American Libraries

California Dreamin’
in Sunny San Diego

ALA Midwinter Meeting,
January 9–14, 2004

• Introduction
• Rodriguez Defies Racial Categories
• Librarians Hold Key to CIPA Controls
• DiCamillo, Gerstein Win Top Awards
• Copyright Experts Tout Value of P2P
• CEOs Ponder Learning Milieus
• Mastretta, Berry Reveal Selves
• Black Caucus Bestows Literary Awards
• King Observance Upholds Equal Access
• Legislative Update Focuses on Advocacy
• Affirmative Action Law Reviewed
• EBSCO Assesses Government Info
• Lubetzky, Morris Remembered
• Extra Earnings in Academic Libraries
• Midwinter Registration Totals

It’s not just all the leaves that are brown, according to keynote speaker Richard Rodriguez, it’s most of America, which can no longer be racially reduced to black and white. The old song “California Dreamin’” rang true in many ways for the 10,762 attendees at the Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association as they went for a walk on a winter’s day in San Diego January 9–14. Many, unlike the preacher, hated the cold and happily left record-low temperatures behind to fly west for the conference.

Delivering the annual Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture, Rodriguez noted that "grandmothers and libraries know the true history of America." The author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America (Viking, 2002) observed that Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of racial equality remains unfulfilled partly because the racial history of this country is a largely untold story retained in the memories of grandparents or waiting to be discovered in books.

"The library gave me that; it taught me how to be brown," Rodriguez told a standing-room-only crowd, describing a nation in which conventional labels like "black," "white," "Hispanic," and "Native American" are no longer adequate, and imagining people free to be themselves, instead of fitting into predetermined categories. His witty and idealistic speech was one of the highlights of the conference.

Key issues, events

The casting off of racial constraints wasn’t the only dream revisited in sunny California. Although attendance figures marked a decrease from Midwinter 2003 in Philadelphia, which saw 13,664 registrants, there was no decrease in hot topics that prompted the profession’s movers and shakers to rally behind such key concerns as equity of access to information, diversity in collections and services, continuous education, intellectual freedom, and literacy.

On a practical level, the Midwinter Meeting brings ALA members together to plan the Association’s Annual Conference and to update librarians on legislative issues, current topics, and Association business. The exhibit hall featured a variety of new products and services, many of which were spotlighted in a Technology Showcase in two theaters in the San Diego Convention Center. (See Technically Speaking for an exhibit hall news roundup.)

At the Library of Congress exhibit, Mary-Jane Deeb talked about her recent trip to Iraq as part of an LC mission to assess war damage to libraries (AL, Feb., p. 13). She showed photographs and said the most important thing she learned from the trip was that many Iraqi librarians did everything they could to protect their collections. Much of what was portrayed as looting in early press reports was actually library staff moving materials in order to hide and protect them. Deeb also said other so-called looting incidents were carefully orchestrated by Saddam Hussein’s supporters to destroy unflattering records in the Republican archives.

The San Diego conference also featured the annual Newbery/Caldecott and other youth book and media awards, the Best-Selling Authors Forum with Bertice Berry and Ángeles Mastretta, as well as several Friends of Libraries USA events with other prominent authors. ALA President Carla Hayden presented "Living in a Post-CIPA World," a panel discussion on the impact of the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Children’s Internet Protection Act.

San Diego’s boom

In the midst of a library building and expansion program that defies the national library funding dilemma, San Diego proved to be such a library-friendly locale that the ALA governing Council passed a special tribute to the city council and Mayor Dick Murphy, commending them for a "library improvement program that will strongly benefit all residents of San Diego." A $312.3-million financing package has been approved for the improvements, and the state has awarded a $20-million grant to help fund construction of a new main library.

SDPL Director Anna Tatár told American Libraries that even in the midst of the paralyzing budget crisis that grips most of the nation, the expansion and unprecedented financial support San Diego libraries are enjoying is a dream coming true. "When the program is complete" she said, "it will provide San Diego residents with one of the best library systems in the United States and will be a model for the nation." The new main library is expected to be completed in 2007.

In an early-morning press conference January 9 U.S. Representative Randy "Duke" (R-Calif.) Cunningham announced that he had secured $100,000 in federal funding for the Serra Cooperative Library System (Carlsbad City Library, San Diego County Library, and Escondido and San Diego Public Libraries) to offer free, live, online homework help from Tutor.com, in English and Spanish, to patrons on-site or in their homes seven days a week. "The number-one reason teens visit libraries is to complete homework assignments during after-school hours," said Cunningham, "and Tutor.com will help them do just that."

Betty Waznis, principal librarian for San Diego County Library, thanked Cunningham and Tutor.com CEO George Cigale, saying, "It may not seem like a lot of money to you, but it’s a lot of money to us." Cunningham’s daughter, April Cunningham, a librarian at National University in San Diego, attended the event with her father.

Too nice to stay indoors

Although sunny San Diego put conferees in a good mood, it may also have been the reason exhibit traffic was reportedly slow—so slow, in fact, that it prompted the Exhibits Round Table to complain to the ALA Executive Board that there was simply not enough no-conflict time to lure people into the show. Nevertheless, many exhibiters reported high-quality, if not high-quantity, traffic.

In the midst of grappling with the adoption of a set of core values for the profession of librarianship, ALA Council considered rescinding a little-used motto crafted by founding father Melvil Dewey and adopted by the Association in 1892: "The best reading, for the largest number, at the least cost." While some councilors claimed that it was paternalistic and outdated, others argued that the motto applies to the priorities of library professionals as much today as ever, and the body voted 98–52 to retain it.

Council approved honorary membership for librarians Norman Horrocks, SLIS professor emeritus at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, and Sanford Berman, cataloging guru whose career at Hennepin County (Minn.) Library ended amid controversy in 1999 (AL, June/July 1999, p. 36). The Association’s highest honor will be bestowed at this summer’s Annual Conference in Orlando.

"The bad news is that revenue decreased from 2002," reported ALA Treasurer Teri Switzer. She told Council that although the Association’s revenue declined last year, expenses were reduced even more, allowing ALA to realize a positive net gain of $115,000. Budget Analysis and Review Committee Chair Patricia Smith credited Headquarters staff for tracking financial information, making astute budget adjustments, and enacting "tough and painful" cuts. (See Council report.)

The ALA Store enjoyed brisk sales, netting $69,000. The store showcased new ALA Editions books and classic backlist titles featured in the new ALA Editions winter 2004 catalog. Among the many store bestsellers were Fundamentals of Collection Development by Peggy Johnson and Putting XML to Work in the Library by Dick R. Miller and Kevin S. Clarke. The new Orlando Bloom Celebrity Read poster was by far the most popular ALA Graphics product, with the poster and bookmark selling out in record time.

Other ALA Store successes include the new do-it-yourself Read poster CD, Dewey coffee mug, librarian action figure, and the collectible conference bear. Nancy Pearl, the model for the action figure (AL, Feb., p. 72), was at the store on Saturday signing copies of her new book, Book Lust (Sasquatch Books, 2003), and new author-series poster from ALA Graphics. Divisional titles, including the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Assessing Student Learning Outcomes for Information Literacy, were also a hit, as was Booklist Publications’ 60 Years of Notable Children’s Books.

The "@ your library" public-awareness campaign conducted a daylong workshop, hosted by the Marketing Academic and Research Libraries Committee of ALA’s Association of College and Research Libraries and featuring the latest tools and strategies for implementing the academic arm of the Campaign for America’s Libraries.

Ethnic caucuses

ALA’s five ethnic caucuses selected Dallas and the city’s Adam’s Mark Hotel as the location of the first-ever Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (AL, Apr. 2003, p. 8). At a Midwinter session, the conference steering committee amended the previously released conference dates of October 12–15, 2006, to October 11–15 in order to accommodate preconference activities. A site-selection team, headed by John Ayala, considered and visited several cities in the central-tier states in December. JCLC cochairs Gladys Smiley Bell and Kenneth Yamashita said the hotel’s "strong commitment to staff development, the diversity of management support, and the support of the ethnic caucuses were the factors of greatest influence in the decision-making process."

The Coretta Scott King Task Force, sponsors of the King Awards honoring African-American authors and illustrators, voted to break from ALA’s Social Responsibilities Round Table and move to the Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table. CSK Task Force chair Fran Ware said that EMIERT’s missions are more "closely aligned" to the task force. EMIERT has a "clearly defined emphasis on ethnic materials and awards that matches the focus of the task force," she said, and the round table "hosts and sponsors forums and programs that discuss key issues of ethnicity and materials of interest to the task force."

The board of directors of the Library Administration and Management Association launched an initiative to "re-imagine" the ALA division at its Saturday meeting. The brainstorming included the possibility of renaming the association to include the word "leadership." The ongoing re-imagining will look at how LAMA is perceived and structured, the ways in which issues are engaged and products and services are delivered, and how leadership development will take shape in the future.

The following are recaps of representative events during the Midwinter Meeting.

Rodriguez Defies Racial Categories

"When I read James Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name, I entered Harlem. The library gave me that. It taught me how to be brown," said author and PBS commentator Richard Rodriguez at the Curley Lecture, "The Color Brown and the Meaning of the Library."

America is "browning," Rodriguez explained, defining and playing with the word "brown" and the way it embodies the extraordinary mix of complexions and cultures that thrives in the United States. Hispanic, his own ethnic background, he said, "comes in all colors—black, white, Asian, indigenous. But all things brown in time. America is browning, color is melting, food is melting, religion is melting."

Rodriguez noted that the "choose one" practice of the U.S. Census Bureau has reached an impasse. Too many Americans belong in more than one category, and they are refusing to choose in order to please bureaucrats.
"I don’t want to be Hispanic," he stated, "I want to be me." When PBS’s Bill Moyers once asked him to declare whether he thinks of himself as American or Hispanic, he quipped that his answer was, "I think of myself as Chinese."

Always unpredictable, Rodriguez took issue with Americans who, when asked about their ethnicity, respond that they are "nothing" or "mongrels." It’s only because they have not gone to the library and investigated "the complicated stories of America," which grow more complicated by the minute, as evidenced by the creation of the tofu burrito, he joked, which enables you "to gain and lose weight at the same time."

Libraries are social centers "where Vietnamese meets Hispanic," he observed. "The primary business of libraries is not information, it’s human relationships." It is at the library where children meet great writers who can show them what it’s like to be someone else. He also urged librarians not to segregate materials on shelves designated "Latin American" or "African American" as bookstores do.

"Libraries are inherently brown," Rodriguez said, urging the crowd to support a "Brown History Month" that celebrates the American mixing of races and cultures, that helps people "learn to be flexible, to live side by side."

The Curley Lecture is presented by the ALA Public Awareness Advisory Committee, with the support of the Simmons College GSLIS and contributions from ALA members. Arthur Curley was ALA president in 1994–95 and devoted his career to the promulgation of good literature.

Librarians Hold Key to CIPA Controls

"The future of libraries is in helping everyone learn to think like a librarian," argued Omar Wasow, NBC and National Public Radio technology analyst and executive director of BlackPlanet.com. Wasow was one of several speakers who discussed the long-term impact of CIPA on libraries at the President’s Program, "Living in a Post-CIPA World," hosted by ALA President Carla Hayden and sponsored by Dynix.

"We really need to think about how CIPA is part of this broader transformation of libraries, where new technology, and particularly the Internet, is forcing us to rethink what a library does, what a library is," Wasow maintained.

Providing what he called the "nerd’s eye view" of the convergence of technology and libraries, Wasow predicted that the impact of CIPA will become less and less relevant. "People are going to be able to get online in a lot of different places," he said. "So that also poses a very difficult question for libraries. The real skill that allows you to succeed in an information society is not the ability to get online, it’s the ability to think critically."

"The first great victory of libraries was the democratization of information," he added. "The challenge going forward for libraries is to democratize the expertise that all of you have developed."

Alan B. Davidson, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C., discussed the decisions libraries will have to make by July 1 regarding CIPA-mandated Internet-filter installation.

"We have a huge job to do in educating patrons about what their rights and responsibilities are under CIPA," Davidson said. "Librarians need to demand library-appropriate filtering technology from vendors. There is an implementation program. It’s not just a matter of picking the right product. It’s a matter of how you set that product up, how you use that product."

"If you filter, do so in a manner that provides the greatest possible access to protected speech," advised Charlie Parker, executive director of the Tampa Bay Library Consortium in Florida. "Select the categories carefully, choose only those that correspond with the requirements of the law. Be on the lookout for newer and better ones."

Filtering products should be handled like "management platforms, not black box sensors," Parker advised. "Any product that a library should be considering for purchase should support the ability to create local lists of things that the filter product would block but you don’t think that you need to."

"CIPA is not the story here," Parker asserted, indicating that more technology is needed in disadvantaged communities, low-income neighborhoods, and rural areas. "It’s about the public use of technology in libraries," he said. "We need to provide commercial electronic-information products free in every school and every library."

According to Dan Lulich, executive director of safety, security, and privacy for America Online, CIPA can be viewed as either a mandate or an opportunity. "I think that it actually might be an opportunity to put librarians back into the driver’s seat. The Web is difficult and it’s hard to research and it’s hard to reference. Librarians are uniquely positioned to bring order—the order that everyone finds in a library—to the Web."

DiCamillo, Gerstein Win Top Awards

The writer of a story about a tiny mouse in love with a princess and the writer/illustrator of a true-life story about a young Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center were named respective winners of the Newbery and Caldecott medals honoring children’s literature. The announcement came during the Midwinter Meeting in San Diego.

Kate DiCamillo garnered the John Newbery medal for The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, published by Candlewick Press. The book recounts the adventures of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse condemned for talking to the princess that he loves; a servant girl with royal aspirations; and a devious rat determined to bring them all to ruin.

Mordicai Gerstein took the Randolph Caldecott prize for his ink and oil paintings that illustrate The Man Who Walked between the Towers, published by Roaring Brook Press, a lyrical evocation of Philippe Petit’s daring 1974 tightrope walk. The Newbery and Caldecott are administered by ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC).

Angela Johnson, author of The First Part Last, and Ashley Bryan, illustrator and author of Beautiful Blackbird, earned Coretta Scott King Awards recognizing African-American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children and young adults. Johnson’s book, published by Simon and Schuster, tells the story of Bobby, a 16-year-old artist and single parent raising his daughter alone. Johnson also won this year’s Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature for young adults. Bryan’s adaptation of a folktale from the Ila-speaking people of Zambia, accompanied by vividly colored paper collages of birds, was published by Atheneum.

Other awardees were:

• Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award to authors and/or illustrators at the beginning of their career as children’s book creators: Hope Anita Smith for The Way a Door Closes (Henry Holt) and Elbrite Brown, illustrator, and Judy Cox, author, for My Family Plays Music (Holiday House).
• Robert F. Sibert Award for the most distinguished informational book for children (administered ALSC and sponsored by Bound to Stay Bound Books): Jim Murphy for An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Clarion).
• Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime contribution to writing for young adults (sponsored by School Library Journal and administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association): Ursula K. LeGuin, author of the Earthsea fantasy series (published from 1968 to 1990), The Left Hand of Darkness (Walker, 1969), and The Beginning Place (Harper & Row, 1980).
• Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in children’s video: Paul R. Gagne and Melissa Reilly of Weston Woods Studios, producers of Giggle, Giggle, Quack, based on the picture book by Doreen Cronin and illustrated by Betsy Lewin.
• Pura Belpré Author Award for Latino authors whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in a children’s book (administered by ALSC and Reforma): Julia Alvarez for Before We Were Free (Knopf).
• Pura Belpré Illustrator Award: Yuyi Morales, illustrator and author of Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book (Chronicle).
• Mildred L. Batchelder Award to a publisher for the best foreign-language children’s book subsequently translated into English: Walter Lorraine Books for Run, Boy, Run, originally published in Hebrew in 2001 as Ruts, yeled, ruts, written by Uri Orlev and translated into English by Hillel Halkin.
• May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecturer: Richard Jackson, editor of books for children and young adults and editorial director of Richard Jackson Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster’s Atheneum division.

ALA’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered Round Table also announced the winners of the 2004 Stonewall Book Awards. Monique Truong, author of The Book of Salt, is the winner of the Barbara Gittings Book Award in Literature, and historian John D’Emilio, author of Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, is the winner of the Israel Fishman Book Award for Nonfiction.

More information about the various ALA book award lists is available at www.ala.org.

Copyright Experts Tout Value of P2P

"The instinct to share is hard to stamp out," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, at a Washington Office breakout session addressing peer-to-peer (P2P) technology and its effects on libraries. Even if there were no P2P technology, "file sharing as a problem to the recording industry would continue to exist," he noted, pointing to instant messaging and recordable CDs and DVDs.

Von Lohmann compared the arguments leveled against P2P software vendors today to claims made about the first VCRs—that the ability of the technology to copy programming is an infringement of copyright. In the landmark 1984 case of Sony Corporation v. Universal Studios, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that creators and distributors of technology could not be held liable under copyright law as long as a technology was "capable of substantial noninfringing uses."

"There are a lot of people out there who are using these technologies in order to avoid going to Tower Records and paying for their music," von Lohmann acknowledged. "Applied to them, I think traditional copyright law says that they are potentially liable." But, he added, there are also plenty of fair uses, and because P2P software allows you to "move the most expensive pieces—storage and bandwidth—out to the user community," it offers "enormous potential benefit to libraries and archives, especially as those institutions struggle to make multimedia content available."

"We don’t know at time X how technology will be used at time X + 10," von Lohmann said. If we create conditions where "companies aren’t able to build new technologies unless they first obtain consent from copyright industries . . . that, frankly, would be a terrible outcome."

"We are talking here about very powerful, multipurpose technology that is integral and essential to education, to research, to scholarship, to social discourse, to the information commons . . . to all of the things that are critical to having the kind of society we all want to live in," said Adam Eisgrau, former legislative counsel to the Washington Office and now executive director of P2P United, a group of five peer-to-peer companies that represents the industry to policy makers.

The notion that intellectual property is the same as real or tangible property "has become ingrained in current policy-making bodies and has become, if not dogma, at least accepted lore," Eisgrau said. "Unfortunately, historically, legally, and otherwise, it’s just wrong."

P2P United’s goal is "to convince legislators that we take this stuff, ironically, as seriously as the copyright interests do, if for slightly different reasons," he said. Among the beliefs the group works to counter:

• that P2P technology singlehandedly is the cause of the rapid decline of American recording-industry sales worldwide;
• that installing P2P software on a computer will jeopardize the security of the owner’s personal information and the contents of the entire hard drive; and
• that the industry is irresponsible, and that P2P technology and the people who produce it "are tantamount to being themselves pornographers, and particularly child pornographers."

Eisgrau said that Congress has the responsibility to "not simply pass what would amount to feel-good legislation and essentially legislate us out of business, but which takes into account the fact that copyright law is supposed to be about incentives and rewards and encouraging progress in science and the arts."

When looking at a new technology that is used, at least initially, to infringe on copyrights, he said, "you still shouldn’t ban that technology . . . because you give up too much. You give up, in fact, what you don’t know you’re giving up, and that may be the biggest reason not to."

CEOs Ponder Learning Milieus

Seven chief executive officers for library-related companies gathered for "View from the Top," the 14th annual Presidents’ Seminar. Sponsored by RMG Consultants, the three-hour session attracted about 100 people for a discussion of "Managing Content in Library and Learning Environments."

Libraries are being expected to manage digital content to support school curriculums, said Ed Walker, CEO of the nonprofit IMS Global Learning Consortium, explaining that the "learning industry" encompasses three "areas of functionality: general abilities, education services, and specific interaction." These parts have to work together, he said, as a business model.

Walker noted that "Google makes people impatient with barriers to functionality in integrated learning systems, and the Internet perpetuates the notion that content is free. Companies must understand that access to content needs to be open and universal, that people must be able to receive it on demand, and there must be interoperability between systems." The library of the future will remain a physical space, he said, but it will be "bricks and clicks."

One overarching question evolved from Walker’s observations: "What is content?" Vinod Chachra, CEO of VTLS and the one panelist who has participated in all 14 RMG "View from the Top" programs, summed it up nicely: "You know it when you find it." This led to a discussion of the library’s role in preserving "unstructured data" and making it accessible.

Bob Walton, chairman of Ex Libris USA, noted, to general agreement, that "library technology has been the most successful introduced into higher education."

Isoph Corporation CEO Jeff Cobb observed that content and context are equally important. "Technology has blown apart how learning happens," he said, "and the division between the codified learner and the codified teacher has broken down."

Walton also noted that "technology has outpaced our ability to restructure," with regard to both space and staffing.

Dynix President and CEO Jack Blount said, "Libraries are learning centers. They have to change their space to reflect the variety of content inside."

Walton told a questioner in the audience that companies do not invest enough in the "learning path of librarians. They just have to suck it up." He warned that "tech dollars are going to diminish. Teaching systems rather than learning systems will succeed."

"Integrated library systems will shift to intelligent library services," Chachra added, meaning that systems must understand the profiles of their users. Panelists agreed that software design should support human-to-human interaction.

Other members of the panel were Roland Dietz of Endeavor Information Systems and Greg Ritter of Blackboard. RMG President Rob McGee moderated.

Mastretta, Berry Reveal Selves

Ángeles Mastretta and Bertice Berry shared much about themselves—personally and professionally—at their joint appearance during the annual ALA Best-Selling Authors Forum.

Mastretta, who read excerpts from her book Women with Big Eyes (Riverhead Books, 2003), began her talk by answering questions about herself. "Why do I write? I write because I’m obliged to do so. I enjoy writing and thinking about life, about love and disenchantment." Indicating that the characters of her book frequently live in the past, Mastretta said, "I write about the problems in the past, to better the present."

"I would love to meet and talk to Jane Austen, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Oscar Wilde," she revealed. "I’d like to visit 17th-century Venice. I miss my children’s childhood and my father."

"I am honored to be here," Berry enthusiastically told the crowd. "I have a special place in my heart for all of you. You saved my life. You get to deal with those in the population who like to read a lot and people who have no place to go and I was both of those at one time."

"As a kid," Berry said after singing a meditation reflecting on peace and healing, "I cleaned houses before school and in the evening, and in between I went to the library. Librarians are like Morpheus in The Matrix. When I was a kid, my desire was to travel and I got to do that in books."

Indicating that there is a librarian in every book she writes, Berry said her latest novel, Jim and Louella’s Homemade Heart-Fix Remedy (Doubleday, 2002) recently won a "best erotica" award, "which is embarrassing because I didn’t know I was writing erotica."

"The sad thing in this country is that we often look at librarians as somebody’s babysitter or just a person who watches those nobody wants to take care of," Berry maintained. "Librarians are modern-day wise people who are keepers of the wisdom and the weather of the culture and, if that dies, what’s going to happen?"

Black Caucus Bestows Literary Awards

Hottentot Venus (Bantam Doubleday Dell) by Barbara Chase-Riboud and In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. (Knopf) by Wil Haygood are the fiction and nonfiction winners of the 2004 Black Caucus of ALA (BCALA) Literary Awards. Announced in San Diego, the awards recognize excellence in adult fiction and nonfiction by African-American authors.

In Hottentot Venus, Chase-Riboud recounts the harrowing true story of Sarah Baartman, a young Khoekhoe woman from South Africa. In Black and White chronicles the career of Sammy Davis Jr. from 4-year-old vaudeville performer to one of the country’s leading entertainers.

Two fiction honor books were named: Loving Donovan: A Novel in Three Stories (Dutton) by Bernice L. McFadden and Joshua’s Bible (Walk Worthy Press) by Shelly Leanne. Nonfiction honor books were: Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights (Ballantine) by Tananarive Due and Patricia Stephens Due and Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement (Univ. of North Carolina Press) by Barbara Ransby.

The recipient of the BCALA First Novelist Award is Edward P. Jones for The Known World (Amistad Press), which tells the story of former slave Henry Townsend, who rises to become a powerful plantation owner and slaveholder himself.

For excellence in scholarship, the awards committee presented the Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation to Michael D. Harris for Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representations (Univ. of North Carolina Press). The book explores the role of visual representation in the construction of black identities in the United States.

King Observance Upholds Equal Access

Herb Cawthorne, vice president of operations at the Southeastern Economic Development Corporation in San Diego, provided a stirring rendition of Martin Luther King Jr.’s words at the fifth annual 2004 Sunrise Celebration, marking the slain civil rights leader’s 75th birthday.

Cawthorne, whose son Jon is associate university librarian at San Diego State University, was a news anchor at KGTV, the San Diego ABC affiliate, and has previously performed King’s speeches and works.

ALA Honorary Member Lucille Thomas (AL, Sept. 2003, p. 61) told the early-morning crowd that Cawthorne’s presentation provided an "emotional journey" into King’s life and work. She then spoke on the observance theme "A Challenge to America’s Libraries: Ensuring Information Access for All People."

"American libraries continue to be challenged to ensure equal access of information to all people—whether they are geographically isolated, have disabilities, are rural or suburban poor, new or nonreaders, or those who have been discriminated against based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, language, or racial class," Thomas said.

"What would King’s expectation of librarians be today?" Thomas asked. "He would ask if libraries are providing equal access to information for all. He would remind us that at this promising moment in our history, we have an extraordinary legacy upon which to build, with unmatched resources and unmatched strength to provide quality of access to information to all."

Thomas said librarians should be working to ensure information to "disconnected youth, building bridges that span the stream of ignorance and connect people with collective knowledge to satisfy the intellectual and social needs of our communities."

"Library boards must make policies that serve as the underpinnings of velocity of library services for the human race," she added. "It is their responsibility to ensure adequate funds for the operation of the library—investigating sources of income to maximize governmental support as well as cultivating the support of the community and the Friends of the library."

"No matter where you stand at this moment," Thomas concluded, "you can be a volunteer, serve as a coach, mentor, or docent. Commitment is what transfers or transforms a promise into a reality."

The King Holiday Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table and the Black Caucus of ALA sponsor the annual King Sunrise Celebration; it is administered by ALA’s Office for Literacy and Outreach Services.

Legislative Update Focuses on Advocacy

Jan Sanders, chair of the Committee on Legislation, kicked off a fast-paced ALA Washington Office briefing session by urging attendees to stay current on legislative issues in order to become more effective library advocates in their communities. Nearly a dozen speakers then offered updates on key legislation and available resources and tools, and predictions about some of the major issues of concern to librarians.

With so many materials moving into digital form today, said attorney Leslie Harris, "there is enormous opportunity for library patrons—not just people with disabilities, but [those with] low vision, senior citizens, people with mobility issues—to have more access than they might’ve had in a traditional print environment; however, there are a lot of structural and financial barriers to making that happen." Harris, who works with ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) to monitor issues of accessibility, highlighted many of those issues that had been brought into the policy arena in the previous six months—including proposed legislation that would establish a single standard for accessibility—and noted that OITP was scheduled to launch an online tutorial on accessibility in March.

After a very long fight, the reauthorization of the Library Services and Technology Act was signed September 25, Washington Office Director Emily Sheketoff reported. "Now it’s on to getting the money." However, even if the proposed funding agreement passes, the $158 million in LSTA state grants won’t be enough to implement the new formula, and she urged librarians and their allies to advocate strongly for two changes: $300 million for LSTA next year, along with the full funding of Improving Literacy Through School Libraries at $200 million.

Sheketoff announced that a legislative scorecard—showing how senators and representatives from each state voted on issues of interest to librarians—is now available online.

Charlie Parker, chair of ALA’s E-Rate Task Force, noted some of the tools available online to help libraries that receive e-rate funding to comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act, yet minimize overblocking. "None of us chose CIPA," he acknowledged "But we’ve got it, and what the task force is trying to do is to help practitioners that have to work with it to deal with it effectively."

Miriam Nisbet, legislative counsel for ALA Washington Office, identified a number of developments concerning copyright, including several international treaty negotiations. "Libraries have been very involved in writing comments, talking to, and getting input to the U.S. Trade Representative . . . to ensure that there’s language for libraries to continue to be able to do what they need to do in terms of providing access to information, preserving information, providing services that we have to provide," she said.

Another big issue is peer-to-peer file sharing, Nisbet noted, "not because we support illegal use of these file-sharing services, not because we support copyright infringement; to the contrary, we do believe very strongly in procedural fairness, which is very much an issue in these lawsuits recently, and we also very much care that we don’t have an overreaction to piracy that cuts back on what we are able to do traditionally through copyright law."

"We’re getting under the skin of John Ashcroft, and that’s okay," said Patrice McDermott, deputy director of ALA’s Office of Government Relations, noting that over 200 states, localities, and counties have passed resolutions opposing the USA Patriot Act. She pointed out that three new bills in Congress work to fix certain provisions of the Patriot Act, and those introduced after the ALA Annual Conference last June specifically address the section "that we have not been talking about as much as we should have"—section 505, which allows the FBI to get transactional records from any place that provides electronic or wire communication service. "We thought at first this meant only those libraries that serve as Internet service providers for their community would need to be concerned, but have been told that’s not how the FBI interprets the law," McDermott said.

OITP Director Rick Weingarten concluded the session with a look into the future. "Over the next few years, there is going to have to be a major rethinking of telecommunications policy," he predicted, identifying four major trends: increasing controls on access to information, a growing assault on anonymity and privacy, a collision in the area of telecommunications, and the privatization of policy.

Affirmative-Action Law Reviewed

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2003 landmark decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger that struck down racial admissions preferences at the University of Michigan have wide-reaching implications, even for the nation’s libraries, according to panelists who addressed the topic at the "Libraries and Affirmative Action: An Update" program.

Tracie Hall, director of ALA’s Office for Diversity (OFD), shared information on several judicial rulings and pointed out the implications for professional and educational affirmative action and diversity issues. She also directed the audience to her editorial, "The Burden of Right," in Versed (see AL, Jan., p. 10), the office’s new publication.

"Our profession cannot afford to sit the affirmative action conversation out," Hall wrote. "Nor can we resign ourselves to recent trends that seek to reduce diversity to a ‘business case ’ as if we can ever successfully quantify the feeling someone gets when they nervously enter a library for some needed document and discover they can find help in their native language; or calculate the degree of resonance someone feels when a library hosts a program or author that speaks to and validates their personal life experiences."

"Obtaining a diverse student body is not, on its face, the goal of libraries," argued panelist Daniel Eaton, employment-law specialist and partner in the litigation department of Seltzer Caplan McMahon Vitek in San Diego, who provided an overview of affirmative action and an interpretation of the recent court rulings. The question remains to what extent the rationale of the Grutter case applies to libraries, specifically "what other interests the court may use to deem sufficiently compelling to justify the use of race-conscious programs."

Eaton said libraries that are in the midst of redesigning their overall affirmative-action programs should consider adopting the Mayo Clinic’s advice to those struggling to keep a New Year’s resolution—plan ahead, write it down somewhere where you can see it every day, tell someone, and take baby steps.

When discussing affirmative action and quotas in hiring practices, Kathleen (K.G.) Ouye, city librarian at San Mateo (Calif.) Public Library, advised librarians to be on the lookout for new code words, such as diversity, language abilities, criteria, bias, and prejudice—"some of which have positive or negative sides depending on who’s saying them and how they are used." She also warned against those who "pit one race against another" and added that librarians must "learn when to keep our mouths shut" in order to avoid potential legal problems.

Ouye suggested that libraries maintain a dedicated recruiting staff and create their own models. "Everyone in the organization has to market," she said, recommending that staff-interview workshops be held to teach employees how to go through an interview process and to listen for words that may indicate there is some kind of bias in the hiring process.

"Even within the legalities," Ouye maintained, "we sometimes get fearful of what is a legal question. I believe we are too timid, that we don’t challenge the legal limits."

ALA’s OFD, Office for Human Resource Development and Recruitment, Office for Literacy and Outreach Services, and Human Resources Department sponsored the program.

EBSCO Assesses Government Info

"This will be a Power Point–free program," joked Sarah C. Michalak, introducing the EBSCO Executive Seminar in the beautiful University Club Atop Symphony Towers in downtown San Diego. The apparently presentation-weary audience responded with applause.

Government resources are sprawling, said Michalak, director of the Marriott Library at the University of Utah, but the future of those resources is in question. Research libraries must safeguard access to these materials, she urged, alluding to a survey of 123 regional and selective depository libraries in the Federal Depository Library Program.

The survey revealed that 7% of selective depositories and 14% of regionals have considered dropping their depository status, 31% are undertaking digital projects, and 52% are undertaking collaborative projects of various kinds. According to the survey, the mean cost of being a depository library is $345,000.

Speaker Nancy Baker, university librarian at the University of Iowa, reviewed the results of a 2003 Association of Research Libraries survey and noted trends toward consolidating documents access with regular reference-desk service and downsizing print holdings as more documents become available in electronic format. She said general reference librarians need to be trained in how to access government documents, and document delivery must be viewed as a service component.

Kenneth Frazier, director of libraries for the University of Wisconsin at Madison, talked about ARL’s national digitization plan for retrospective government documents, noting that "nobody wants to pay and everybody wants to ride." He said depository libraries must evolve to accommodate the burgeoning demand for digital access to government documents and must establish a coordinating mechanism, initiative, or organization for a North American Digitization Plan for historical documents. "We need to let the world know that we’re going to start and we’re not going to stop," he said.

EBSCO Vice President and Division General Manager for Information Services F. Dixon Brooke Jr. introduced the seminar, noting that the company was celebrating its 60th year of serving the library community.

Lubetzky, Morris Remembered

Seymour Lubetzky, whose contributions to cataloging ultimately led to the development of the 1967 Anglo-American Cataloging Rules and who is often recognized as the foremost cataloging theorist of the 20th century, and William C. Morris, former vice president and director of library promotion at HarperCollins Children’s Books, were honored by colleagues in separate memorial tributes during Midwinter.

Lubetzky, who died April 5, 2003 (AL, May 2003, p. 67), at age 104, was repeatedly noted for his brilliant mind and passion for scholarship. But he also proved true the idea that "people with great minds have big hearts," said Elaine Svenonius, information studies professor emerita at the University of California at Los Angeles.

"Everywhere I turn I find myself walking a path that he started," said Barbara Tillett, chief of cataloging policy and support for the Library of Congress. "His legacy will live on through the development of AACR3."

Children’s librarians, writers, and publishers affectionately remembered Morris, a much-beloved colleague who died September 28, 2003, at age 74 (AL, Dec. 2003, p. 82). Credited with revolutionizing the marketing of children’s books, Morris "represented the best of publishing: decency, civility, compassion, concern, and dedication," said Mimi Kayden, consultant for Chronicle Books and North-South Books.

Caroline Ward, youth services coordinator for the Ferguson Library in Stamford, Connecticut, surmised that Morris, who attended ALA conferences for more than 40 years, loved librarians because "we were the
ultimate book people, and he adored book people."

Extra Earnings in Academic Libraries

While academic libraries have gotten more involved in fundraising in the last 30 years, "donors aren’t the only potential source of new revenue," advised Steve Coffman, vice president of business development for Library Systems and Services Incorporated, at an Association of College and Research Libraries Fee-based Information Service Centers in Academic Libraries (FISCAL) discussion group session.

The University of Pennsylvania museum, for example, generates approximately 30% of its income—a median of $5.61 per visitor—through its café and catering service, a gift store, publications, and a travel department. Libraries on average are nowhere near that amount, "but some are trying," Coffman said. Speakers detailed some of the steps their libraries had taken toward finding those other income sources.

Down 100 staff and with a budget cut by 20%, Boston Public Library looked to entrepreneurial activities, in part "for self-reliance," said BPL President Bernard Margolis, who described the library’s successes with an online store and two restaurants. Through a licensing arrangement with Zazzle.com, the store sells cards, posters, prints, and mugs utilizing 3,000 digitized images from the library’s collections. Because items are made overnight, the store requires no inventory and no warehousing, Margolis said.

The biggest resistance to the restaurants "has been our own staff," he noted. "Clearly, the public loves the idea of eating in a library," an idea that "has been taboo for so long, so we try to capitalize on that."

William E. Brown, associate director for public services at the University of California at Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, said that the UCB library was also an early partner with Zazzle, and that its costs were minimal because the deal required no additional staff and used already digitized images from an earlier grant-funded project.

The library’s Free Speech Movement Café, Brown said, came about through an endowment that also established a digitized archive of the Free Speech Movement. Despite an early protest over the lack of availability of organic foods in the café—"only at Berkeley could we open the café with a demonstration by the people who gave the money," he joked—the café has been extremely successful, with profits of 400% more than projected.

Reporting for American Libraries are: Gordon Flagg, Pamela Goodes, Amy Jordan, and Leonard Kniffel. Photographs by Curtis Compton and others.

Midwinter Registration Totals

Registration revenue totaled $601,761, compared to $597,080 last year in Philadelphia.

Placement Center Statistics

Jobs: 129 (The highest number, 23, was for general reference positions.) This compared to 196 jobs last year in New Orleans.

Job-seekers: 197 (The highest number, 145, interested in reference positions.) This compared to 293 job-seekers in New Orleans.