A Blank Slate

The official slate of candidates for ALA's council included no media specialists--and a lot of people want to know why

Staff -- School Library Journal, 2/1/2000

School librarians may soon find they have less clout in setting policy for the American Library Association. Of the 52 candidates named to run this spring for ALA Council, the association's governing body, not one school librarian made the list.

And that has some in ALA questioning how this year's nominating committee, which comes up with names to run for association-wide offices, did its job. "My biggest disappointment is that the committee did not think it was important enough to, on its own volition, find a school person--or two or three or four--to have on that list," says Steve Matthews, a school librarian and ALA councilor. "Can you imagine a slate without a public or academic librarian on it?"

Another council member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was less diplomatic: "The nominating committee did a really lousy job." The council member says that instead of sending out a "generic" form letter to prospective candidates, committee members should have personally beaten the bushes among their colleagues. "You use your committee to tap into existing networks. This committee did not do that."

The chair of the nominating committee, Deborah Miller, says her committee did the best job it could, considering the near-impossible task. The fact is, says Miller, it's extremely difficult to find anyone to run for president and council, let alone make sure there are enough people from each library specialty. Miller says her 10-member committee--which included one school librarian--sent forms to several media specialists, who either didn't respond or declined to participate. She then followed up by e-mail with those who didn't respond. "We didn't do it by numbers [from each specialty], but we all knew we wanted to reach out as much as possible to the library community," she says.

The ALA Council sets all association policies and has 182 members serving staggered, three-year terms. In the upcoming election, 26 at-large council seats are up for grabs. (Some seats are reserved for representatives of ALA's divisions and roundtables and the executive board.)

Besides being formally nominated, you can also nominate yourself for council by getting names on a petition. School leaders were hoping to find candidates to do that at last month's midwinter meeting in San Antonio, TX. Matthews says he and other members of the council's youth caucus would also discuss the issue and make sure they were doing everything they could to put forward nominations. Still, he says, it sends a "bad message" when no school librarians are on ALA's official slate.

Association veterans say it's hard to recruit media specialists for council, because administrators are often unwilling to give them the time off to attend ALA conferences or help defray costs. The problem is that school librarians, who represent the largest library specialty, do different jobs than public librarians. Without representation, ALA policy is less likely to reflect their concerns, says M. Ellen Jay, a councilor and president of the American Association of School Librarians. "If you're not voting on policy, you're at the whim of whatever rules council chooses to set."--A. G.