Thom Barthelmess Replaces Kate McClelland as ALSC President-Elect

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By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 02/10/2009

Thom Barthelmess, youth services manager at the Austin Public Library in Texas, was elected vice-president/president-elect of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). The position became vacant late January when Kate McClelland, who had been elected to the position last spring, died in a car accident on her way back from the American Library Association’s (ALA) midwinter meeting in Denver.

Thom Barthelmess replaces Kate McClelland as vice-president/president-elect of the Association for Library Service to Children.

Barthelmess, who will soon begin a new position as lecturer and curator of the new Butler Children’s Literature Center at Dominican University’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science in River Forest, IL, immediately takes on the position of vice-president/president-elect. He assumes the ALSC presidency at the close of ALA’s Annual Conference in July 2009 in Chicago.

Librarians, says Barthelmess, who is serving his third year of ALSC board service, hold a responsibility to those they serve. “As children’s librarians, serving toddlers to tweens, in public and school libraries, we commit ourselves to employing the magic of literature and equipping young people with tools to find and make their way,” he says. “I pledge to carry this commitment into every corner of our professional endeavor.”

He has also served on the ALSC Membership Committee, the Newbery Award Selection Committee, and the ALSC Notable Children’s Recordings Committee (including a term as chair), among other ALA activities. He is only the third male to serve as ALSC President, following Spencer Shaw in 1975-76 and Steven Herb in 1996-97.

Barthelmess earned his MLS from the University of Pittsburgh and his BA from Grinnell College in Iowa. He has previously served as youth services coordinator and youth services supervisor at Spokane County Library District and worked as a circulation clerk and library assistant in the children’s room at the main branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

According to ALSC bylaws, a vacancy in the office of vice president is to be filled by a vote of the board of directors, who elect from their membership someone in his second or third year of service.