ALA Council meets at Midwinter

Members discuss ways to improve advocacy, leadership

February 1, 2015

The ALA Council met for its first session Sunday morning. After a brief introduction and announcements, ALA President Courtney Young established a quorum. Council then adopted the rules and the day’s agenda (CD #8.1rev_12815_act). Councilors also approved minutes from the 2014 ALA Annual Conference (CD #2).

Council then accepted nominations for election to the ALA Executive Board. The Council Committee on Committees (COC) presented the following candidates for election of three Executive Board members:

Gladys Smiley Bell, Peabody librarian, Hampton University, Va.
John C. DeSantis, cataloging and metadata services librarian, bibliographer, Russian, theater and film studies, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.
Julius C. Jefferson Jr., information research specialist, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Loida Garcia-Febo, president, Information New Wave, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Aaron W. Dobbs, systems and electronic resources librarian, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, Ezra Lehman Memorial Library
Mike L. Marlin, director, Braille and Talking Book Library, California State Library, Sacramento
Bernard Margolis, New York State librarian, Albany
John C. Sandstrom, acquisitions librarian and technical services, New Mexico State University Library, Las Cruces

Council then acted on the appointment of the Tellers Committee for the Executive Board election. The tellers are: Kathleen DeLong, Suzanne Sager, and Kent Slade (chair).
ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels then reviewed the Executive Board actions since the 2014 Annual Conference (CD #15) as well as the implementation of the 2014 Annual Conference Council actions (CD #9).

Because no new agenda items were added, Council moved to a discussion session on the ALA Strategic Directions: advocacy, information policy, and professional and leadership development. Councilors spent 20 minutes discussing three questions for each strategic direction: 1) What would success look like? 2) How do you think we might get there? and 3) How might you/your community help us get there?

Councilors separated into about 20 groups of eight people to answer these questions. In regards to advocacy, the groups reported that success would entail having community stakeholders and policymakers; more funding and job security — especially for school librarians; marketing and outreach to change stereotypes of librarians; ensuring students have access to certified librarians and well-stocked libraries; increased ALA member involvements; a unified message; and making patrons advocates.

For information policy, the councilors defined success as: creating transparency about ALA to the average member; developing an educated citizenry and legislatures (state and national) that are aware of and well-versed in library issues such as privacy and net neutrality; connecting to real world issues and how people use information in their daily lives; making sure library professionals understand these complicated issues; and having non-library groups join ALA in speaking for libraries.

In regards to professional and leadership development, success was defined as: more ALA investment in leadership development — especially regarding diversity; a focus on addressing disparities in leadership development; creating a career path to leadership within the association; beginning leadership training during LIS education; combining ALA and state chapter leadership development; creating post-LIS certificates in non-library subjects such as policy or marketing; and having more training available for free or with membership dues.

Fiels instructed councilors to contact him or ALA’s Governance Office with additional ideas. The office will compile feedback into a report and provide it to membership in a few weeks. Fiels added that ALA Midwinter Meeting registration was at 10,552, and that organizers weren’t expecting many drive-in registrants in the next day or two because of snowy weather conditions in Chicago. Council then adjourned for the day.

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