Show me your papers

Good morning PLA Blog readers! This is longish, but Saturday morning I attended ALA’s opening and well-attended panel update on the anti-terrorism legislation crafted and passed under the 108^th Congress and forecasting. The overall theme was “your right to know” and getting involved at the local level. The discussion began with announcements. First, Sunshine Week, a national initiative spotlighting the importance of freedom of information coming to a library near you March 13-19. Sunshine Week activities will include special news reports, editorials, commentaries and the like. Sunshine Week in conjunction with ALA will be helping interested libraries coordinate community discussions and idea sharing. Check out the website in the coming months for additional information: Sunshine Week. Next up was Abbie Goodrum, an assistant professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University.

Goodrum is a lead researcher for ALA’s Patriot Study. Her portion of the program was billed as “a discussion of the ALA effort to quantify and examine contacts by federal law enforcement agencies in public academic libraries and its effect on library users” but she really only about the quantitative efforts thus far (types of surveys to be used, number of libraries expected to be contacted etc.) This survey will reach 4000 academic libraries and close to 1500 public libraries in the country. The qualitative interviewing begins next month. This will be much more interesting to gnaw on once the data starts coming in… Nancy Talanian, director of Bill of Rights Defense Committee, spoke briefly about her organization’s efforts to galvanize local communities to reclaim their civil rights by passing resolutions declaring themselves a “Civil Liberties Safe Zone”. Talanian spearheaded a measure in her own town of Northampton Massachusetts. As someone who grew up in the part of the state, I think it’s fair to mention that Northampton is already a pretty liberal haven and the home of Smith College. If you’re interested in the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), go to their website: BoRDC.

If the first three updates read like a press release, good. That’s how they sounded to me as I listened. Believe me, I was not expecting a rally cry at 8:30 am, but…

Now, the most interesting parts of this update to me were the “briefings” by the Laura Murphy, director of the Washington office of the ACLU and Thomas Sussman, a partner in the DC office of Ropes and Gray. Sussman rattled off his impressions of what was coming from 109^th Congress in a humorous way, and made a sarcastic comment about incoming Attorney General Gonzales being a nice guy, you know, save his memos and the subsequent horror in Abu Ghraib that I won’t try to recreate because sometimes attempts at sarcasm in the blogosphere just doesn’t work. Murphy was especially fantastic because she spoke about the practical implications of certain PA measures (more in a minute) and talked about what legislation to be on the lookout for with the 109^th Congress and her office’s efforts with ALA. She referred to librarians as a less radioactive group than ACLU and in a position to impact politics and line up support where we live (editorial boards, state reps, etc.). Did you know that about 10 percent of the Patriot Act is due to expire in December 2005? This occurrence is called “sunsetting”. Get it, sunshine, sunset?

Sneaking a peek: Murphy talked about RFID, which many of us know about in relation to libraries. The new passports will contain RFID, which may be read up to 30 feet away. So if you have a passport, it will be possible for the government to get more private information on travelers. There’s a push to get the same technologies for state licenses, making a “national id” card closer to becoming a reality. Will getting patron information happen under our noses? Murphy and Sussman each talked about the need for more bipartisanship and the ACLU’s current work with conservatives. Murphy says there’s fertile ground for change, even in red states and that we need to go into every office because they all deserve our attention. Resolutions to strengthen the Patriot act are occurring in unlikeliest of places across the country.

I hope Jennie Pu’s post about yesterday’s Hot Topics in Frontline Reference (sponsored by RUSA and extremely useful info for Public Libraries) is published soon; it was also my favorite meeting of the day yesterday! After hanging with the PLA bloggers of course. Two or three PLA bloggers were snapping photos, so I’m sure the evidence of our gathering will surface at some point. I sat two PLA bloggers away from Walt Crawford. End swooning and I’m off for more PLA meeting action this morning!! Keep reading.