ALA Leadership Voted In

AASL, YALSA, ALSC elect presidents for 2007–2008

By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 6/1/2006

Sara Kelly Johns, a media specialist at Lake Placid Middle/Senior High School in New York, was elected president of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) for 2007–2008.

Johns, who beat Fayetteville (AR) High School Media Specialist Cassandra Barnett, will assume the AASL presidency in July 2007, following the American Library Association’s annual conference in Washington, DC.

Johns says her top priority will be working with other educational agencies and organizations to ensure that they recognize school librarians’ crucial role.

Another concern is the 65 percent solution, a controversial educational funding proposal mandating that school districts spend at least 65 cents of every dollar on “in-class instruction.” In many states where the initiative is gaining traction, school librarians don’t fall under the definition of classroom instruction and risk losing crucial funding. “If [the 65 percent solution] needs to be handled, then we’ll handle it,” Johns says. “But I hope by the time I’m AASL president that it’s dead.”

Paula Brehm-Heeger, teen coordinator at the Public Library (OH) of Cincinnati and Hamilton County and a writer for School Library Journal’s Teenage Riot column, was elected president of the Young Adult Library Services Association. Brehm-Heeger defeated C. Allen Nichols, director of the Wadsworth Public Library in Ohio, by a vote of 560 to 453.

Brehm-Heeger says she’ll focus on advocating for young adult librarians and for library services to teens. “Providing opportunities for division members to gain and enhance vital leadership skills will be a priority for me, as will thinking of creative and innovative ways to engage teens themselves in leadership roles at the library,” she says.

Meanwhile, Jane Marino, director of the Bronxville (NY) Public Library and author of Sing Us a Story: Using Music in Preschool and Family Story Times (H. W. Wilson, 1994), was elected president of the Association for Library Services to Children, narrowly defeating Molly Kinney, the director of public library services at the Alvin Sherman Library, Research and Information Technology Center in Florida, by a vote of 474 to 462.

Loriene Roy, professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information, was elected president of the American Library Association (ALA), beating William Crowe, director of the University of Kansas’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library, by a vote of 8,898 to 4,702.

“I look forward to working with ALA members on my platform issues: workplace wellness, supporting library and information science education through practice, and including all peoples in the circle of literacy,” Roy says.