Council III

Three new members of the executive board were elected - a school, academic, and public librarian. They will serve a three year term starting at Annual Conference in June.


The treasurer, Rodney Hersberger gave his report, and he highlighted 4 of the programmatic priorities this year, which include (1) school library advocacy statistics inititative. (2) Diversity (3) advocacy for rural and for tribal libraries. (4) State/Chapter online network - provides 25 chapters with capwiz an online program that allows ala and the chapters to work together and mobilize grassroots support.



COO reported and introduced three motions.

(1) Establish a Council committee to work with the Advocacy office

(2) Have the president-elect report to council some demographics on the make-up of the committee on committees

(3)Restrain candidates from participating on a committee or board that could advance or appear to advance his or her candidacy.

The committee has also inititiated two groups: one on Library Assessment and and one on Gaming.



The Constitution and Bylaws Committee put forth a resolution that ALA accept the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials as an affiliate, which passed. The second resolution that passed indicates that ALA accept the On-Line Audiovisual Catalogers as an affiliate. The third resolution called for an amendment to the constitution, which would allow the executive board to be charged with appointing a new officer should the elected officer not be able to serve. The fourth resolution that passed changed the constitution so that all officers and elected members of the board shall serve until the adjournment of Annual Conference.



The Intellectual Freedom committee had no action items. Trends that were reported included:

(1) NSL - 43 states have confirmed that.

(2) Censorship and Book Challenges - Alms for Jihad - an example of "libel" tourism. Settlement was out of court. The press called on libraries to pull their copies of this title. OIF put out the call that we have no obligation to do this, and most academic libraries did not do this.

(3) The Golden Compass. It reared its ugly head because of the movie. The Catholic League protested this. There was a large increase in the censorship of this book. ALA President made a timely and strong response and prevented a lot from happening.

(4)The Use of Obscenity Laws to censor literature. Teachers can be charged in court for providing "obscene" literature to their children. Parents are going to legal outlets to get charges against the teacher, and the teacher will lose their job.

(5)A Festschrigt to honor Gordon M. Conable.



New Projects

(1) They are planning a national conference on privacy as an American value.

(2)A revision of the Intellectual Freedom Manual

(3) Banned Books week was a huge success. OIF has moved into Web 2.0 through Faceback, MySpace and Flickr.

(4)The Intellectual Freedom Manual is putting together a three part series that address intellectual freedom.

(5) Lawyers for Libraries has been very successful. Over 400 lawyers trained. Colorado held this workshop in November as a pre-conference at CAL.



Committee on Legislation asked Council to pass six resolutions including one to commending the FBI "whistleblower," Bassem Youssef, for exposing abuses in the use of exigent national security letters. They were all supported. Others included a resolution to have accessible workstations available at conferences (voted for); a Resolution to end the violence in Kenya (abstained); a Resolution on the Confiscation of Iraqi Documents (voted for.)

This is the conclusion of my second Mid-winter conference, and it is truly an honor to be a part of ALA. I would encourage you to be a member and get involved. Please contact me if I can be of assistance.