Upcoming Council Business

There is always a flurry of activity on the listservs and blogs about ALA governance before the conferences. Although this is only my second conference as ALA Chapter Councilor, it is obvious that there has been an ongoing discussion about whether Council should take up "social issues" business. I have only heard from about 5 folks from Colorado libraries on their opinions on this - 4 did not want me to vote on non-library issues, and 1 person did. As I am also a representative of CAL, their stand on this is important to me too. I see my role as a representative of library staff in Colorado and will tend to use other venues besides Council to work on social issues of importance to me (and libraries). If a social issue arises that is clearly involved with libraries, I will take a stand on it, if not I will abstain from voting. There is still a lot of dissatisfaction with how ALA is governed. Here is some discussion on the freerangelibrarian blog.
http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/05/29/ala-what-is-to-be-done/

As of today, there are only a few resolutions that have been proposed. One calls for Congress to fully fund the National Library Service's digitization project, and the other calls for support for school libraries by passing a resolution that urges the inclusion of school library media specialists in the "highly qualified" category of "No Child Left Behind." Discussion has also started on another resolution of end the war in Iraq, but no formal resolution has been introduced.

One other bit of news - ALA will be showcasing representative possibilities for a new website design during the annual conference. There will be kiosks that will display wireframes (rough sketches) that are intended to gain feedback on the information architecture, navigation approach, and basic layout. So redesign is moving forward. Hope to see you at the Council suite on Saturday night between 6 - 7:30 (See previous post.)