ALA Council II

A report from the President of the Freedom to Read foundation was given. The Freedom to Read foundation marks its 40th anniversary celebration in Chicago. A new category of membership has been established - membership now brings in $40,000 into the treasury.

The Executive Board needs to develop guidelines concerning the endorsement of ALA Presidential candidates by divisions, round tables, and other units of ALA.

BARC is studying the feasibility of shortening Council sessions so that they can end on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. Although most Councilors would like this, there are problems with other committees getting their reports to Council on time as well as already established contracts with conference venues.

Policy Monitoring Committee Report: 4 action items were passed on wording changes for the previously passed resolution, Resolution on Principles for Digital Content. This resolution can be found at http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/oitp/digtask.cfm#prin

Recruiting Councilors: Joseph Eagan spoke to various means that would encourage more members to run as councilor including a podcast and website with FAQs. A motion was made to conclude all council business by Tuesday.

Presidential Task Force on the Graduated Dues Study. This task force identified 5 components to study this topic : survey, trends (now being done through an LSTA grant with UPENN), Due modeling, stakeholder review, and revenue impact analysis.) The full cost of all the tasks would have topped $500,000 so it was decided that they would recommend only the first step of the process, which included an in-depth membership survey. Executive Director, Keith Fiels indicated he would find the money within the current budget to accomplish the current component.


Committee on Professional Ethics. A motion to make the proposed changes on the statement of ethics was discussed. These changes are mostly grammatical, with the exception of one paragraph. (I will include a link here to the document.)