The ALA Archives

Building on the Association’s past

February 2, 2015

The ALA Archives is the Association’s official repository, housed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1973. The archives maintains official records, correspondence, personal papers, ephemera, and other materials that document ALA and the history of librarianship, from the first U.S. library conference in 1853 to the 2015 Midwinter Meeting.

On Monday afternoon, two of the ALA archivists were on hand to explain the process. Visiting Archival Operations and Reference Specialist Cara S. Bertram and Digital Archives Assistant Denise Rayman said that researchers from as far away as Sweden and Japan have come in person to use the collection and examine ALA history. One scholar, Molly Guptill Manning, used the papers of ALA President Althea B. Warren (1943-1944) to research her book When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

Bertram said that the archives currently has about 4,000 cubic feet of materials, which is about half its full capacity. She added that archivists are on top of the backlog right now, but with only 1.5 FTE staff they might fall a bit behind if a large amount of records come in.

One of its richest collection areas is ALA’s Library War Services campaign during World War I, which established libraries for servicemen and women both in the U.S. and the Western Front. “It was ALA’s first big project,” Bertram said, so many of the posters, pamphlets, photos, and other materials were well preserved.

Rayman said that the archives also accepts digital materials on CD, DVD, flash drive, email, Dropbox, and even legacy floppy disks and cassette tapes. The ALA website also is regularly scraped for its content.

One part of the archives is the ALA Institutional Repository (ALAIR), an open access facility that collects, permanently stores, and offers digital access to certain ALA publications and other intellectual works.

Bertram reminded the audience that “ALA owns all the material, and the archives cares for it.” ALA’s contract with the archives is supported by the ALA general budget.

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2015 ALA Presidential Candidates Forum

The four ALA presidential candidates respond to audience questions at the Midwinter Meeting.

Ferguson (Mo.) Public Library Director Scott Bonner, after his packed Midwinter talk

Latest Library Links, February 2, 2015

News from ALA and the profession

Latest Library Links

4h

Rowana Miller writes: “In my experience, many young library-goers identify as storytellers but not writers. These are the kids who draw Captain-Underpants-style cartoons, who craft meticulous Minecraft universes, and who plot elaborate Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, but who believe that ‘writing’ is limited to 5-paragraph essays. But when children draw the connections between their natural storytelling proclivities and the written word, they can become self-motivated to develop the communication skills that will help them for the rest of their lives. Libraries, I believe, are uniquely positioned to help children make this connection.”

ALSC Blog, Nov. 15
22h

ALA has reopened its search for an executive director in partnership with executive search firm Isaacson, Miller. The search will be led by a steering committee comprising ALA member leaders. The selected candidate will succeed Interim Executive Director Leslie Burger, who was appointed in November 2023. “We are excited to embark on our search for a new executive director,” said ALA President Cindy Hohl. “This leadership position is critical as we navigate the years ahead. We seek candidates who have knowledge of the library community and the urgent issues we face.”

ALA Communications, Marketing, and Media Relations Office, Nov. 14
1d

Emily Weak writes: “Something I always hear from hiring managers is that they want to build a resilient, diverse workforce. Sometimes we say we want a resilient workforce, but what we mean is that we want staffers who are willing to go above and beyond, or to do more with less. These concepts are deeply entrenched in librarianship, but I think we’re beginning to see how they can cause problems. Instead of trying to hire people who will do more with less and who will thrive amid adversity, let’s think about resilience as an organizational feature.”

American Libraries column, Nov./Dec.
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Elisabeth B. White writes: “How can librarians ensure their instruction materials are as accessible as possible? One way is through Universal Design for Learning Guidelines, a set of best practices to improve teaching and learning and create inclusive and equitable educational experiences for all students. The guidelines include three principles that instructors must provide via multiple means: engagement (the ‘why’ of learning), representation (the ‘what’ of learning), and action and expression (the ‘how’ of learning). However, to create a truly equitable educational experience, school library workers need to consider accessibility principles as well.”

American Libraries feature, Nov./Dec.
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Elisa Shoenberger writes: “The comics I grew up reading were those in the newspapers, and they were called the funny pages for a reason. In time, I began exploring the wider world of comic books, covering a wide variety of genres from superhero comics to horror. But I do have a fondness for the seeming simplicity of one to four-panel comics in the newspapers and webcomics for humor. For this list, I’ve put together my tribute to the funny pages. Most of the comics are short form comics, but a few are longer narratives.”

Book Riot, Nov. 11
4d

Jay Peters writes: “Bluesky gained more than 700,000 new users in the last week and now has more than 14.5 million users total, Bluesky COO Rose Wang confirmed to The Verge. The ‘majority’ of the new users on the decentralized social network are from the US, Wang says. The app is currently the number two free social networking app in the US App Store, only trailing Meta’s Threads. Instagram-bootstrapped Threads, which recently crossed 275 million monthly users, is still significantly larger than Bluesky. But the independent platform has seen a lot of growth in recent weeks.”

The Verge, Nov. 11
4d

André Salkin writes: “A militant but peaceful protest movement is underway at Carlos Gilbert Elementary School in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It started with a student petition and escalated to administration hearings, picket lines, and sit-in demonstrations. The movement’s aim? More library time. At the head of the protests is sixth grader Rainier Long, 12, an avid reader who was outraged to learn Carlos Gilbert Elementary would be cutting library time in half—to 30 minutes a week—this year to make more time for technology education.”

Santa Fe New Mexican, Nov. 9