Rod Hersberger & Marilyn Hinshaw interview

ALA Treasurer Rod Hersberger and Marilyn Hinshaw, Chair of the Budget Analysis and Review Committee (BARC), sit down for a chat with Director of Membership Development John Chrastka. Hersberger offers a glimpse of his plans for the Treasurer's Online Forum and talks about brining ALA financial information to the members in a timely fashion, while Hinshaw speaks on the complexities and responsibilities of BARC. More ALA videos available at alfocus.ala.org.

October 8, 2007

ALA Treasurer Rod Hersberger and Marilyn Hinshaw, Chair of the Budget Analysis and Review Committee (BARC), sit down for a chat with Director of Membership Development John Chrastka. Hersberger offers a glimpse of his plans for the Treasurer’s Online Forum and talks about brining ALA financial information to the members in a timely fashion, while Hinshaw speaks on the complexities and responsibilities of BARC. More ALA videos available at alfocus.ala.org.

This report from the Banned Books Read-Out, held September 29 in Chicago, features ALA President Loriene Roy and Judith Krug from ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom speaking on the importance of choosing your own reading material, and authors Carolyn Mackler and Chris Crutcher on how librarians "save our lives daily."

After the Fire

The October 2007 fires in southern California burned hundreds of thousands of acres and destroyed thousands of buildings, and libraries were among those threatened. Helen Fried of the Orange County Public Library and Margaret Todd of the County of Los Angeles Public Library spoke to AL Focus on October 26, as the fires were still raging.

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Willem Marx writes: “Sometimes it’s not about catching up on the newest news or the hottest debut. Sometimes it’s about taking a bath with a cup of tea on a Sunday morning and listening to famous writers laugh about their MFA students while going nuts about their favorite short story writers. Sometimes it’s about taking a plane across the Atlantic just to visit a bookstore and pretend it’s still 1922 and Ulysses is all the rage. The book life is about a lot of things and these podcasts cover every single one.”

Electric Literature, July 19
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Stephanie Buffamonte writes: “Altamonte Springs (Fla.) residents came together to save their local library. In an Altamonte Springs City Commission meeting July 18, commissioners voted to keep the city’s local library after the city announced it would close. The city held a special meeting to discuss the library shutting down, and residents came out in droves. Most argued to commissioners that the library should not shut down and is vital to the city.” Commissioners voted at the meeting to raise the city’s property tax rate from 3.01 mills to 4 mills.

WRBW-TV (Orlando), July 19; WESH-TV (Orlando), July 9; Orlando Sentinel, July 19
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ALA applauded the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s July 18 vote allowing libraries and schools to use federal E-Rate funding to purchase Wi-Fi hotspots for lending. The new policy is a keystone of FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel’s Learn Without Limits proposal, announced at ALA Annual Conference in June 2023, to meet increasing connectivity needs nationwide by expanding and modernizing the E-Rate program. The move comes amid concerns about the impact of recently sunset pandemic-era programs, including the Emergency Connectivity Fund, which helped more than a thousand libraries provide Wi-Fi hotspots during the past three years.

ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Office, July 18
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$Sheep doing math wrong$ Heather Kelly writes: “Anyone with an internet connection can watch breaking news unfold in real time, or at least some version of it. Across social media, posts can fly up faster than most fact-checkers and moderators can handle, and they are often an unpredictable mix of true, fake, out of context, and straight propaganda. The risk is higher immediately after politically charged incidents such as the Trump rally shooting, which has already flooded social media with incorrect information and spawned a number of conspiracy theories. Here are some basic tools everyone should use when consuming breaking news online.”

Washington Post, July 15
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Martin Appel writes: “Sometimes small news can reveal big truths. When Microsoft released its annual sustainability report in May, the numbers hid something interesting: the company has increased its emissions by 30% since 2020. Why? One key explanation can be summarized in two letters: AI. Microsoft’s massive investment in artificial intelligence (AI) has led to proportionally massive climate emissions. AI and cloud computing are here to stay and there’s nothing we can do to stop that. In that case, how long can we—the consumers and people of the world—continue to use them without paying?”

PC World, July 10
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Brown University’s John Hay Library in Providence, Rhode Island, has acquired the contemporary papers of poet, musician, playwright, author, and activist Joy Harjo, the 23rd US poet laureate. Harjo, who served in that role from 2019–2022, was the first Native American to hold the position. The acquisition primarily includes materials from 2021–2024, and Harjo will continue to send materials to the library throughout her life. Harjo received an honorary degree from Brown in May, and had been mentored by Brown’s late Professor of Literary Arts and English Michael S. Harper.

Brown University, July 11
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Kyle Pfannenstiel and Mia Maldonado write: “House Bill 710—which passed in April, following years of similar attempts by the Idaho Legislature—requires Idaho public and school libraries to move materials deemed harmful to children, or face lawsuits. Libraries across Idaho are reworking policies to comply with the new law that some call vague. But many are waiting to see if there’d be a formal challenge to books in their collections, which they said community members have rarely filed before the law. Some libraries planned and then canceled new policies limiting access.”

Idaho Capital Sun (Boise), July 15, Apr. 10

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Rod Hersberger & Marilyn Hinshaw interview

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Report from the Banned Books Read-Out!

After the Fire