WikiLeaks Measures Voted Down in Membership Meeting

June 26, 2011

Three measures related to WikiLeaks were debated and ultimately defeated during the ALA Membership Meeting at Annual Conference amid controversy about the required number of members present throughout the meeting to represent a quorum.

Member Herb Biblo contended that the meeting was set up for failure, reacting to the fact that action on the resolutions was placed near the end of the agenda. “This is really an insult to our Membership,” he maintained. “ALA does a lot of wonderful things with noncontroversial issues, but when it comes to some things controversial were built for failure.”

A resolution on WikiLeaks and federal agencies offered by Councilor Al Kagan and defeated by a vote of 23–36, called for the amendment of Executive Order 13526, Classified National Security Information (December 29, 2009), to exclude publicly available information; the amendment of any other executive orders, public laws, or federal regulations that forbid access to publicly available information; and called for U.S. government agencies to follow the example of the Library of Congress in providing access to documents available on WikiLeaks.

Two related resolutions failed by pass by a show of hands.

One resolution, from member Jane Glasby, in part called for support of the right of WikiLeaks to publish leaked government documents, commended the efforts of WikiLeaks to expunge the names and other material deemed potentially harmful to innocent people and for performing a public service by making available important documents related to foreign and military policy, urged libraries to link their websites to the WikiLeaks website, and condemned the harassment of WikiLeaks. The other measure was in support of Bradley Manning of the U.S. Army, who was arrested for allegedly leaking classified material to WikiLeaks.

Members also heard the report “After Katrina: Renewing Communities and Libraries” delivered by Linda Hill-Smith, curator/archivist at Southern University’s Center for African-American Studies, and Idella Washington, librarian at William Hart Elementary School in Gretna, Louisiana, and former librarian at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans.

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