LJ Report "Orlando ALA 2004": Goodbye, Orlando?

The American Library Association's (ALA) Annual Conference, June 24–30, in steamy Orlando, drew 19,575 people, including 5,739 exhibitors, the lowest total since Miami in 1994, not counting the SARS-shadowed conference in Toronto last year (see statistics, p. 15).

While visitors were able to take advantage of some theme park entertainment—the Scholarship Bash returned, held at Universal Studios—the sprawling site posed some challenges, generating complaints about the cost of transportation, food, and lodging. The Orange County Convention Center is moored on International Drive, the long, touristy strip between the city of Orlando and Walt Disney World, with few hotels within walking distance. "Does anyone live here?" quipped New York University's Howard Besser during one program.

Top issues covered were funding and recruiting, as well as technology implementation, including the increasingly popular RFID. ALA began to confront some organizational issues, including a possible dues increase.

National politics was a hot topic, too. A benefit screening of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 drew a nearly full house to a 2300-seat auditorium. At the Opening General Session, former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, author of the best seller Against All Enemies, gave an impassioned speech, both lament and warning, about America's failure to confront its national security challenges. He criticized the USA PATRIOT Act and urged librarians "to continue to be outspoken." His remarks earned a sustained standing ovation.

ALA members at a Washington Office update got a chance to hear a library champion, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who represents southern Arizona. Recalling that he "grew up as a library rat in Tucson," Grijalva called libraries "a great equalizer in our society." He retains personal ties to libraries: his wife, Ramona, runs a branch of the Tucson-Pima Public Library, and Marisa, one of his three daughters, recently graduated from the Knowledge River program at SIRLS at University of Arizona, Tucson.

If we have the political will to reconstruct Iraq, Grijalva said, we have a corresponding responsibility to meet America's educational needs and support libraries. "To build long-term capacity, we need a dedicated source of funding" for libraries, he added.

At a party to honor Joey Rodger, founding president of the Urban Libraries Council (ULC), ULC supporters announced the Joey Rodger Fund for Library Leadership. They aim to raise $100,000 in annual awards for leadership—an issue Rodger pushed during her tenure, which ended this July with a new job at a peace organization. Nearly half the total has been reached.

ALA's new president, Carol Brey-Casiano, speaking at the gala where she was inaugurated, said she plans to use her year as president to extend ALA advocacy efforts and sharpen library expertise to lobby at the local level. Following the ovation from the audience, Brey-Casiano and her husband, Mark, mounted the bandstand, he on the drums and she out front with her flute. With other band members, they performed "The Girl from Ipanema," to much acclaim.

The Executive Board, at its final meeting in Orlando, asked ALA managers to outline options regarding the next Orlando annual conference, scheduled for 2010. Factors in the decision, noted Mary Ghikas, ALA's senior associate executive director, are the cost of possible contract fees ($172,515 as of July); availability of alternative sites; and changes to the Orlando site (such as additional hotel construction adjacent to the convention center). Ghikas noted that "[e]ach site presents a unique set of challenges—related to price, transportation, weather, cultural attractions, etc."

Patriot Act survey

How much has the USA PATRIOT Act affected the operations of public and academic libraries? Emily Sheketoff, executive director of ALA's Washington Office, announced ALA's plan to sponsor a study on law enforcement access to library records. The organization is raising $250,000 for the study, which would be conducted by researchers from Florida State University's (FSU) School of Information Studies and Syracuse University's School of Information Studies.

FSU's John Carlo Bertot noted that the study would address not only law enforcement visits to libraries but also the overall impact on materials and collections. "Are they asked to remove materials from the circulating collection?" he said. "You talk to people off the record and they say, 'People tell us to remove this environmental study.'"

The study will come in two versions: one for academic libraries, one for public libraries. Bertot said that he expects all academic libraries to be queried, while researchers will conduct a sample of public libraries. The survey will be complemented by interviews and focus groups. While an attempt to modify the Patriot Act failed in July (see News, p. 16), the issue should reemerge next year, with the study as backdrop.

In July, ALA began recruiting members to respond to another survey on how much government officials have tried to search library records. The survey, conducted by the Library Research Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is intended to help a consortium of alternative weekly newspapers prepare an investigative report on the effects of the Patriot Act.

Watching CIPA

Even as libraries began to comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which went into effect July 1, questions remain. As Bob Bocher of the State Library Division in Wisconsin noted at a program on CIPA, there's no benchmark to determine whether any TPM (technological protection measure) meets the requirements of the law—libraries receiving E-rate discounts or LSTA funds for Internet service block obscenity, child pornography, and (for minors) "harmful to minors" material.

Filtering trends vary widely. Tamara Georgick of the Washington State Library noted that while most libraries in the state are filtering, they're not CIPA-complaint. "CIPA compliance is really not the issue in Washington, because we have such cheap telecomm service." She noted that the King County Library System is CIPA-compliant, even though people can bring laptops in for unfiltered wireless service. (The law addresses library computers.)

North Dakota state librarian Doris Ott reported that 43 public libraries have chosen to participate in a centralized filter operated by the state library and the North Dakota Information Technology Department.

Judith Krug, director of ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), said OIF would conduct an informal survey of CIPA compliance to make sure that librarians were turning off the filter upon the request of adults, as the Supreme Court decision indicates. "I have heard some horror stories," she said, citing one in which an adult asked the librarian for the filter to be turned off and was told the request had to go to a committee that wouldn't meet for two weeks. The survey, prepared in conjunction with the Center for Democracy and Technology, is expected to be completed by the end of the summer.

Top trends

As usual, "Top Technology Trends," sponsored by the Library & Information Technology Association, drew a big crowd. Eric Lease Morgan of the University of Notre Dame, noted that libraries need electronic resource management (ERM) systems and recommended open source software. Vanderbilt University's Marshall Breeding wondered why it had taken libraries so long to identify ERM as a priority. "It was a crisis in 1998, when one-third of our budgets were going to electronic resources," he observed. "Why did we let ourselves get into this predicament?"

Breeding also alerted listeners to an open source project: an effort by Georgia's PINES consortium, which encompasses 249 public libraries statewide, to create an automation system. He noted that library automation continues to improve, with Java now in wide use on the client side, replacing Windows.

Roy Tennant, user services architect for the California Digital Library, expressed amazement at how cheap and portable storage has become—and the importance of reaching users via their handheld devices. "When a person can carry more storage on their person than we once had on our desktops, what does this mean for library services?" mused Tennant, LJ Digital Libraries columnist, who hopes that we are entering the golden age of digital libraries.

Joan Frye Williams, "not the token woman on the panel but the token public librarian," said that libraries should consider their web sites as a branch. Williams offered cautions about the trend toward self-check (Home Depot has given it a lousy reputation) and touch screens ("they don't lend themselves to bibliographic data"). She reminded listeners to focus on user wants: "We express love by pouring more information on you. But people are walking away from what we are putting out there."

The little chip that could?

Two programs on RFID (radio frequency identification) devices drew public librarians looking to streamline circulation operations and academic librarians looking for improved collection management. Many were motivated to look closely at RFID because of an impending building project or a major renovation.

With the ongoing community outcry over the San Francisco Public Library's (SFPL) RFID initiative serving as a backdrop, privacy was on everyone's mind—except, perhaps, the vendors, who were armed with ready, if conflicting, answers. Veterans of early barcode initiatives questioned the stability of the transmitters, the interoperability of systems, the stability of the RFID vendors, and impending changes in technology and pricing.

James Lichtenberg of Lightspeed, LLC, a consultancy to publishers, observed that RFID may be either "the next big thing" or a "train wreck." Challenges include the development of standards, confusion in the corporate landscape, and the development of new levels of middleware to manage RFIDs. Librarians and booksellers have different needs: librarians want persistent chips with long life spans while retail operations want chips they can "blast" or neutralize at the point of purchase.

The Book Industry Study Group has issued a draft of an RFID policy with four proactive principles about privacy, including keeping personal information separate for the data recorded on or with RFID tags and the protections of data by reasonable safeguard from unauthorized third parties. The policies were developed with ALA's Office of Information Technology and OIF and the National Information Standards Organization.

Why choose RFID? Responses included consolidating service points, reassigning staff, and meeting the expectations of a self-service society. The University of Nevada at Las Vegas's (UNLV) Jennifer Fabbi reported that handheld readers give staff "huge capabilities," particularly for in-depth inventory and usage questions.

Orange crush

The Orange County Convention Center show floor was like Orange County itself—hot, sprawling, and hard to get around. Still, the paucity of nearby hotels and places to walk to or eat meant that the exhibit floor drew light but steady numbers. Exhibitors told LJ that they were pleased with the traffic, with those in attendance focusing on doing business.

In past shows, the flow of traffic was heaviest on Saturday and shrunk each day until closing. Recently, however, attendees have gotten a second wind after the weekend, and Mondays have become the second busiest day. ALA attempted to bring bodies onto the show floor with its Super Tuesday promotion, by holding raffles, but several vendors queried by LJ said that the effort did little to bolster Tuesday's numbers.

To lure folks to a booth, exhibitors often give away something valuable. For publishers, that means author signings. Many publishers still view ALA as a show for children's books, though the number of adult authors has been increasing, including appearances at the "Auditorium Speaker Series."

Random House, HarperCollins, and Viking enjoyed a steady stream of traffic thanks to the presence of its adult authors, ranging from Debra Ginsberg and Mary Kay Andrews to E.L Doctorow, signing in their booths. Random's booth seemed perpetually crowded, as adult authors often signed in tandem.

Libraries' growing interest in graphic novels was evidenced by the crowds swarming the section for graphic novels and manga, where publishers like DC Comics and Dark Horse drew greater traffic than many larger publishers.

Some hot new products by tech vendors also created good energy on the floor (see InfoTech, p. 30 for a full report). For tech vendors and others, raffles are a surefire way to draw traffic.

It's the money!

The threat of a dues increase—and attendant fear of membership losses—hovered in the Orlando air. ALA has a revenue problem. It was heard at sessions of the ALA Executive Board and in the reports of the treasurer and the Budget Analysis and Review Committee (BARC) to both the board and the Council. BARC warned that ALA might end the current fiscal year with revenues $1.2 million below budget. The current budget—just under $49 million—could not include the $50,000 to print the ALA Handbook, a much-criticized plan that is likely to be reversed.

The $50,000 in operating funds needed for the Spectrum Institute, an annual gathering of the scholarship winners, would be allocated from Spectrum Scholarship Funds rather than the ALA operating budget. This, too, was angrily opposed and is likely to be reversed.

As for the new Allied Professional Association (ALA-APA), its revenue fell woefully short of projections. Only $13,280 has been raised. It is expected that selling certification and $35 annual subscriptions to the new publication Library Worklife will make up for the shortfall, but in the corridors and cocktail hours of Orlando there was talk, again, of having an APA membership and charging dues.

ALA's Endowment

Trustees were openly hostile to a decision to seek $1 million from the ALA endowment, which now totals about $20 million, to make the down payment on a building to house the ALA Washington Office, a purchase that is expected to save ALA substantial rent. By conference end it appeared that a compromise would be struck that includes some way of repaying the endowment.

Values, quorum, torture

With wisdom rare in its deliberations, the ALA Council approved the report of its Core Values Task Force II, chaired by Pat Schuman, former ALA president and president of Neal-Schuman Publishers. Thus ended years of debate and deliberation.

The task force listed 11 values (access, confidentiality/privacy, democracy, diversity, education and lifelong learning, intellectual freedom, preservation, the public good, professionalism, service, and social responsibility) extracted from existing ALA policies. "It would be difficult, if not impossible, to express our values more eloquently than ALA already has," said the report.

At the urging of its Committee on Legislation (COL), the Council expressed ALA's concerns about the designation "sensitive information." The designation is applied without public hearings or review under the E-Government Act of 2002 to information developed by government agencies believing that public access to such information would be compromise national security.

A new committee on Rural and Tribal Library Resources was created at the request of the ALA Task Force on Rural, School, and Tribal Public Libraries. The responsibility for initiatives relating to such libraries will be assigned to the new committee, which will reside in ALA's Office for Library Outreach Services.

The Council put ALA on record as condemning the use of torture by the U.S. government to extract information from detainees, "as a barbarous violation of human rights, intellectual freedom, and the rule of law." After extensive debate, the resolution, proposed by Councilor Mark Rosenzweig, passed by a vote of 75 to 46. Another resolution, by councilors Rosenzweig and Al Kagan, opposing the U.S. occupation of Iraq, was defeated 55 to 39. Most opposition to both measures was on the basis that they were "not library issues."

Whither social activism?

In an effort to be able to hold an official Membership Meeting at ALA conferences, the Council lowered the quorum to 75. Such meetings refer issues on member resolutions to the ALA Council when a quorum is achieved. For the past several conferences, the meetings have attracted fewer than 200 members and failed to meet quorum requirements. As a result, only unofficial discussions have taken place.

The first membership meeting addressed "ALA and Social Activism: Where To Draw the Line." LJ's John Berry espoused the "more active" side of the argument by outlining the history of the Social Responsibilities Round Table and some of the issues that ALA, or groups of individual ALA members, have addressed. "Every social issue is a library issue," he said, because libraries are intended to inform a democratic society. "Where we draw the line is an exercise of our democratic vote."

Jim Rettig of the University of Richmond, VA, said that ALA has a profound social responsibility to "promote library issues," among which he included First Amendment arguments and CIPA as well as access to information issues, protection of the public's right to know, and preservation of the public's privacy. ALA should "speak and act on issues where our authority and knowledge are in our expertise," he said. It was all right for ALA Council to pass a resolution on Iraqi libraries, despite the foreign policy implications, he said. But what would we accomplish if we create a policy on women as sex slaves? "Don't dilute the authority and trust of ALA," he cautioned. Audience reaction to both was mixed.

The second membership meeting allowed members to provide input on the early states of strategic planning for ALA 2010. A planning consultant/facilitator introduced the format and provided excellent handouts to structure the conversation. Attendees broke into small discussion groups but were given only 15 minutes to list concerns. The reports were predictable—focus on funding, salaries of librarians, recruitment to the profession, etc. Once again, the crowd numbered fewer than 200.

Meet the boomers

With a population including 40.2 million people age 65 and older by the year 2010, some 35 percent will consider themselves "middle aged," and libraries will have to adjust, observed Connie Van Fleet, associate professor, School of Library & Information Studies, University of Oklahoma. One-third of these boomers think that new learning is very important to "vital aging," 80 percent will work at least part-time, and 49 percent say they will do volunteer work.

Allan Kleiman, head of reference at the Westfield Memorial Library, NJ, observed that senior centers are unpopular because of their name, and libraries can be a new home for aging baby boomers. There will be collection development implications, along with the need for new, welcoming spaces. Boomers are used to being in control, so let them help design library programs, suggested Diantha Schull of the Americans for Libraries Council/Libraries for the Future.

Disney style

The usual offerings of marketing sessions were supplemented by advice from a local authority—the Disney Corporation. The presenters at "Service Disney Style," longtime Disney employees, emphasized the similarities between Disney and libraries: meeting the needs of diverse customers, memorable service, and attention to detail. They advised developing a set of priorities appropriate to one's culture and communicating them staffwide.

A group of librarians protested, condemning Disney for censorship, copyright abuse, and corporate irresponsibility over allowing its merchandise to be produced in sweatshops. Libraries have the best customer service in the world, said the protesters, and shouldn't embrace a corporate model that "assumes every public good is for sale."

Recruiting

Several panels addressed efforts to recruit new academic librarians, from new mentors for Spectrum Scholars to plans to recruit humanities Ph.D.-holders. Ray English, director of libraries at Oberlin College, OH, discussed the first year of the Mellon Librarian Recruitment Program, which has awarded Oberlin and five other libraries $500,000 for a collaborative project that aims to recruit undergraduates to libraries. The other libraries are at the Atlanta University Center (serving Clark University and Morehouse and Spelman colleges) and Mount Holyoke, Occidental, Swarthmore, and Wellesley colleges.

At Oberlin, English said, the target group has been student assistants, who already know something about the library. In the fall, they explored an issue through facilitated small group discussions. He noted that the topic was the Patriot Act. "Our students could see our profession taking a national lead on this," he said. "Our mantra is: we're not training librarians, we're trying to recruit people. We're trying to replace stereotypes with a more realistic picture of what the profession is."

Toward the future

A capacity crowd heard a panel speak on "The Future of Libraries: Disappearing Libraries and Invisible Librarians." Clifford Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information noted that libraries will diverge in maintaining the twin responsibilities of access and stewardship. He said that major research libraries are starting to ask how much they should invest in stewardship and how much they should "kick off" to national libraries. Lynch further observed that research libraries will devote much more effort to managing content that is created by scholarly communities but doesn't pass through publishers—including institutional repositories.

Richard Sweeney of the New Jersey Institution of Technology, offered a twist on Roy Tennant's dictum about how users care less about searching than finding. "I would add a third level," Sweeney said. "It's about learning." He posited a new role for libraries: fostering "accelerated learning" tools that enhance and speed a student's learning process. "We have an opportunity," he said. "The whole area of information literacy hasn't really happened."

Howard Besser of NYU sees a role for libraries in preserving digital communication. "Much of the history of science and literature is analyzing different drafts of particular work. Who keeps every draft when your word processor changes them? Even if they're doing drafts, how is that going to end up in a special collection?" Who's going to keep these things? "Maybe it's your role to start working on these things for your university."

Open access

International discussion of open access issues has heated up in the last few months (see News, p. 16), and some sparks flew at a panel in Orlando. "The whole debate has been turned into David vs. Goliath," declared Arie Jongejan, CEO of Elsevier Science & Technology, the Goliath in this market. "Parties like the Wellcome Trust [a supporter of open access] are not talking about coexistence." He offered some cautions on open access, which he said might lead to a "bias to accept" articles. He also noted that the movement may not be financially sustainable, notwithstanding high-profile, well-funded entrants like PloS Biology from the Public Library of Science (PLoS).

Jongejan was backed up by Anthony Durniak of IEEE, who warned, "Free open access runs the risk of destroying professional societies." Andy Gass of PLoS responded, "Genuine open access articles are those whose prospective digital use is unlimited," noting, for example, that those writing for such journals "have no interest in suing copy shops." Also warmly received by the audience was Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford University law professor who chairs the Creative Commons project and stressed that copyright not be used to block those who wish to build on creative work.