Editorial-The Big Idea Redux

Our National Love Affair with Technology and our politicians' courtship of its manufacturers has hit school library book budgets hard. In a country that annually anguishes over the reading scores of its children, school districts sink millions into the acquisition of computers and software, but allocate less and less for the purchase of new books or essential replacement titles.

Enter First Lady Laura Bush.

In late July, Mrs. Bush announced that she would create a not-for-profit organization to raise money for the purchase of books for school libraries. Details on how this will be done are expected later this month. For the moment, the proposed foundation exists as a Big Idea backed by a worthy and knowledgeable First Lady who once was, by all accounts, the sort of librarian every school needs.

Big Ideas without implementation plans are sitting ducks for advance critics. It is to be hoped that Laura Bush has been fully informed about the fate of the Big Idea when it was presented to the American Library Association (ALA) a decade ago, during the presidency of Marilyn L. Miller, in 1991–1992.

Back then, Drs. Blanche E. Woolls and David V. Loertscher, both former presidents of ALA's American Association of School Librarians, proposed that ALA set up a foundation to raise funds for grants to enable needy school libraries to buy books. The proposal was in the vision stage, sans detail on how it would work.

The project came to be called "A Billion Bucks for Books." A consultant produced an outline for a pilot program to be conducted in Pennsylvania. The pilot program was to be the laboratory for testing and resolving any unforeseen problems about how the Big Idea might work on a national scale.

When the consultant's report was brought to ALA's council for approval and additional funding for the project, the report contained the admonition that the experiment would only work if it had the full endorsement of all of ALA's units. The proposed pilot program got tepid support from ALA's three youth services divisions. Many councilors raised questions about how a foundation with such a super-attractive purpose might affect ALA's efforts to raise outside funds for its other endeavors, but none condemned the project's feasibility outright… until one of ALA's biggest divisions, the Public Library Association, refused to endorse the experiment. That Big Idea got shot down before its trial-balloon stage, a victim of institutional and organizational turf wars.

What's likely to happen to Mrs. Bush's Big Idea? How will she put her Big Idea into motion? These compelling questions await answers. But nobody can doubt her ability to raise the cash necessary to get books to the school libraries that need help the most.

As an experienced librarian committed to the enhancement of reading skills, Laura Bush knows that the success of the Big Idea depends on providing quality books, as well as the qualified staff needed to select and put those books to good use in school library collections. All librarians, not just those who specialize in work with young readers, can applaud Mrs. Bush for moving forward on a Big Idea for which the time has come at last.

American librarians concerned for young people and their reading should stand ready to help, not hinder, the first school librarian to lead from our White House.