ALA Council Session I
January 24th, 2006 by Heidi Dolamore
Since I’m running for Council Member-at-Large (Heidi Dolamore, vote for me!), I thought I should take a look and see what I’m getting myself into.
There were less than ten non-Councilors observing the meeting, though there were plenty of chairs on the off chance a mob of folks obsessed with the Sturgis rules for parliamentary procedure showed up to get their fix.
The first little while was taken up by all of the fine print and announcements (like how to submit resolutions, amendments, etc etc). Listening to all of that, I kept thinking, “Sheesh, Council needs a wiki.”
The floor was opened up to questions and proposals for additions to the agenda. Someone asked for clarification on the ALA’s Freedom of Information Act request. Keith Michael Fiels, ALA executive director, got up and said a bunch of legal stuff which I am afraid to misquote, so I’ll just point you to the article in American Libraries which should clear things up.
Then we moved on to debate surrounding the first resolution before Council, which took up the rest of the meeting. I don’t have the text (er, wiki anyone?), but it was basically a response to proposed legislation “that calls for all 50 states to require that their school districts spend at least 65% of their budgets on direct-classroom instruction by 2008.” Unfortunately, according to a 30 year old definition, football counts as instruction, but school libraries and librarians don’t. I don’t know if I would exactly call the discussion a debate, because it was pretty clear from the start that there was a strong majority in support of the resolution, and in the end it was approved. The biggest sticking point was in the first resolved clause, because it calls upon the ALA executive director to write an annual letter in support of school libraries to a bunch of government big-wigs. The word “annual” didn’t sit well with some people, but I think everyone finally realized that it’s okay to revisit this decision in a couple of years if we decide we don’t need to send a letter anymore. Meanwhile, I learned that the American Association of School Librarians is the second largest ALA division. The most interesting point raised during debate was made by Jackie Griffin, Director of the Berkeley Public Library. She pointed out that this is also a public library issue. With decreased funding for school libraries and school library staff, public libraries are becoming the de facto school libraries, without specialized staff, training, support, or funding.
(By the way, I’m back in Seattle and will hopefully catch a bus home to Vancouver in a couple of hours. But I’ve still got to catch up with my blogging…at least one or two more posts.)
Tags: ALAMidwinter2006, conferences
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January 26th, 2006 at 11:24 am
Council Wiki? Oh, you poor delusional girl, you! The problem with pointing to ALA documents so soon after conference, particularly, resolutions, is that they often are often amended during the course of debate. ALA staff do make those available as soon as possible on the website. I wonder, though, if some of us could do an unofficial wiki (if it were ALA sanctioned, it would take a committee, a consultant and three years…). Certainly stuff to think about! And yes…VOTE FOR HEIDI!
January 26th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
Often amended? Exactly why Council needs a wiki!