Elections

We are pleased to announce the slate of candidates for the 2024-2025 ALA Core election. The Core election will open on Monday, March 11, 2024 and will continue through Wednesday, April 3, 2024. Learn more about the ALA election and ALA candidates.

All Core members in good standing as of January 31, 2024, are eligible to participate and vote in this election. Members will receive an email from ALA with information about how to vote online. The election results will be announced on Monday, April 8, 2024.The Core ballot will include candidates for three Board positions: President-Elect and two Directors-at-Large, as well as one Section position: Metadata and Collections Chair-Elect.

The Core President is elected to a three-year term that begins at the conclusion of the 2024 ALA Annual Conference and ends at the conclusion of the 2027 ALA Annual Conference, serving one year each as President-Elect (2024–2025), President (2025–2026), and Immediate Past-President (2026–2027). The Directors-at-Large are elected to three-year terms, 2024–2027.  The Metadata and Collections Chair is elected to a one-year term that begins at the conclusion of the 2024 ALA Annual Conference and ends at the conclusion of the 2025 ALA Annual Conference.

View the recording of the Core Candidates Open House held on Monday, March 11 from 2:00pm - 3:00pm CT.


Candidates for Core President-Elect


Don Allgeier

DirectorHeadshot of Don Allgeier
Tillamook County Library
Tillamook, OR

Hello. I am running for Core President‐elect because I believe in the mission of the division and the importance of library leadership, infrastructure, and futures. I have worked in public libraries for almost 20 years, starting on the front lines shelving materials and progressing into circulation, reference, and management. Today, I work as a director for a rural county library system on the coast of Oregon. I love my job because it fuses together the work of directly serving the community with strategic planning. That connection between the work and the strategy of an organization is vital and must be cultivated with intention. As Core President‐elect, I would seek to continue developing the division with an eye toward prioritizing efforts that will enhance Core as a welcoming, connected, and inclusive organization. I am committed to the current Core strategic plan for increasing member value, career‐building, recognition, and organizational alignment. These goals need to be informed by the voices of membership both current and prospective to find their best expression. If elected, I will be committed to listening to member voices and using that engagement to support the work of our division. Thank you for your consideration, and I hope that we get a chance to connect in the months ahead. 

Read Don's candidate interview.

 

Kevin A.R. King

Director
East Lansing Public Library
East Lansing, MI

When I hear the word "Core," I immediately think of the center of the Earth ‐ a magma‐filled place with spewing flames, waiting to erupt. Your Core Division is quickly becoming a hotbed of innovation regarding leadership, infrastructure, and the future of librarianship. This explosion of new ideas comes directly from a membership committed to library core services. We are a division that embraces new ways of thinking about how best to serve our communities. Throughout my career, I have been devoted to feeding the innovative flames of others and harnessing that heat to fuel growth. I have served on multiple professional development and conference planning committees, advocating for the best ideas to teach and inspire. My priorities as your Core President would be to provide opportunities for the membership to create and implement ideas that promote the division's mission. This goal would include continuing to codify the new practices, policies, and procedures that empower the membership to activate meaningful change. Core is on the verge of a massive eruption of knowledge. The next Core President will have the task of working with the Board of Directors to divert this important flow of passion, intelligence, and innovation to ALA's entire membership. My over 25 years in the profession have given me the chance to lead and foster the growth of new ideas, like the Core Division. If elected to lead, I will promote the idea that Core is the place to explore the future. Jules Verne in JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH wrote, “What darkness to you is light to me." I ask that no matter who you vote for in this election, you share with others that Core is the division to play with fire safely.

Read Kevin's candidate interview.

 


 

Candidates for Core Director-at-Large

Cara Calabrese

Acquisitions & Access Librarian
Miami University
Oxford, OH

I want to be a member of the Core Board so I can help guild how the Division is continuing to grow. I want to ensure the Division’s financial health as well as make sure there are pathways for other Divisions and Roundtable to partner with Core. ALA is a large organization and helping our members to find pathways to the resources and training they need while being able to connect them to colleagues in their areas of specialization and from other areas of the library world makes Core great. Being able to see the work the Board does as an Ex Officio member has made me want to be able to engage and contribute more. Now that I’ve got Core as my ALA home, I want to make sure it thrives so others can continue to feel welcomed, supported, and that they are actively contributing to the profession like I have in our Division.

Read Cara's candidate interview.

 

Amy Swartz

Head of Library Technology
Columbia Law School
New York, NY


Core is my home in ALA. I want to foster growth for Core, and help it become the community where others feel most welcome within the larger professional organization. Since Core’s formation, I have worked on various committees that focus on professional growth and member engagement, mostly within the technology section. This culminated in a year spent as Co‐chair of the Technology Section Leadership team. Today I serve on the Bylaws and Organization Committee, because I believe that having solid policies is an important foundation—and I enjoy the unglamorous work that any organization needs to have done to move people and projects forward. I would be honored to continue working to strengthen this division as a member of the Board of Directors.

Read Amy's candidate interview.

 

Denise R. Lyons

Commissioner and State Librarian
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives
Lexington, KY

I am a live‐out‐loud librarian which means that I am always on board for highlighting the amazing work of libraries. We cannot be quiet about the important work that is being done and so I serve as a catalyst for the work of libraries, educators, and archives. We have stories to tell and I want to tell them. I am a progressive, creative, and innovative leader. The most sustainable organizations are those with strong partnerships and so I build relationships in every possible way. I listen to those around me, surround myself with the most qualified people, and feel a strong commitment to the work I do and the people who benefit. I seek to serve in Core leadership because I believe that I can lend my voice to the organization so that we can build strong leaders looking to create a strong future for libraries and our partners.

Read Denise's candidate interview.

 

Kerry Walton

Associate Dean for Academic Services (Interim), Electronic Resources Librarian
West Chester University
Phoenixville, PA

Alleviating concerns and identifying solutions are areas of strength I will rely on in the role of Core Director at Large. I believe in the power of dialogue and transparent communication to resolve problems, identify areas for improvement or change, and to offer space for individuals to 
contribute. I will bring my values of transparency, inclusivity, and responsiveness to the role of engaging the Board and members of Core in accomplishing work across all areas. The innovative work Core addresses involves constant change. It will be important to address continued areas of change for Core and its members but also be responsive to evolving and emergent needs. Supporting libraries and professionals through change is work I am passionate about and I am eager to contribute through this role in Core by cultivating relationships, building knowledge and expertise, and being a champion for all libraries as they engage in the important work Core supports.

Read Kerry's candidate interview.

 


 

Candidates for Core Metadata and Collections Section Chair-Elect

Emily Fidelman

Head of Metadata Services
West Virginia University
Morgantown, WV

Librarianship has recently faced adversity in the United States, whose citizens have questioned the value of public funding for education and related services and the trust they can place in purported "truths." Increased adoption of commercial search has resulted in widespread disinformation, with visible social consequences. While metadata initially fell into disfavor in web‐based commercial search because it could be manipulated by tag‐stuffing and spam, in library domains, it continued to provide an alternative to link popularity for relevance ranking. Now, to compete with search based on link popularity, metadata has begun transitioning to linked data, surfacing library resources selected for credibility and emerging or differing points of view by expressing these topics as linked entities. However, we have seen that circumventing spam by leveraging links did not prevent and has perhaps amplified the proliferation of misleading narratives and questionable science online. We have seen that commercial search drives traffic disproportionately to the most popular and thereby profitable information, unless it is subscription based and prohibitively priced. Now‐‐ when we have increased computing to control for spam outside of stewarded domains, and when we see the results of search privileging connections over diverse attributes‐‐ is the time to revisit metadata as perhaps not the only mechanism for discovery, but as a means of benchmarking other approaches, especially linked data and the artificial neural networks that could soon be based on structured entities. This becomes all the more important as open publishing mandates force vendors to sell indexing rather than content and to choose whether algorithms based on metadata or link popularity are the most competitive. My leadership will reflect these considerations in pursuit of a Metadata Reawakening, positioning the Section's work at the fore of wider professional efforts to combat disinformation and reestablish trust in publicly accessible information.

 

Scott A. Opasik

Director of Access Support
Indiana University South  Bend
South Bend, IN


As chair elect my goals are to help current Core Metadata and Collections Division committees fulfill their charges and to move the Metadata and Collections Division in the direction that meets the professional and educational needs of its membership.

 

 


ALA Election

Core Members Running for ALA President-Elect

The ALA Presidential Candidates Virtual Forum was held on Wednesday, February 8. Each candidate had the opportunity to share a statement and answer questions from members.

Core Members Running for ALA Council

  • Michele Fenton
  • Charles Kratz
  • Anne Larrivee
  • Mike Marlin
  • Christina Rodriques
  • Brian Shottlaender
  • Natalie Starosta
  • Eric Suess
  • James Teliha