[Libs-Or] ALA Reports

[Wyma Rogers]

Attached is an excellent summary of the ALA Council actions from the Delaware Councilor who offered to share.  It's a short report (3 pages and easy to read).   I'm adding highlights and comments on ALA outside Council:

It was a fantastic experience to view Fahrenheit 911 within an audience of a thousand librarians.  Imagine the cheering, hooting and laughter, as well as the tears.  

I made a point of hearing several authors read from their works:  Jackie Winspear (Brit mystery writer whose unusual detective had a childhood education that sounds like that of the Mitford Sisters and who uses a combination of counseling and logic to not only solve crimes but set the world right), Carl Hiassen (who really is the funniest and most outrageous satirist on the subject of his native Florida, the slease who inhabit it, and even his readers), Edward P Jones (whose novel presents mostly blacks, but other cultures too caught in the Reconstruction Era, dealing with freedom and the aftermath of slavery), and Tom Perrotta (whose wry humor is dark and very funny - and whose characters are more multidimensional than portrayed in film, i.e. Election with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick).  

At the very end of the small press exhibits I met the author of a book on sculpture that we have in our collection called "Sculpture as Experience: Working with Clay, Wire, Plaster and Found Objects."  Judith Peck is a lovely woman who has a soft voice and modest demeanor.  She was most concerned with communicating and experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed the few minutes I spent talking with her.  It was only after I returned home and looked her up online that I discovered her to be a noted sculptor and university professor. 

Highlights of the report:

A new committee on Rural and Tribal Library Services will be looking at concerns of rural libraries

Membership meetings at conference could reach a quorum in the future:  On the ballot in 2005 will be a resolution reducing the quorum required to 75 (same as Council)

Library Technical Assistant programs at colleges and universities will have a new set of criteria for their programs, thanks to the Committee on Education

Council adopted the eleven Core Values for librarians and librariespresented by the 2nd Task Force

A very good 10-minute video produced for the Campaign for America's Libraries will soon be available (we previewed it)

During the conference, the Supreme Court upheld an injunction against the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a federal law that proposes restrictions on Internet content deemed "harmful to minors."   Freedom to Read was one organization who had brought the injunction.

Wyma Rogers
Chapter Councilor
 
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