Paul Zindel, The Pigman and others.
• Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in children’s video: Dante Di Loreto and Anthony Edwards (Aviator Films), and Willard Carroll and Tom Wilhite (Hyperion Studio), My Louisiana Sky, based on the book by Kimberly Willis Holt.
• Pura Belpré Author Award honoring a Latino author whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience (administered by ALSC and Reforma): Pam Muñoz Ryan, author of Esperanza Rising (Scholastic Press).
• Pura Belpré Illustrator Award: Susan Guevara, Chato and the Party Animals (G.P. Putnam’s Sons).
• Pura Belpré Author Honor Books: Francisco X. Alarcón, Iguanas in the Snow (Children’s Book Press); and Francisco Jiménez, Breaking Through (Houghton Mifflin).
• Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor Book: Joe Cepeda, Juan Bobo Goes to Work (HarperCollins).
• Mildred L. Batchelder Award for the best foreign-language children’s book subsequently translated into English: Carus Publishing/Cricket Books, How I Became an American, originally published in Germany as Das Paradies liegt in Amerika, written by Karen Gündisch, and translated by James Skofield.
• Batchelder Honor Book: Penguin Putnam/Viking, A Book of Coupons, originally published as Joker in French by Susie Morgenstern, illustrations by Serge Bloch, and translated by Gill Rosner.
• May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecturer: Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are and others.

Info Session Addresses 501(c)(6)

Presided over by ALA President John W. Berry, the Council/Executive Board/Membership Information Session opened with a videotaped greeting from ALA Executive Director William Gordon, who was unable to travel to New Orleans because of health problems. His welcome was immediately followed by a second video introducing the newest phase of the Campaign for America’s Libraries, “Rediscover America @ your library,” set to launch during National Library Week.

Patricia Smith, chair of the Budget Analysis and Review Committee, presented BARC’s financial report. “The volatile stock market, massive layoffs in major companies, lower sales tax revenues to local and state governments, huge corporate mergers, consolidations and closings—all of these will ultimately impact library revenues and spending.” Consequently, the Executive Board, BARC, and ALA management decided to reduce the FY 2002 budget by 5%, or $1.3 million, through a series of deferrals, which will be reinstated at the end of the fiscal year if there is no shortfall.

Although it is still early in FY 2002, “all indicators at this point are that ALA will reach budget by the end of the year,” Smith said, pointing out that to date revenues of $8.9 million were 4% less than budget and expenses of $8 million were 26% less than budget. Midwinter registration and booth counts were impressive, and another good sign was a steady 5% increase in membership. “Yet we are still very cautious,” she said, as there are expected shortfalls in areas such as advertising.

Senior endowment trustee Rick Schwieterman said, “It’s been a difficult market, particularly challenging because of the recession as well as 9/11.” The endowment, which grew from $7 million in 1995 to almost $14 million in 2000, decreased $1.4 million in 2001 for two reasons: an overall drop of approximately 6% as well as withdrawals totalling $713,000 for the CIPA suit, the Campaign for America’s Libraries, and the Spectrum Initiative and other scholarships.

Councilor James Casey asked if the portfolio included Enron shares, to which Schwieterman replied, “That’s a very good question and obviously a very sensitive one, and the answer is fortunately no.”

Discussion then shifted to the allied professional association proposal, facilitated by Tom Wilding and Blanche Woolls. Wilding explained the recommendation of the Task Force on the Status of Librarians to expand the definition of the 501(c)(6) association—which was approved for certification by Council last year—to “undertake a variety of activities to support the profession, broadly related to the status and salaries of librarians and other library staff members.”

President Berry commented that it’s generally felt that now is the appropriate time to take this step. Councilor Michael Golrick asked what other library professional associations have done. ALA Senior Associate Executive Director Mary Ghikas answered that many small associations have not made such a split, but that others, often outside the library environment, have, particularly in the last 10 years.

Several councilors expressed approval for the proposal, suggesting it would raise the profile of ALA and encourage membership. Councilors Thaddeus Bejnar and Mary Biblo asked about structural issues: What additional controls would be proposed, and who would determine the policies for the 501(c)(6)? Wilding said the shift would not require restructuring.

Councilor Sue Kamm wanted assurance that the divisions who first brought up the question of certification would be represented when the bylaws were presented for adoption. Sarah Pritchard questioned the budget structure, asking what would be the sources of revenue for the (c)(6), since money originally given to the (c)(3) could not be transferred over. Ghikas explained that they were exploring various options with BARC. One way other associations have handled it is by taking a revenue-generating activity out of the (c)(3) and moving it to the (c)(6) so the “entity becomes a self-funding mechanism.”

Info Execs Look at the Digital Future

The RMG Presidents’ Seminar, a panel discussion on information-industry trends, had a slimmer turnout than usual this year, with only 50–75 curious trend-watchers in attendance. Moderated by RMG Consultants President Rob McGee and now in its 12th year, the event did, as usual, spark freewheeling debates on new technologies, copyright, and privacy among the eight executives on the panel, whose companies provide a variety of products and services to libraries.

Right off the bat, RoweCom President Dick Rowe asserted that “in a relatively short time there will be a major shift from print to electronic information. Current barriers to its use will fall within five years.” Not so, said Ebrary President Chris Warnock: “Print is not going away anytime soon. Books have an artifactual quality that cannot be replicated digitally. Paper lasts. It is in its way a perfect technology.”

There were almost as many library luminaries in the audience as on the panel. One audience member, Bernard Reilly, president of the Center for Research Libraries, a 5.5-million-volume repository of scholarly research materials in Chicago, also took issue with Rowe. “The shift will not occur so fast,” he said. “To preserve digital you have to embrace constant change, and the infrastructure is not yet there” to make this a viable strategy. Panelist Kate Noerr, CEO of search-gateway company MuseGlobal, took the middle ground: “We are entering another era. It will take time to make the transition, but it will gradually happen. Print will be largely replaced.”

VTLS President Vinod Chachra observed that “in the print world it was the community that defined the library collection,” whereas “in the digital world it is the library collection that defines the community.” This elicited a rejoinder from audience member Arthur Brody, founder of Brodart, who admonished the panelists and the audience not to forget that there are real physical communities out there that libraries must serve.

Discussion of e-content vs. print content continued, as Lana Porter, president of Epixtech, concluded that textbooks would be the first major book market to go electronic, and Baker and Taylor President George Coe observed that “the print world is doing well financially.”

From the audience, Marty Keeley of Gaylord Information Services reminded the panelists that “content is king.” However, Rowe immediately countered with, “Context is queen, and increasingly the queen will win out.” He added, “The real benefit will lie in the manipulation and personalization of content. These tools will be the future.”

Panelist Pat Sommers, SIRSI’s new president, observed, “There is always one view that says everything will change. Another view says nothing will change. Both are wrong. Amazon did make a change, but it did not change everything. Bookstores still exist. There will be more and more specialization and micromarketing.” NetLibrary President Rob Kaufman cautioned everyone not to get carried away by visions of techno-euphoria: “The same companies that own the record labels also own the major publishing companies, and they don’t care about libraries.”

King Tribute Recalls His Life and Legacy

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was martyred in 1968, America lost its most effective prophet, declared Kathleen Bethel, Black Caucus of ALA executive board member, at a sunrise observance January 21 on the 16th national holiday in honor of the slain civil rights leader.

Members of the Librarians of Color Caucuses and ethnic round tables, Spectrum scholars, and Association leaders participated in a scripted program based on the theme “A Challenge to America’s Libraries: Ensuring Information Access for All People.” The hour-long 6:30 a.m. event highlighted various excerpts from speeches made by King as well as musical selections sung by Yolanda Beavers.

Virginia Moore, chair of the King Holiday Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table, which sponsored the event along with the Black Caucus of ALA, the Office for Literacy and Outreach Services, and World Book, told the more than 300 in attendance that King’s words correspond to ALA’s mission statements that address equity of access to information.

Representing ALA’s Office for Diversity, Johnnieque B. Love, University of Maryland/College Park libraries, delivered stirring closing remarks, describing King as an “avid reader and patron of the library” who felt that books and libraries were the “instruments to be used for freeing the mind and creating that just and equitable opportunity.”

Love shared what she thought would be King’s words today: “Librarians, you are the keepers or our culture. Your impact extends from the child’s first trip to the library and his first efforts to read, to the layperson trying to find information to complete or build a project for the home. You must lead by leading your colleagues to care deeply, by inspiring, and by persuading. You must become leaders with courage to change your workplaces so that they are inclusive, and your resources are representative of all cultures.”

The program ended with the crowd clasping hands in a huge circle and singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Communicating During a Library Crisis

“Crises always happen on the weekend at four in the afternoon when all the library directors are at home.” This is the Broward County (Fla.) Public Library version of Murphy’s Law, given by Associate Director Kathleen Imhoff at a training session on crisis communications sponsored by ALA’s Public Information Office. Broward was at the center of a media crisis in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks when the library was portrayed as uncooperative with the FBI’s request for BCL’s electronic records (AL, Nov. 2001, p. 13).

Imhoff explained that the FBI had initially contacted the library administration to find out how best to craft a subpoena that would not violate Florida confidentiality laws or directly affect the integrity of the library’s database. “They came back with an acceptable subpoena in six hours,” she said, “but the next day the Miami Herald headline read: ‘Broward County Library refuses to help in terrorist investigation,’ misconstruing everything that had happened.”

CNN then “parked on our front door for a few days,” she said, and “every five minutes they would ask a passing patron, ‘What do you think about your library not helping in the investigation?’” Then on the weekend a circulation clerk answered one of their questions by saying, “Broward County has a diverse population and we believe it’s everyone’s right to use the library.” Imhoff said that CNN’s next newscast spun this as “Broward County believes that terrorists have the right to use the library.”

“After that, we had to issue statements and media Q&As every single day,” she said. “Eventually CNN packed up their trucks and went off. Three weeks later, the Miami Herald had a brief story on page 37 about how helpful the library had been.”

A similar crisis could strike a library anytime, warned crisis consultant Howard Opinsky of the public-relations agency Weber Shandwick in Washington, D.C., in the second part of the session, adding that “smart crisis management is far simpler than rebuilding a damaged reputation.”

Opinsky offered numerous nuggets of advice on how to handle the media during a crisis:

• “There’s no such thing as ‘off the record.’ Assume that anything you say will be on the front page of the paper the next morning.”
• “Just answer one question at a time. Don’t give in to the compulsion to keep talking just to avoid a reporter’s creative use of silence.”
• “I’m not a big fan of ‘No comment.’ There’s usually a better answer for almost anything.”

Reporting for AL: David Dorman, George Eberhart, Gordon Flagg, Pamela Goodes, Amy Jordan, and Leonard Kniffel. Photos by Curtis Compton, George Eberhart, Jennifer Henderson, and Leonard Kniffel.

Midwinter Registration Totals

Registration revenue totaled $605,572, compared to $611,527 last year in Washington.

Placement Center Statistics

Jobs: 318 (The highest number, 147, was for general reference positions.)

Job-seekers: 214