ALA Conference 2009: Price of Expanding Council Transparency: $5,000?

ALA Annual Conference: A webcast would be nice, but a recording would be cheaper

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 07/01/2009

• Options range from transcript to webcast
• ALA faces financial constraints
• Issue will be discussed in Chicago

So, how might the work of the American Library Association (ALA) Council become more transparent and available to the vast majority of members who can’t attend in person? The options are several, but they depend on budget, according to a report from ALA Executive Director Keith Fiels in response to a 2008 Council “Resolution on Expanding Council Transparency.”

Fiels noted that face-to-face Council meetings currently cost about $80,000 per year, including AV equipment and services, projectionists, captioning, and more. The cost estimates noted below would vary somewhat from city to city.

Posting the transcript: $1500–$10,000 a year

Fiels said that simply posting the on-site captioned transcript, prepared to assist the hearing impaired, would not be acceptable, because it inevitably contains errors and inconsistencies.

One alternative would be hiring a certified court reporter, at the cost of $3000–$5000 per conference or $6000–$10,000 per year. Alternatively, the on-site captionist could review the tapes and recordings of the Council sessions to produce a “clean” transcript, at the cost of about $750 per conference or $1500 per year.

Posting an audio recording: $1500 a year

Given that audio recordings of Council proceedings are already created, ALA could make them available on the ALA web site via a downloadable podcast or streaming audio file. This option, Fiels noted, does not create real time access. It would cost about $1500 per year to prepare and post the audio files.

Real time streaming audio webcast: $11,000 a year

This option would provide real-time access, via the ALA web site, at a cost of about $11,000 per year.

Real time audio/video webcast

Audio can only go so far, so the state-of-the-art would be live streaming video, but it would be more costly, about $55,500/year.

Recommendations

Fiels, noting that ALA faces severe financial constraints, suggested that “a combination of an edited transcript derived from the captionist’s transcript, along with an audio recording and Council documents...would constitute the most economical and reasonable” solution. 

That would involve $3000 in direct costs, plus at least $1500 in staff time, leading to an estimate of about $5000 per year.

However, he offered some cautions. ALA’s legal counsel advised that the publication of a transcript “will increase the risk to the Association of legal liability for statements made by individual Councilors” and also increase the risk that statements would be presented out of context as ALA’s position.

Fiels said that the report is being shared with the Budget Advisory and Review Committee (BARC)), which will discuss it during the annual conference, and is also being shared with the ALA Executive Board.