Saying 'Yes' to NO

By Teresa Koltzenburg | A library in New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
    When you come here, you're going to find libraries raising themselves up from the dust. We're down, but we're not out. We're working very diligently trying to put our libraries back on the map, back into the situation we were in before—even better than we were before. You're going to find that some of us have made more progress than others, but there will always be the spirit of hope.—Dr. Mary Penny, Library Director, Southern University of New Orleans
ALA Annual 2006 is just over a month away, and our Conference Services Team has recently added the ALA Helps to Revitalize New Orleans video to the NO Frequently Asked Questions site. The video includes interviews with ALA President-Elect Leslie Burger, ALA President Michael Gorman, as well as a few librarians and writers who call New Orleans home.

Burger explains in the video, "When we evaluated the situation post-Katrina, we sent a group of people down to take a look, to assess whether or not we thought the city would be ready to accommodate us by June 2006. When we came here in October, we were sufficiently impressed with the progress that had been made to that point to say, 'Okay! We're going to do it.' More importantly, I think it says something about the association's willingness to invest its resources in rebuilding New Orleans. When we come here with 20,000 people in June, we hope that they will contribute about twenty to twenty-two million dollars in economic benefit to the city, and that's really important."

You can view the seven-minute video via RealPlayer or QuickTime.
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