Council II: SCOE Preliminary Recommendations

GLBTRT becomes Rainbow Round Table

By Amy Carlton | June 24, 2019

American Library Association (ALA) President Loida Garcia-Febo called the second ALA Council meeting to order at 8:30 a.m.

Shali Zhang, chair of the Committee on Organization, proposed an action item (CD#27.1) to add representatives from the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services and the Association for Rural and Small Libraries to the Rural, Native, and Tribal Libraries of All Kinds Committee. The motion passed. Zhang also reported that the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table has changed its name to the Rainbow Round Table.

Steve Matthews, chair of the Constitution and Bylaws Committee, proposed an action item (CD#25.1) to clarify language in the ALA Bylaws regarding the status of a councilor of a division or round table going through the discontinuance process. The motion passed. A second action item to insert the words electronic voting in addition to voting by mail passed. A motion to change the majority needed to carry a vote of Council taken by mail or electronic voting passed.

Robin Kear, chair of the International Relations Committee (CD#18.1-18.2), reported that 531 international librarians from 69 countries were attending Annual. The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) 2020 conference will not take place in Auckland, New Zealand, as originally planned because the conference venue is not completed; Auckland will host the 2022 WLIC instead. The new 2020 location will be announced at IFLA WLIC 2019 in Athens in August. Garcia-Febo was elected to a four-year term on IFLA’s Libraries Management Section. ALA’s International Relations Office Director Michael Dowling was elected to IFLA’s governing board.

Intellectual Freedom Committee Chair Julia Warga proposed five revised interpretations of the Library Bill of Rights (CD#19.5-19.11), all of which passed.

“Library-Initiated Programs and Displays as a Resource: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights” (CD#19.7)
“Diverse Collections: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights” (CD#19.8)
“Minors and Online Activity: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights” (CD#19.9)
“Privacy: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights” (CD#19.10)
“User-Generated Content in Library Discovery Systems: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights” (CD#19.11)

Charles Brownstein, president of the Freedom to Read Foundation (FRTF), gave an update on the foundation’s activities since the 2019 Midwinter Meeting (CD#22.1). FRTF celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada, chair of the Steering Committee for Organizational Effectiveness (SCOE), and Jim Meffert, consultant from Tecker International, provided preliminary recommendations from the project (CD#45). Proposed changes include redesigning the Executive Board and the ALA committee structure. A possible new division membership model is also being discussed. Final recommendations are expected in September, but timeline extensions can be made with member feedback. The SCOE discussion forum on ALA Connect can be found at bit.ly/2ZGwxiC. Pelayo-Lozada and Meffert will repeat their presentation virtually July 8 at 1 p.m. Central.

ALA Executive Director Mary Ghikas reported 21,345 attendees in Washington, D.C., compared with 17,600 attendees in New Orleans in 2018, and 22,591 in Chicago in 2017.

Garcia-Febo adjourned the meeting at 11:39.

AMY CARLTON is a senior editor of American Libraries.

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Sheila Craft-Morgan writes: “Citations are a key measure of the impact of a researcher’s work. However, research in a variety of disciplines has found that women are less likely to be cited than men; citations contain geographic bias; and the Matthew effect—in which those who begin with advantage continue to gain advantage—leads to more citations for prominent scholars in a specific discipline. These findings contribute to the notion that scholarly knowledge comes from a homogenous group of researchers, thereby overlooking the contributions of other groups.”

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Mel Baldwin writes: “Regardless of why someone comes into a library, every patron should be free to interact with staff, browse materials, and use the internet without fear of harassment or worse. That freedom depends on libraries upholding patron privacy. With nearly 400 active anti-trans bills pending in state legislatures as of April 2024, it is a dangerous time in the US to be gender nonconforming, someone whose gender expression does not align with the traditional male or female binary. And for trans people of color, studies show the risk of discrimination and violence is higher.”

American Libraries column, June
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Greg Landgraf writes: “On a school morning last September, small groups of 5th-graders crowded around tools connected to scientific research—a microscope, a robotic camera, and even a snake named Morgan Freeman—clipboards and pencils in hand. They were at the Melrose branch of Roanoke (Va.) Public Libraries (RPL), judging graduate students from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg on their research. The event was RPL’s second Flip the Fair, introduced in 2022 to help graduate students develop skills to effectively communicate their research while engaging local elementary students with STEM topics and the library.”

American Libraries Trend, June
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Aaryn Bierly writes: “Disability Pride Month is traditionally celebrated in July to celebrate the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. The ADA regulates laws regarding service animals, requires employers to accommodate their employees’ physical and medical needs, stipulates the number and placement of accessible parking spaces and restrooms, and more. One in five Americans has some type of disability that makes working more difficult, and the ADA has made working conditions easier for a significant number of Americans. We’ve got several great lists of books for kids and teens of different ages featuring characters with a range of disabilities.”

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Associated Press, July 7
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Todd Spangler writes: “In the days after Paramount Global disabled mtvnews.com and mtv.com/news in June—removing a trove of hundreds of thousands of articles about music and pop culture from the internet—the not-for-profit Internet Archive assembled a searchable index of 460,575 web pages previously published at mtv.com/news. The Wayback Machine’s archive of MTV News is not the full complement of what was published over the span of more than two decades. But the new collection at least ensures, for the time being, that much of MTV News’ articles remain accessible in some form.”

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