Editorial: ALA Is a Business!
Restore the balance between revenue and service
By John N. Berry III, Editor-in-Chief -- Library Journal, 2/15/2005
"ALA is a business! A big business!" American Library Association (ALA) treasurer Teri Switzer recently announced to the ALA Council. It wasn't the first time I'd heard that assertion. Some ALA officer said the same thing way back in the Sixties, and I've dismissed it ever since. I used to deny it outright, but now that's difficult. Whether or not ALA is a business, a lot of its leaders act as though it is, using the measures of business to chart ALA success.
Treasurer Switzer expressed her concern that the "profit" from ALA conferences had dwindled to a mere 17.5 percent. You can see that when ALA acts like a business, conference costs to members increase. That makes it tougher for members and especially for librarians in the lower ranks.
When I first joined ALA more than four decades ago, it said it was an association governed by the members. I thought of ALA the way Ken Haycock defined "association" in a presentation as the new president of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE): "a group of people who voluntarily come together to solve common problems, meet common needs, and accomplish common goals."
As I became more active in ALA, served on its committees, worked with the Social Responsibilities Round Table to open ALA meetings, even won a couple of ALA awards, I clung to the view that ALA is a democratic association. I believed that membership amplified my voice in the profession and to the public. Now ALA functions more like a business. That direction impinges on the rights of members, proscribed by the constant pressure to produce revenue. Even ALA's crucial salary initiative was expected to support itself.
Sometimes it gets ridiculous, as it did when Mary K. Chelton asked for contributions to a book she's compiling on the discussion list of ALA's Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). She was scolded by the YALSA president: "That particular posting violates the policy because it is a solicitation for a publication that is not an ALA/YALSA publication." Her friend and mine, Dorothy Broderick, a longstanding ALA and YALSA supporter, asked, "Is YALSA in the business of promoting young adult services, or is it just in business?"
When ALA behaves like a commercial enterprise, the purpose of more and more of what it does is simply to generate revenue. Sometimes that produces genuine benefits to members, sometimes it doesn't. As the number of preconference institutes grows, they become more expensive and less accessible. Member dues should purchase much of that education. Conference registration is too costly. Nonetheless, talk of a dues increase hovers over ALA Council.
Now the plan for the Allied Professional Association, created by ALA to protect its tax-exempt status as it moves to lobby for salaries and to offer certification programs for librarians, expects to be totally dependent on the revenue it can generate from its "businesses."
ALA didn't always act like a business, and members can still change that trend. I won't quit ALA because of it. Instead, now when I rejoin each year, I'll redouble my effort to restore some balance between ALA's push for revenue and the needs of ALA members for service. We have to force ALA back to its stated mission: "the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services…to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all."
We must get ALA to spend some of its huge endowment on developing sharper messages advocating libraries and getting them in the media. We have to work to make it less expensive for members to attend conferences, take part in ALA continuing education, and participate in ALA governance. And, yes, we have to make ALA divisions and units into gathering places for like-minded professional experts to improve their practice, not some kind of corporate subsidiaries, initiating revenue streams to flow into their own and ALA's ever-growing bottom lines.
