EPA Officials Make Nice at ALA

At Midwinter Meeting, Council shies away from politicization

By John Berry, Francine Fialkoff, Rebecca Miller, Norman Oder, & Michael Rogers -- Library Journal, 3/1/2007

Seattle—chilly and hilly but with a booming downtown around the Seattle Public Library’s Central Library and the Washington State Convention and Trade Center—proved a solid draw for the American Library Association’s (ALA) Midwinter Meeting. More than 12,100 librarians and others—including a record-setting 539 exhibitors—attended, well over the 11,084 in San Antonio in 2006 but fewer than the 13,232 attendees in Boston in 2005.

ALA leaders were buoyed by several things. The organization’s endowment has grown from $25.5 million to $29 million in one year. The ALA-APA (Allied Professional Association), while still in the hole financially, is finally experiencing positive net revenues. A new Democratic Congress is expected to favor legislation friendly to libraries or at least resist Republican encroachments on issues such as privacy. And Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) representatives appeared in force, contrite about communication over library closings.

It’s clearly a time of change. Library 2.0 services remain a hot issue—here come podcasts and wikis and much more, even as a large audience at a memorial service honored Fred Kilgour, the far-seeing founder of OCLC. Libraries are taking additional cues from bookstores, and publishers are recognizing the library market, giving out more adult galleys than at previous meetings. “I wouldn’t be here without libraries,” observed publisher Peter Wiley. Integrally involved with the San Francisco Public Library’s Friends and Foundation and an author himself, Wiley celebrated the 200th anniversary of the steadily expanding John Wiley & Sons at a party at Seattle’s Experience Music Project.

TIME magazine columnist Joe Klein, presenting the Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture, offered some harsh and sobering observations about the administration of George W. Bush. While he acknowledged that “I know this is tough” in certain communities, Klein told librarians “you should have displays and programs, front and center, about Islam and about the region. We’re in a long-term conflict with Islamic extremism.” He acknowledged librarians as the “curators” of the habits of citizenship that we as a society have lost.

EPA officials, mindful of the steady criticism regarding the decision to close five of 26 agency libraries, said they won’t close more libraries without further consultation. “We have reengaged,” said Mike Flynn, of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Information. He said the EPA had been ineffective in communicating its plans to rely more on electronic documents. “As we move forward, EPA is in the process of analyzing and seeking stakeholder input.”

Flynn met with a welcoming but skeptical response from several librarians, some of whom reported difficulty in getting EPA documents via interlibrary loan or who said that scientists they work with have been frustrated by the closures of physical libraries. Flynn said that unique EPA-created documents from the closed libraries should all have been digitized by the end of January, and while some documents might have been unavailable in the “early stages,” now the agency has a tracking system. He also agreed that representatives from ALA and other library organizations should review the quality of the agency’s digitization.

On February 6, the EPA library issue became a hotly partisan debate during a hearing held by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. EPA administrator Stephen Johnson said that the libraries were being closed because few people used them and the documents within them were being digitized. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), however, confronted Johnson with internal documents that suggested that EPA staffers at one library were ordered to throw away scientific journals, according to the AP. ALA president Leslie Burger commented, “While having the information digitized is indeed important, it should not be the driving force behind shuttering the libraries and, thus, taking from the public one of the libraries’ most important assets: the librarians.”

The ALA Council welcomed some resolutions that specifically involved library service but shied away from other politically charged resolutions that were deemed not mission-critical. Council adopted resolutions opposing legislation that infringes on the rights of anyone (including immigrants) to use library resources and another supporting the role that libraries play—now more than ever—in providing e-government and emergency services.

However, Council defeated by a significant margin a resolution calling for ALA to back Congressional efforts to withhold funds for the war in Iraq and to support the impeachment of President George W. Bush. Burger initially considered the latter resolution out of order, distracting from the core business of the organization, and Council agreed. Later, she apologized, recognizing that several members considered it significant and allowed discussion and a vote.

Another resolution called for ALA to suspend any affiliation with the Boy Scouts of America National Council until the group changes its policies that exclude atheists and gays. However, the resolution was directed to the Association for Library Service to Children so the division can clarify its position before a vote.

The Congressional change in power has meant fiscal gridlock, and most programs, including the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), have been frozen at FY06 levels, a step back for libraries. For FY07, the President recommended and the House of Representatives concurred in directing $171.5 million in grants to state library agencies. This modest boost of nearly $8 million would have finally allowed the full implementation of a formula Congress enacted in 2003 to raise the base for small states.

A few weeks later came better news, as President Bush’s FY08 budget for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) includes $214,432,000 for library grant programs, an increase of $10,914,000 from the FY06 appropriation. This includes an increase of $7.8 million for the Grants to States program, bringing it to the needed benchmark of $171.5 million.

The request also includes $26.5 million for the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program, a $2.74 million increase over 2006. Some $4 million is requested to conduct research and statistics programs called for in the 2003 reauthorization of the Museum and Library Services Act.

The convention center’s proximity to wonderful shopping and good eating beyond the typical show floor offerings catapulted it above most of the ALA meeting spaces in recent years. Even a two-room exhibit floor, generally disastrous for those vendors exiled to the “other” space, proved a draw, with both halls enjoying fairly steady traffic throughout the weekend—with an especially brisk Saturday flow despite the often crowd-stealing Friday night opening.

The show floor, which offered free Wi-Fi (although many complained that Internet service was sloooow), was crowded yet roomy. Google preferred a more subdued presence than at last summer’s annual conference in New Orleans, but local companies Microsoft and Amazon helped pick up the slack. Random House produced sf superstars Timothy Zahn and R.A. Salvatore (who is on his local library board) and had a dozen fully outfitted Star Wars Imperial Storm Troopers and other baddies accompanying the writers at their Friday night signing.

Base salary of $40K?

The ALA-APA voted unanimously to endorse a nonbinding minimum salary for professional librarians of not less than $40,000 a year. Before the measure passed, it engendered some spirited commentary.

Councilor Michael McGrorty, who moved the resolution, described it as “a standard to try to rise to.” While the salary figure mirrors the minimum established by the National Education Association for public school teachers, some ALA-APA councilors, however, wondered whether the comparison was apt, because teachers often don’t have master’s degrees. Some suggested that the term professional should be specified as those holding LIS degrees from accredited schools.

But no one was ready to alter the text before a vote, nor did anyone reconsider the $40,000 floor. After all, as Vicki Gregory, director of the School of Library and Information Science, University of South Florida, Tampa, noted, LJ had recently reported that starting pay for LIS graduates tops $40,000.

The perils and promise of mass digitization, libraries’ forays into social networking, and the future of the OPAC all generated lively discussion during ALA’s Top Technology Trends discussion. Actually, some of the chatter began earlier, thanks to the postings (on the blog of the Library and Information Technology Association [LITA] at www.litablog.org) by participants who couldn’t attend.

“I believe that OCLC is angling to produce a fully functional ILS,” declared Sarah Houghton-Jan (Librarian in Black blogger), citing the potential of “baby steps—a web interface here, an integrated [interlibrary loan] system there” and hoping “that the result is cheap, easily installed, and intuitive.” Karen Schneider (Free Range Librarian blogger) mused that the library world might evolve to where OCLC produces an ILS for libraries that can’t afford to or don’t need to maintain software, while others use an open source system.

Evergreen, the new open source system adopted last fall by 250 libraries in Georgia, got mixed reviews. “I believe that September 5, 2006, will long be remembered as the day when the ILS world irrevocably changed,” declared Roy Tennant of the California Digital Library (and LJ columnist). But Schneider cautioned that “open source software is more like 'free kittens’ than 'free beer.’ It still needs to be maintained and updated.”

Clifford Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information observed that the “underlying conception of the ILS is very deeply conflicted and flawed” when it comes to digital content and suggested that open source might not be “massively cheaper or massively better.”

Tennant observed that the grand digitization projects by Google and the Open Content Alliance present “massive opportunities and massive challenges,” suggesting that “we need to be thinking about this issue long and hard.”

Lynch wondered whether libraries’ presence on sites like MySpace and Facebook is “an attempt to jump on the next trendy thing.” He suggested that a move to Second Life “is more complex, because people are doing more programmatic things.”

Is LIS education meeting the practical needs of the profession? That perennial subject was addressed in the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Forum on Library Education held on the opening day of the Midwinter Meeting.

With some 80 percent of those present educators and 20 percent practitioners, there were too few students or new librarians to offer their immediate perspective—a limitation that has also been the case in previous forums.

John Budd, who teaches at the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri–Columbia, asserted that there is a “common knowledge base” for the LIS professions, citing the organization of information based on taxonomies, service, access for particular purposes and groups, management of organizations, and ethics.

Thomas Leonhardt, who chairs the ALA Committee on Accreditation, asserted that “accreditation is not the place to begin reforming library education.” Leonhardt, director of the Scarborough-Phillips Library, St. Edward’s University, Austin, TX, mentioned research that he said showed that “94 percent of the LIS programs have curricula that address the core competencies” although he didn’t spell them out.

Michael Gorman, formerly ALA president and dean at California State University, Fresno, began by saying “there is a profession of librarianship centered on work in libraries.” He also asserted that “ALA has a duty to ensure that people entering the profession have education in the core body of knowledge” related to that profession.

In a refreshing reframing of the issue toward ongoing education, Burger declared it “somewhat odd that I can be a librarian for 30 years and never set foot in a classroom or do anything that shows that I’m keeping up with developments.” She pledged to appoint a library education task force, saying it was urgently needed to capture the results of the current conversation and to complement accreditation.