ALA past president Betty Turock, in her role as chair of the Spectrum Presidential Initiative, made a special appeal to the Association’s governing Council asking divisions, affiliates, and members to help reach a $1 million goal.
Turock has provided a gift of $100,000 to the program on behalf of the Turock family. The gift will be used to provide scholarships to MLS candidates from traditionally underrepresented groups.
“As president of ALA, there was a struggle raging in Council and in the Association, and, at times, I wondered whether Spectrum would really have a life,” Turock told Council. She chaired then–ALA president Sarah Long’s Special Advisory Committee on the Spectrum Campaign, which began raising funds for the Spectrum Scholarship. Since its founding, Turock and her family have provided several gifts to the program, including the creation of the Betty J. Turock Scholarship in 2001.
“Without the passionate voices of ALA's Council, I would not now be able to call it, as ALA does, one of its most successful programs,” she said. "We've done it before; we can do it again. We can do it in good financial times and in bad because it's essential, it's desperately needed, and it's our job.”
Turock explained that over the past decade, there have been 600 Spectrum scholars, but we've lost 700 because nearly every year the figure of 70 scholars or applicants who were fully qualified to become Spectrum scholars could not be funded because there was no money.
“It’s hard to believe that the people of this new nation will support libraries if libraries are not equipped to support them,” she maintained. “Let's make more dreams a reality. Let's make more librarians of color. The potential Spectrum scholars await our assistance with great anticipation. Let's not let them down.”
At the 2009 Annual Conference, ALA President Camila Alire, Immediate Past President Jim Rettig, and President Elect Roberta Stevens announced the special yearlong initiative to raise $1 million for the Spectrum Scholarship Program. The money will ALA to double the number of scholarships awarded over the next few years, provide Spectrum Doctoral Fellowships, and build the Spectrum Endowment.
For more information, visit www.ala.org/spectrum.