Council I Ends with Minimal Action

January 22, 2012

The lone resolution on the agenda of the first session of ALA’s governing Council Sunday was postponed until the second session Monday as councilors sailed through the agenda, ending a half-hour early.

Moved to Council II was a resolution, offered by New Jersey Chapter Councilor Cynthia Czesak and seconded by Councilors-at-Large Mario Gonzalez and Valerie Bell, that opposes the discriminatory policies of publishers and distributors which adversely impact access to content by library users. It asks that the Digital Content and Libraries Working Group, established by Council this past June, be directed to review the situation and recommend appropriate action.

The group also heard the first report from the 25-member Digital Content and Libraries Working Group, cochaired by Sari Feldman of Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Public Library and Robert Wolven of Columbia University in New York City. The report noted the publication of a special ebook supplement to the January/February issue of American Libraries magazine, with an upcoming AL supplement on digital content that is in the works to coincide with the May/June issue.

DCWG also reported on the September 2011 meeting between ALA President Molly Raphael, Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels, and Office for Information Technology Policy Director Alan Inouye with the president of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which resulted in an ongoing relationship. Raphael, President-Elect Maureen Sullivan, and Fiels are planning a two-day meeting beginning January 31 with publishers MacMillan, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin in New York City. ALA Treasurer Jim Neal and Raphael, along with New York Library Association President Anthony Marx, will also participate on a panel at AAP’s General Annual Meeting in March.

In other action, Council approved from the floor the addition of Gladys Smiley Bell, Peabody librarian of the William R. And Norma B. Harvey Library at Hampton (Va.) University, to the slate of candidates for the ALA Executive Board.

As Council met as the ALA-Allied Professional Association, a discussion was held about a recommendation from the Presidential Task Force for Improving the Effectiveness of ALA's Council to abolish the APA Council (ALA-APA CD#7). No action was taken but there was mixed views among councilors on the validity of the change.

ALA-APA Treasurer Jim Neal reported that FY11 operating revenues totaled $158,563, an increase of $3,392 from last year. Expenses were $122,410, rising $22,353 from the previous year. ALA was repaid $50,000 from the loan to APA, leaving a ending loan balance of $225,000.

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Eleanor Hecks writes: “Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Graceful degradation is a design approach that ensures the basics of a website will still function even if specific individual parts of it stop working. The approach removes single points of failure: just because one thing stops working doesn’t mean the system as a whole fails. A site following this principle fails in pieces instead of all at once, so the most important features remain available when some components encounter an error.”

Smashing Magazine, Dec. 6
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Camruinn Morgan-Rumsey and Lexi Lepof write: “On December 3, Knox County (Tenn.) schools received a list from the district of books to be removed from school libraries under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Knox County’s board of education voted in July, passing a policy to remove ‘explicit’ books from everyday student access in response to the new law. Some of the books on the list of nearly 50 titles might surprise parents. Among those to be removed are Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”

WVLT-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.), Dec. 4
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Joe Foley writes: “Copyright rules vary from country to country and have changed over time. In the US, works created between 1929 and 1963 that gave notice and renewed copyright have 95 years from their first publication date. That means that on January 1, 2025, a host of works from 1929 will enter the public domain. This means that copyright will expire on Buck Rogers, Captain Easy, Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, Hal Foster’s first Tarzan comic strips and, yes, Popeye.” Other notable works entering public domain in the United States include the Marx Brothers’ first film, The Cocoanuts, contralto Marian Anderson’s first record, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Creative Bloq, Dec. 7; Everybody’s Libraries, Dec. 3, Dec. 7; Public Domain Review, Dec. 10
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Brittany Adams writes: “The digital landscape of libraries is expanding rapidly, with an increasing shift towards electronic resources and online services. As members of the library community, we’re witnessing a transformative era where physical collections are complemented—and sometimes replaced—by digital ones. This transition offers new opportunities for enhancing accessibility and engagement, but it also presents challenges, especially for young patrons and their families. It is essential to equip children and their caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need to navigate this evolving space confidently.”

ALSC Blog, Dec. 9
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Karen O’Grady writes: “I am the embedded librarian for the Hahn School of Nursing at the University of San Diego. I am surrounded by nursing faculty, staff, and students rather than by librarians. This has proven to be an incredible gamechanger for the way I see things. Every student in my school knows me by name. I am often stopped in the hallway to answer questions. Every correct answer I give increases my authority and builds trust. Through these casual mini-lessons, this foreign animal called ‘librarian’ slowly becomes an approachable, knowledgeable person.”

College & Research Libraries News, Dec.
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ALA has selected 46 participants for its 2025 class of Emerging Leaders (EL). The EL program allows library staff and information workers to participate in project planning work groups, network with peers, gain an inside look into ALA structure, and have an opportunity to serve the profession in a leadership capacity early in their careers. The group will take part in a day-long session during the 2025 LibLearnX conference in Phoenix this January and work for six months, culminating in a poster session at ALA’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia in June, where they will highlight results of their project planning work.

ALA Office for Human Resource Development and Recruitment, Dec. 4
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On December 9, ALA announced a $25 million bequest by James W. Lewis, of Washington, D.C. The gift, the largest individual bequest in ALA’s history, will fund scholarships for aspiring librarians with demonstrated financial needs. Throughout Lewis’s career at Merrill Lynch, where he leads the Lewis Group as senior vice president and senior relationship manager, he has demonstrated his commitment to libraries and their communities by generously volunteering his time, including as a member of the Board of Visitors at the library of his alma mater, Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He also served as a Library Trustee Board member at District of Columbia Public Library for 10 years.”

AL: The Scoop, Dec. 9