Overheard at ALA
By Lillian N. Gerhardt, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 8/1/1997
Three discussions observed by School Library Journal's reporters during the American Library Association's Annual Conference in San Francisco resulted in no action or change. However, these non-events are indicative of why ALA members who are specialists in library services to young people have to work overtime inside the organization to affect ALA's direction, policies, and budget allocations.
First, there was the Joint Executive Committee's meeting of the three youth services divisions. Barbara Stripling, President of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), chaired. Reasoning that the service goals of AASL, the Association of Library Services for Children (ALSC), and the Young Adult Library Service Association (YALSA) could best be achieved via understanding and active cooperation from the administrators who populate the Public Library Association (PLA), Stripling invited PLA's officers to attend the first hour of the tri-divisional meeting.
Stripling reported on AASL's progress toward setting standards for student literacy and learning and the division's new national guidelines due for publication in 1998. ALSC President Steve Herb reported on ALSC's "Born to Read" project and other ALSC reading initiatives, such as America Reads, Ready Start Read, and work for Reading Rainbow and Head Start. YALSA President Deborah Taylor outlined the division's strategy to encourage senior high school students to be America Reads tutors. Officers of all three youth services divisions described not only reading initiatives, but also technology and advocacy issues requiring collaboration between schools and public libraries.
PLA's President Linda Mielke took the floor to say that PLA has no reading or literacy initiatives and no space in the division's busy schedule to insert any. PLA's officers departed to do whatever it is that keeps that division so busy. AASL, ALSC, and YALSA officers promised to stay in touch. The questions left behind are: in touch with what? And for what?
Then there was ALA's successful case against the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Council toasted the Supreme Court's finding that "communications over the Internet deserve the highest level of Constitutional protection." Two days later, Council finally voted to affirm "that the use of filtering software abridges the Library Bill of Rights (LBR)." But, not without strong suggestions that ALA embrace the installation of filters on library computers used by minors.
Just over a year ago, ALA's Council, without debate, voted to reaffirm LBR's Point #5, which condemns limiting access to library services and holdings because of a customer's age. The next question for research ought to be why Judith F. Krug, Executive Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, continues to promote filters in children's rooms.
Finally, there was the unfinished ALA Executive Board discussion of some incomplete research. The Benton Foundation's Andrew Blau gave a progress report on a study undertaken for ALA on what the public wants from public libraries in the future. Among the early findings of focus groups of adult library customers, Blau revealed some old news: all the focus groups -- the college educated, the working class, women, men, African-Americans -- came on strong for 1) the educational value and importance to literacy of library services for children and 2) human (rather than automated) information navigation help. This isn't quite clear in ALA's Goal 2000 and beyond. It spurred highly wired Past-President Betty Turock to lecture the Board on the low esteem in which focus group research is held by academe.
But, focus group findings are indicators of where work has to be done. Just as opposition to support for full access to library services for young library customers -- implicit in the reports above -- indicates where youth advocates must keep the "Kids Can't Wait" theme alive: inside ALA.
Renée Olson
Editor-in-Chief
rolson@slj.cahners.com
