ALA Draws Crowd to Philadelphia

Mild weather and easy downtown access to the convention center and hotels added convenience to a successful Philadelphia American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in mid-January. More than 13,000 librarians, publishers, exhibitors, and guests attended, topping the 2007 total of 12,230 in Seattle and the 2006 number of 11,084 in San Antonio.

Popular authors and emerging technology drew crowds. More than 800 people attended the ALA President's Program, which featured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the National Basketball Association's all-time leading scorer. Abdul-Jabbar told librarians he was not addressing them as a basketball player but “as an author, a historian, and a book lover, all because of librarians like you.”

Traffic on the floor was steady (see InfoTech, p. 23ff.), and the elephant in the room among the ILS and other tech vendors was open source, thanks to some recent projects and the results of a survey by Marshall Breeding rating ILS systems that appeared on his Library Technology Guides site just prior to the conference.

ALA drew some national notice by hosting the first appearance at a public forum by Bassem Youssef, the highest-ranking Arab American agent in the FBI, who is suing the agency for discrimination, complaining that he was shunted aside after the 9/11 attacks, when his skills would have been most valuable.

Youssef had been scheduled to present a speech at the conference, but after the FBI got wind of an ALA press release, he was limited to answering questions and was sometimes cautioned by his attorney, Stephen Kohn, not to offer more details.

Youssef, who noted that he was speaking for himself, not the FBI, presented a careful but impassioned indictment of current FBI practices in the war on terror, warning that the FBI is cutting corners to acquire data without supporting the human intelligence that would be more effective.

Youssef, his lawyer explained, protested that the FBI was using an “exigent circumstances” loophole to obtain National Security Letters (NSLs) for warrantless searching even though there was no imminent danger.

ALA Council was challenged to open up ALA affairs. Councilor Melora Norman proposed that Council authorize read-only access for virtually all ALA electronic mailing lists, except for closed lists that concern awards or those that affect the privacy of individuals or institutions.

While several councilors said they approved of the idea in concept, they questioned its implementation. Council referred the matter to the existing Task Force on E-member Participation, which will report back at the annual conference in June. Those sessions will be blogged and podcasted.

The Council Orientation Committee, chaired by councilor Joe Eagen, had been asked to look at how to increase interest in running for Council and removing obstacles that prevent ALA members from standing as candidates. This year's Nominating Committee, which sought at least 53 candidates, obtained 63 acceptances but also faced challenges, requiring a three-week extension of the deadline for application. The main reason potential candidates declined was that attendance at both the Midwinter Meeting and annual conference requires extra travel time and expense and is often not institutionally supported.

Eagan's committee suggested shortening the length of conferences by ending Council meetings on a Tuesday instead of a Wednesday. Any such change might have a significant impact on ALA's advance bookings for future meeting space and hotel accommodation, so the matter was referred to the Budget Analysis and Review Committee (BARC).

There may be a need for a graduated dues structure within ALA, but ALA leaders are not ready to shell out big money to figure it out. The cochair of the task force on dues structures, Marcia Boosinger, presented the group's final report, which called for a six-part study plan, costing nearly $625,000, including a $210,000 study of trends in the profession.

BARC cautioned against adopting any graduated dues structure “unless there is strong evidence that [it] will increase revenue.” Council decided to spend $45,000 to do a membership survey and, rather than pay for a trend study, will wait to see what emerges from “The Future of Librarians in the Workforce—What Will It Look Like?” a study funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and led by José-Marie Griffiths, dean of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Another piece of breaking news was the release of the final report by the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control established by the Library of Congress (LC). A draft had been issued on November 30, 2007, and the comments collected until December 15, 2007. A large crowd attended a session on the report.

While the working group recommended some significant changes to achieve a collaborative, decentralized, international, and web-based world of cataloging, it did not establish time lines or responsibilities for implementation, which group member Diane Casey, dean of library services/academic computing, Governors State University, University Park, IL, said “were beyond the scope of our charge.” Indeed, she noted, LC and other library entities “must identify and allocate sufficient funding to improve and expand bibliographic control.”

Although the ALA/ALCTS (Association for Library Collections & Technical Services) response to the draft was mostly positive, ALCTS representative Mary Charles Lasater of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, noted that the association was dismayed that the working group presumed that LC would not get additional funding to do the increasing amount of work. “ALCTS commented that it's professionally disempowering to accept this as an immutable truth,” she said, adding that it will be a “major reversal” for some libraries “to reconsider their disinvestment in professionally qualified staff.”

The most controversial recommendation in the report is the suspension of development of RDA: Resource Description and Access, a “comprehensive set of guidelines and instructions on resource description and access covering all types of content and media,” which is to replace the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. To move ahead, the report stated, “the use and business cases for moving to RDA” must be “satisfactorily articulated” and its “presumed benefits…convincingly demonstrated.”

Beacher Wiggins, LC's director for cataloging, commented from the floor that LC has not yet made any decisions about the report's recommendations. Three groups at LC are expected to make internal recommendations by early spring, with a public report on LC's plans by the ALA annual conference in June in Anaheim, CA.

A forum featuring ALA presidential candidates Camila Alire and Linda Williams drew fewer than 100 people. In opening statements and later questions, it became apparent that the nominees differ little in their views. Both favor more effective ways to increase member participation in ALA. Both strongly support ALA's position on intellectual freedom in libraries, including its most controversial stand that children have the same rights of access to information and library collections as everyone else. Both were articulate in their commitment to diversity in ALA and the library profession. Both spoke out favoring better library salaries and increased efforts for literacy.

Williams, coordinator of library media services for Anne Arundel County public schools, Annapolis, MD, was fervent in her view that ALA should do more to alleviate a “crisis” in school libraries, 40 percent of which have no librarians, and which have been declared not essential in many jurisdictions. Alire, former dean of libraries at the University of Colorado at Denver, agreed. Both candidates serve as adjunct teachers in LIS graduate programs. Surprisingly, when asked whether or not ALA should do anything to oppose the growing “commoditization of information,” both candidates professed ignorance of the issue, and neither mentioned either the copyright issues or the open access movement related to it.

Endowment trustee Robert Newlen reported that in 2007 the ALA Endowment Fund had increased by approximately $2.2 million, from $29 million to $31.2 million, This was a return of 8.4% compared to the portfolio's benchmark of 6.5%. Although audited financial statements have not yet been received, Marilyn Hinshaw, BARC chair, reported expected higher revenues and lower expenses, resulting in some $840,000 revenue for 2007.

Diane Chen, Joseph Eagen (nominated from the floor), and Em Claire Knowles were elected to the Executive Board.

Committee on Accreditation (COA) chair Richard Rubin brought forward the COA's revisions of the 1992 “Standards for Accreditation of Master's Programs in Library and Information Studies.” Among the proposals are an enhanced emphasis on “systematic planning” as an essential component in the accreditation process, a feature lacking in some programs.

The revision also places stronger emphasis on assessment and diversity, specifying that COA “will encourage…programs seeking accreditation or re-accreditation to ensure that their student bodies, faculties, and curricula reflect the diverse histories and information needs of all people in the United States. Collaboration between these programs and local libraries and community-based organizations serving diverse populations is to be particularly encouraged.”

Some on Council wanted to defer approval of these changes until they received the report of the task force established by then-president Leslie Burger following up on Michael Gorman's presidential initiative on LIS education. However, the report was accepted with a handful of “nay” votes.

In the days leading up to the meeting, the Top Tech Trends Experts designated by the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) zeroed in on the tools and issues they believe will have the greatest impact on librarians and their institutions in 2008.

In their posts, bloggers Karen Schneider (Free Range Librarian) and Sarah Houghton-Jan (LibrarianInBlack) both pointed to recent innovative solutions for virtual reference, including Skype for live video reference at Ohio University and the LivePerson software used for the January launch of the AskON pilot project in Ontario, Canada.

Houghton-Jan said that libraries are using commercial text-messaging programs to provide live cell phone text-messaging (SMS) reference to their users.

Karen Coombs (Library Web Chic) was among several trend-watchers who mentioned shrinking computer hardware and the move toward using network software to perform tasks previously done locally on individual machines.

However, not all of the identified technology trends were cause for celebration. “[O]ur approach to individual privacy needs to be dragged into the 21st century,” Darien Library's John Blyberg observed.

Houghton-Jan suggested that libraries could draw on “intelligent, attractive” user-created content, given how many households own digital cameras, “with digital video not far behind.” Among the topics that generated lively discussion at the session were privacy concerns and mobile computing and ebooks and alternative methods of book delivery, as well as the pros and cons of “branding” online tools and content to increase visibility for libraries.