ALA MidWinter Conference Report

Despite advance registration totals that kept reasonable pace with last year's figures, the total attendance at the American Library Association's (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in Denver represented a notable drop-off from the 2008 meeting in Philadelphia and even the 2007 event in Seattle.

ALA reported the total attendance in Denver as 10,220, including 7,905 librarians and 2,315 exhibitors, vs. a total in Philadelphia of 13,601 and 11,230 in Seattle. The number of advance registrants in Denver was 7,191 vs. 7,668 last year. The dramatic difference was the result of many fewer on-site registrants in Denver.

It's clearly a time of transition, with new curbs on travel and a push for increased electronic participation. Comments about the exhibit floor traffic from members of ALA's Exhibits Round Table (ERT) were mixed. While some thought there was a good number of attendees, others saw fewer librarians than they had hoped. The latter group, however, do believe that those who come to Midwinter are the decision-makers. Look for a report from the show floor in the March 1 issue of LJ.

As with private investors and endowed institutions, ALA suffered significant endowment losses in the past fiscal year, 24.1%, but thanks to budget adjustments and some new sources of revenue (notably grants), net operating income in FY08 actually exceeded expenses more than in FY07, ALA officials said at the Midwinter Meeting.

FY08, which ended last August 31, left ALA with net assets of $34.4 million, compared to $33.3 million at the end of FY07. Three months later, net assets declined to $24.1 million, primarily owing to endowment losses. ALA has adjusted by reducing expenses, but continued losses in the endowment—which does not contribute to operating income—could cut into scholarships and awards.

The longer term remains a question mark, given the push for electronic member participation and limits on travel, both of which could raise costs and lower revenue. Executive Director Keith Fiels noted that the next two annual conference sites, Chicago and Washington, DC, typically draw large crowds. However, Fiels acknowledged, “2011 then looks like it's going to be really, really difficult.”

Both Kent Oliver, executive director of the Stark County District Library, OH, and Roberta Stevens, outreach projects and partnerships officer at the Library of Congress (LC) and the National Book Festival's (NBF) project manager, have long and diverse records in the library field and in service to the association. Both have endorsements from prominent librarians.

Stevens stressed advocacy, saying her role at the NBF has “given me an invaluable network of authors who can be mobilized to speak out on behalf of libraries.” Oliver said, “I purposely did not have a theme,” citing that “we're in such a time of transition in our country and for the association that I felt it would be inappropriate.” Rather, he stressed following ALA's current and future strategic plans.

The atmosphere in the country is one of hope and opportunity, according to Lynne Bradley, who directs the Office of Government Relations in ALA's Washington Office, even as “competition is ever more difficult” for library advocates.

Kendall Wiggin, chair of the Committee on Legislation, noted that much of federal recovery funding will go directly to states. “Libraries of all types have to be on their radar,” he said at a Washington Office update.

“I hope you'll be patient with ALA, with the Washington Office,” Wiggin cautioned. “This is going to take time. This is not the WPA period.” That may have been a reference to the exclusion of public library construction from federal proposals, despite advocates' wish for it.

One grassroots victory emerged shortly after Midwinter. Advocacy by librarians and others prompted the Consumer Product Safety Commission to suspend for a year implementation of a law targeting lead in products aimed at children and, at least according to one interpretation, would not have exempted books, leading to fears that libraries might have to close their doors to children.

Stressing state and local advocacy, ALA recently launched its Advocacy University and an Advocacy in a Tough Economy Toolkit. An advocacy committee, chaired by former ALA president Carol Brey-Casiano, is focusing primarily on state and local efforts, with assistance from the new Office for Library Advocacy.

Ann Ewbank, education liaison librarian at Arizona State University's Fletcher Library, described coalition-building in Arizona. Why should academic librarians care about the loss of teacher-librarians? “Those kids go to your universities,” she reported.

Martin Garnar, former president of the Colorado Association of Libraries, described how a merger in 2002 of the Colorado Library Association and Colorado Educational Media Association led to new strength.

After more than a decade of debating what LIS students should have learned after earning a master's degree at an ALA-accredited program, ALA Council, following minor editing, approved the Core Competencies (CCs) developed over the past two years by the ALA Presidential Task Force on Library Education. Among them are Foundations of the Profession, Information Resources, Technological Knowledge and Skills, and Reference and User Services.

The task force was appointed by former ALA president Leslie Burger during her term and chaired by former ALA president Michael Gorman, who had made library education reform a theme of his presidency. The Council also sent the CCs to ALA's Committee on Accreditation, asking that committee to incorporate them into ALA's Standards for Accreditation of LIS programs.

On one level, OCLC's recently revised—and suspended—policy regarding record-sharing, aimed at “moderniz[ing] record use and transfer practices for application on the Web, foster[ing] new uses of WorldCat data that benefit members and clarify[ing] data sharing rights and restrictions,” was simply a matter of bad communication, a cooperative behaving in top-down rather than consultative fashion.

OCLC VP Karen Calhoun acknowledged that scenario, yet, in much of her presentation Monday at Midwinter, she firmly defended the intent of the policy, suggesting that critics in the blogosphere had an unrealistic view of the library ecosystem. In response, some panelists suggested that OCLC itself was failing to modernize. A revision is expected by the third quarter of 2009.

Discussing the topic “Google Book Settlement: What's in It for Libraries?” Dan Clancy, engineering director for the Google Book Search Project, was not ready to answer some of the big questions, however, such as how much institutional subscriptions would cost or how libraries might get a voice in shaping the product.

Paul Courant, dean of libraries at the University of Michigan and a partner in the project, spoke up for the effort, noting that “the world I live in was not going to produce” a library–generated digital project.

Karen Coyle, digital librarian and consultant, raised questions about quality, user privacy, and sustainability. As for free subscriptions for public libraries, she said, “I really think we have to look a gift horse in the mouth,” adding, “We know Google isn't a library...but my fear is that city managers, in tight budget times, don't know that Google isn't a library.”

For more ALA Midwinter news, see InfoTech, p. 17.