Mitch Freedman Reflects
By Staff -- Library Journal, 06/15/2005
Maurice J. (Mitch) Freedman, director of the Westchester Library System (WLS), NY, will retire at the end of August after 23 years in the job. An automation veteran, Freedman helped automate WLS and later implemented the WESTLYNX catalog, which spurred resource sharing (see "Technology and Teamwork," LJ 9/1/00, p. 160–163).
As a successful write-in candidate for the presidency of the American Library Association (ALA) for 2002–03, Freedman pushed for pay equity and better salaries for library workers and brought a notable set of politically left authors—Barbara Ehrenreich, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, and Ralph Nader—to speak at ALA conferences. Freedman spoke to LJ's Norman Oder about the state of library systems in New York, the salaries initiative, and his own plans.
LJ: Do you think ALA is perceived as a left-wing organization?
MJF: By far-right people, it is. I think Council is relatively conservative. People who get elected to offices are more progressive than those Council elects to the national Executive Board. There wasn't a condemnation on the war in Iraq, and that wouldn't have made them left-wing anyway, given the range of people who condemned the war in Iraq.
