Feedback
By Staff -- Library Journal, 1/15/2006
Uneasy in the Big Easy
The decision-makers of the American Library Association (ALA) are sticking to their agenda: holding the 2006 Annual Conference in New Orleans. Common sense and health issues like the “Katrina cough” should have us feeling uneasy about ALA in the Big Easy. This is the latest example of ALA insiders believing ALA to be a social welfare agency that happens to have “Library” in its name.
In October, our earnest ALA leadership, brothers and sisters with backpacks and briefcases, laptops and lunch plans, made a field trip to post-Katrina New Orleans. Their research must have been pretty darn good, because this SWAT team put the ALA seal of safety on that muddy mess. Yes, their research was dazzling. (After all when they’re not helping those shortchanged by capitalism or they’re not trying to equalize all income for the world’s glorious mosaic of poor people, they sometimes fall back to being librarians and finding…information.)
Louisiana is a state on sort of a permanent vacation from serious business. It’s a state a tad shy on governmental competence and political IQ’s. But our bold social workers in comfortable shoes walked the French Quarter, did their research, and found that the Louisiana Department of Public Health (which I suspect had previously been located in a casino) pronounced New Orleans fit, safe, and ready for 26,000 of us to march in to learn about new cataloging rules and collection development come June 2006.
However, the moist and exotic New Orleans might not be power-washed and safe in June 2006—or ever. It’s a city still struggling, a city not ready for our membership. It’s a city that has been helped by individual ALAers giving to Katrina relief and rebuilding efforts.
Remember, this decision to press on had nothing to do with what is best for convention goers, us—librarians and exhibitors. It had to do with a stubborn vision by the ALA brain trust that the exhibits, enjoyment, comfort, safety, socializing, programming, intellectual stimulation, interaction with colleagues, and wonderful annual discoveries are secondary to bringing social justice to the bayous. How about social justice for underpaid librarians from small, struggling libraries who rely on grants from Friends groups or deplete their personal savings to go to ALA each year and really have pride in doing so? ALA may be their only travel this year. What a destination.
—David Bryant, Director, New Canaan Library, CT
MLA is working on it
…If Cheryl Banick (“Rx for Medical Libraries,” LJ 11/15/05, p. 32-34) was a member of the Medical Library Association (MLA), she would know that the Association is proactive against the threats she lists in her article.
For over ten years MLA has had a representative to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). Each representative has worked and continues to work very hard to ensure that hospital libraries are represented during the survey process at each institution.
Since 1987, the Connecticut Association of Health Sciences Librarians has been actively involved with the Connecticut State Medical Society (CSMS) committee on Continuing Medical Education (CME) Accreditation Council. As part of the survey process, the CSMS assesses the quality of the hospital libraries, along with the rest of the criteria each hospital must meet in order to be accredited to award CME credits to its physicians. In addition, a hospital librarian is a member of every survey team. (See J.C. Gluck and R.A. Hassig, “Raising the Bar: the Importance of Hospital Library Standards in the Continuing Medical Education Accreditation Process,” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 7/01, p. 272–6). Other state health sciences librarians associations have been slow in adopting the Connecticut model; however that doesn’t mean they are not trying to convince their medical societies to adopt it.
National Network: the Official Newsletter of the Hospital Libraries Section of the Medical Library Association; The Journal of Hospital Librarianship; MLA News; and The Journal of the Medical Library Association devote many pages to articles on outreach strategies and cultural shifts affecting the profession.
In her inaugural address MLA Chair M.J. Tooey announced a three-year project to study new roles and opportunities in conjunction with the Hospital Library Section. A full explanation of the project was published in the November/December 2005 issue of MLA News.
I invite Cheryl to join MLA and in particular the Hospital Library Section. The Association and Section always need more members devoted to ensuring that hospital libraries survive for many more years to come.
—Katherine Stemmer Frumento, chair, Hospital Library Section, MLA and Director, Library Services, Greenwich Hospital, Greenwich, CT
