Posted in Uncategorized at 10:24 am by Greg Landgraf
One of the earliest requests we had when we started AL Focus was to include transcripts of videos. We looked for an easy, elegant way to provide them… and didn’t find any.
We did, eventually, find a more mundane way, thanks to John Chrastka, ALA’s director of Membership Development, and Molly Sasajima of ALA Conference Services, who actually did the transcribing work. As a result, all of the AL Focus videos now have transcripts. To access them, simply click on the “Transcript” link in each video’s description. The transcript will open in a new tab or window, so the video will not be interrupted.
It’s been nine days since Pres. Obama announced his administration’s nationwide “United We Serve” volunteer initiative, mentioning “reading to kids at your local library” as an example of how individuals and groups can boost local efforts toward improving education and community renewal, among other worthwhile projects. The library community, of course, is no stranger to harnessing volunteer energy; in fact, quite a few libraries big and small have passionate bibliophiles to thank for their beginnings.
What’s different today about library workers heeding the president’s call to recruit constituents to roll up their sleeves is the economic upheaval that has pushed libraries across the country—most recently in Ohio—into crisis mode. It’s abundantly clear that people love their libraries more than ever, and Wall Street ought to be envying the charts and graphs documenting the surge in libraries’ gate count and circulation stats.
What better time to channel that library love into sweat equity and spin it into advocacy?
That’s the meme of the visionary Carla Lehn of California State Library, who talked with American Libraries about that fiscally beleaguered state’s burgeoning library volunteer movement. Her nascent interest in retooling library volunteerism “all came to a head” when she read the 2005 “Long Overdue” report issued by Public Agenda with support from the Americans for Libraries Council and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Lehn was particularly struck by this finding: “Americans who are active in the community and vote regularly are more likely to have a library card and favor taxes to support libraries. These are also the people who local politicians are most likely to listen to. However, these highly engaged citizens are generally unaware of funding issues that threaten library services.”
So: People who are most likely support libraries at the ballot box are engaged in the community and more likely to get heard by local politicians. But those citizen-dynamos don’t realize how badly libraries need them.
Wow.
Another a-ha moment came when Lehn connected that “Long Overdue” finding to unrelated research indicating that, beginning with the graying baby boomer generation and continuing through successive generations, people are now volunteering at a greater rate than ever—but they are only interested in what they consider to be “meaningful work” related (unsurprisingly) to their hobbies and professional talents and skill sets.
Long story short, about a year after Lehn started training California librarians to “expand the way we think about volunteerism and bring people on that can do things we can’t done otherwise,” the ”Get Involved: Powered by Your Library” campaign launched its library link to the Volunteer Match database May 6. Within a month, Lehn revealed proudly, 100 California library systems (half of the public libraries statewide) had registered more than 500 volunteer opportunities. The project’s goal? Getting 50 libraries involved within a year. Not bad.
The California initiative places libraries at the virtual heart of service opportunities by providing citizens with a one-stop-shopping link to projects that suit their interests and talents. So, participating libraries burnish their cred as community information hubs as well as gaining team players to keep the library humming.
Obama’s “United We Serve” project can do the same on a larger scale. What are we waiting for?
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:31 pm by Leonard Kniffel
Fresh from the launch of “United We Serve” at the Fanwood Memorial Library in New Jersey, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan took time to do a “Newsmaker” interview for American Libraries yesterday afternoon.
Arne Duncan
I chatted with Duncan for about 20 minutes, and he talked with conviction about the value of libraries and about the threats to funding they are facing across the country. He noted that funding cuts are ironically in inverse proportion to the rising demand for their services, which are essential to solving America’s financial and social problems.
The father of a 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, Duncan’s faith in libraries and education is firm, but “our children today need more than we are giving them,” he said. Collaboration with other social service and nonprofit organizations is the key to library success, he believes. What a lot of young people need more than money, he added, “is our time.”
Calling it “a 19th-century concept . . . based on the agrarian economy,” Duncan talked about what a waste it is for schools to be in use only during the six-hour school day and the nine-month school year. What are schools trying to accomplish? he asked. “We have schools in every community in the country; they all have libraries, computer labs, gyms, some have pools,” and “they don’t belong to me or the principal, they belong to the community.”
Summer reading, as Duncan sees it, is a large part of the “Summer of Service” volunteering concept embodied in “United We Serve,” to avoid the “reading loss” that students typically experience over the summer months.
Duncan spoke eloquently about the value of libraries and the commitment of the Department of Education to supporting them, but when I pressed him about specific ways the Department of Education can really prevent plug-pulling on the state and local level, the best answer he could give was a sort of “we’ll do all we can.” There’s no denying that the federal agency has no real control over local decisions, and Duncan characterized the “tough economic times” as “a real test of leadership at every level” that would bring out innovation as well as struggle.
I asked Duncan how librarians and teachers can lobby for library services without seeming self-serving. “It’s not about being selfish or self-serving,” he responded. “It’s about demonstrating the difference you are making our students’ lives . . . in the lives of families and the community.” He said the Department of Education would “do whatever we can to let folks know that we have to keep . . . libraries open and staffed.”
A transcript of the interview will be published on American Libraries Online; the Newsmaker Q&A is scheduled for the August-September print issue of American Libraries.
As the editor of American Libraries Online, I’m always on the lookout for news stories to research and develop about libraries and trends affecting them. Because libraries impact just about every aspect of society, there’s an impressive daily deluge to sort through, as the abundance of annotated links in our weekly e-newsletter American Libraries Direct attests.
However, the global economic crisis has turned that deluge into a fiscal tsunami for libraries, and has raised the threshold for what is newsworthy rather tellingly. There was a time when American Libraries would cover just about every threatened library service cutback or closure that the editors got wind of. In fact, libraries threatened with closure made national headlines in the general press: Even the New York Times covered the near-demise in 2005 of the Salinas (Calif.) Public Libraries, while American Libraries Online trumpeted its subsequent return to fiscal health after voters relented and agreed to properly fund the three-branch system. The library world was similarly startled by the six-month shutdown in 2007 of the Jackson County (Oreg.) Libraries due to the loss of federal logging-industry subsidies.
What makes news in any field is the unusual, the unimaginable, the offbeat. That’s what rivets readers. For the time being in libraryland, however, what used to be unimaginable has become all too commonplace. Several times a week, the editors of American Libraries see headlines and postings about yet another local governing authority looking to make ends meet by slashing library service hours, laying off staff—or even closing one or more branches. Closure threats come and go in cities like Hartford, San Diego, Concord, Memphis, Trenton, and Philadelphia. For those who like their crises serialized, there’s the annual deficit dance in New York City, which is currently in full swing.
Well, the ante has risen again on what constitutes a newsworthy library crisis. This month, American Libraries is following the quest for stable library funding at the state level in New Jersey, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, California, and Connecticut—with no telling where else red ink may run. New Jersey legislators are considering a bill backed by a municipal league to halve a barely sufficient third-of-a-mill funding formula only a year after the library community averted a similar attempt. Pennsylvania lawmakers have before them a choice of slashing state library aid by 50% or 5%; the state library association is willing to consider it a victory to retain FY2009 funding levels. In California, the May 19 defeat of five ballot initiatives has created budget chaos for public, academic, and school libraries as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger looks to balance the state books by taking back some local aid amid other cuts.
And so it goes. But there’s another aspect of all this that makes news each and every time: grassroots activism. That’s what kept the doors open in Philadelphia, Memphis, San Diego, and Trenton; what budget-makers in Concord and New York City are up against; and what state library associations elsewhere are tapping into as lawmakers wrangle over priorities. It’s what got the school librarians of Washngton State into the (albeit unfunded) definition of what constitutes a basic education and has lit a fire in the bellies of other library lovers. In this regard, public libraries are following hard on the heels of school library media programs, whose dedicated media specialists and aides have been fighting marginalization for decades. They may lose battles along the way, but always seem to come back swinging.
May the time soon come when I can once again regard as a man-bites-dog anomaly the occasional news tip about a threat to library funding.
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:59 am by Leonard Kniffel
ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels made two announcments to staff this morning regarding the availablility of WiFi during the ALA Annual Conference here in Chicago, July 9-15.
First the good news: Free WiFi will be available in meeting rooms throughout the convention center, and funds have been made available to prototype a recommendation of the electronic participation task force. Wireless access will also be provided for committee and board meeting rooms selected conference hotels and/or meeting rooms and the convention center, enabling members to utilize laptop computer applications to provide for remote participation by board and committee members not able to attend.
Now the bad news: The cost of providing wireless in the meeting rooms at the four major conference hotels would be $270,000, which ALA simply cannot afford.
Many ALA members have been pressing for WiFi to enable people who are unable to attend ALA conference to participate virtually, but Fiels said providing internet access at hotel prices “is not sustainable as a model.” ALA will continue to investigate and negotiate for future conferences.
Fiels clarifies (5/21): “Since our Midwinter Meeting, we have been actively working on getting wireless into all conference meeting rooms as part of our effort to move ahead on the recommendations of the Task Force on Electronic Member Participation approved by Council.” There’s more good news, he notes: “We have allocated $40,000 in Strategic Plan Initiative Funds, which will be used to provide wireless on a pilot basis to committees and boards that are interested in providing for e-participation for members that will not be at conference. Under this experimental arrangement, boards, committees and discussion groups could provide access via laptop and their choice of internet-based teleconferencing options.”
“More good news,” says Fiels, “is that a group of LITALibrary2.0 members has organized an eParticipation Implementation Task Force that will be providing information and support for those groups seeking to involve members in governance and discussion group activities at the upcoming Annual Conference. A tool kit is available. Please note that this pilot does not include conference programs; we are already providing a ‘virtual conference’ option for those who want to participate virtually in conference programs but cannot come to conference. More information on the wireless pilot will be following shortly.”
Just a quick note to alert Annual Conference attendees that American Libraries’ Annual Conference Dining Guide is now on our website (and on the Conference Wiki). This year’s edition (also coming in print in the June/July issue) is written by Rob Christopher, an administrative assistant for ALA Publishing and a restaurant reviewer for the Chicago Reader.
This year we’ve also got “Highlights on Roads Less Taken,” a collection of some of Chicago’s lesser-known attractions by former ALA President Peggy Sullivan.
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:41 pm by Leonard Kniffel
A very angry Lexington (Ky.) Public Library Chief Executive Officer Kathleen Imhoff called ALA Friday, May 1, upset that American Libraries Direct two days before had carried a link to an article in the Herald-Leader newspaper that characterized charges to her library credit card over the past five years as, at the very least, lousy stewardship of public money. Imhoff was responding to what she felt was an attack on her reputation as an effective and innovative library director, as well as a leader in the profession. I suggested that American Libraries Online publish a story in which she could tell her side of things, to balance out what she said was an unfair and “inaccurate” story in the Herald-Leader. You can read these stories for yourself, and decide what’s fair and what’s accurate.
I spoke with Lexington library board chair Burgess Carey about the AL piece, and I must say that he seemed the voice of reason when I spoke with him, never questioning the newspaper’s right and responsibility to scritinize public expenditures and, indeed, stating that there was nothing technically “inaccurate” about the newspaper article. But he also praised Imhoff as having fulfilled her mandate “to be more public than our previous director” while bringing the fiscal year to a close “under budget every year.” He also told me that he thought the public had been given an unfair perspective by the newspaper article, and that he could understand how “without explanation,” any number of the expenses charged to Imhoff’s credit card “would raise eyebrows.”
Following my conversation with Carey, I received a testy e-mail from John Cheves, the reporter who wrote the article, defending its accuracy. Then I got a call from another editor saying the newspaper was preparing a follow-up story, prompted by the fact that Imhoff had told AL the board was considering “taking action” of some kind in her defense. To Sharon Walsh at the Herald-Leader, that meant legal action, and their defense against any legal action the board or Imhoff might take would be the accuracy of the article. Imhoff has since called me and told me that her statement about the board possibily “taking action” was her own speculation and did not come from the board, a board that has, remember, backed her all the way.
In the follow-up story Cheves reported that “Imhoff, an ALA member, said she told American Libraries editor Leonard Kniffel that she wanted him to write her version of events.” Can I call that statement inaccurate? What I told the Herald-Leader (and I spoke to Walsh, not Cheves) was that I offered Imhoff “an opportunity to tell her side of the story.”
For my part, there are a couple lessons all of us can learn from Imhoff’s experience this month in Lexington. One is not to fly off the handle because a newspaper reporter does his job. If there are corrections to be made, the newspaper will make them; otherwise, all the accusations of inaccuracy you can hurl won’t help your cause. And secondly, look at your records, policies, and expense forms now, before the you-know-what hits the fan. If you are attending a professional conference in Honolulu, or wherever, your records should justify every dime you spend.
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:36 pm by Leonard Kniffel
It’s official, Roberta Stevens of the Library of Congress is ALA’s new president-elect. With 6,786 or 55.7% of the votes cast, she was selected over Kenton L. Oliver who garnered 5,416 or 44.3% of the votes cast.
As soon as the divisions have notified their candidates, all of the ALA Council election results will be posted on the ALA Website this afternoon.
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:39 pm by Leonard Kniffel
ALA staff will gather tomorrow morning for a special memorial to Judith Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, who died April 11. The tribute below will appear in the May issue of American Libraries.
Judith Krug (left) with members of her staff Jen Hammond, Nanette Perez, Jonathan Kelley, Deborah Caldwell-Stone.
Judith Krug believed that no one has the right to tell other people what they can or cannot read. When asked where libraries should draw the line when it comes to stocking controversial material, she always had one answer: “The law.” She understood that we are a nation living under the rule of law, and that creating, enforcing, or overturning the laws of the land is the single most important way to safeguard the freedom to read for all Americans.
In establishing the Freedom to Read Foundation in 1969, Krug based the organization’s mission firmly in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
When Congress did try to make laws “abridging the freedom of speech,” her tenacious involvement in court battles was the stuff of legend. From the triumphant Supreme Court decision that overturned the Communications Decency Act in 1997 to the court’s stubborn upholding of the Children’s Internet Protection Act in 2003, Judy Krug never gave up the fight. Many disagreed with her, but none disrespected her.
On April 11, after a long and courageous battle with stomach cancer, Krug died as she had lived for 40 years, as the proud director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), still leading the charge, still presiding over Banned Books Week last fall, as she had done since founding it in 1982.
Krug often said that when ALA established OIF in 1967 and put her in charge, then–Executive Director David H. Clift sat her down and told her to “put that office on the map.” Rallying her BA from the University of Pittsburgh (1961), her master’s in library science from the University of Chicago (1964), and her natural gifts as a writer, speaker, and progressive thinker, she set about to do just that.
“From time to time, and especially in periods of great stress or social upheaval, a variety of real or imagined evils have been attributed to the reading of obscene and pornographic works,” she wrote in the April 1968 issue of American Libraries (then called ALA Bulletin). “The words ‘obscenity’ and ‘pornography,’ which in themselves cause considerable emotion, are often applied indiscriminately to materials containing ideas, acts, and words which one or another group may find reprehensible,” she added, setting the stage for placing the American Library Association often on the same side of the censorship battle with the likes of Hustler magazine’s Larry Flynt and Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner.
A suburban Chicago mom in her private life, Judy Krug was no prude, and she understood ALA’s obligation to defend the right of Americans to publish and read what she personally thought of as “sleaze,” a word she used to describe Madonna’s 1992 book Sex, which many libraries refused to purchase. Call it sleaze she did, but with the caveat that it should be available in every public library. Krug understood that people have the right to make up their own minds, without librarians exercising a kind of prior restraint by refusing to buy controversial materials.
Frequently attacked by would-be censors, Krug defended what they often called her liberal agenda. She said in an interview in the September 1995 issue of American Libraries, “If I have an agenda, it is protection of the First Amendment. Libraries in this country cannot operate unless we can stand foursquare on the First Amendment. And if that becomes a partisan position, well, OK, I guess if I have to be partisan I will be partisan on behalf of the First Amendment.”
Although she was a liberal Democrat in her personal political leanings, Krug was well aware that, as she put it in the same AL interview, “Our threats come from across the spectrum of social and political thought . . . . We have gone through periods where our biggest threats have been from the left of center, where people have wanted to remove materials that did not portray, for instance, minority groups in the way that they thought minority groups should be portrayed.” She also believed it was the librarian’s responsibility to listen respectfully to those complaints.
She was speaking from experience. One of her greatest challenges as OIF director came in 1977, when she and ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee produced a film titled The Speaker, tackling censorship by telling the story of a library’s decision to allow a racist to speak. Designed to serve as a focal point for library discussions about the First Amendment, the film ironically became a divisive issue at the 1977 ALA Annual Conference in Detroit, denounced by some librarians who called it “insulting in its characterization of black people.”
Then-ALA Executive Director Robert Wedgeworth, her boss at the time, calls the moment one of the Association’s most dramatic. “It split ALA wide open,” he said, and “there was a lot of pressure for me to fire Judith.”
Whatever the arguments in favor of censorship were, Judy Krug had the rebuttal. “She was always ready for confrontation,” Wedgeworth recalled, “and she was such a good debater she could win almost any argument.” Cooler heads prevailed in the case of The Speaker, said Wedgeworth, “but we had underestimated the fact that discussion of race was the one issue that people could not accept with respect to the First Amendment.” He noted that “true to her convictions, Judith stuck by the film.”
Handling controversy was an innate talent that Judy Krug possessed. “She invented what they now call media training,” said Art Plotnik, former editor of American Libraries.
Krug debated the Equal Rights Amendment in Kentucky with conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly in 1990, drawing cheers from a Berea College crowd for articulating “the librarians’ view,” while Schlafly inspired booing.
Krug refined her communications skills to yet another level when dealing with the media frenzy over sexually explicit material online, a furor that erupted as internet access began becoming available in public libraries. For Krug, one of the greatest triumphs of her career was the Supreme Court ruling that overturned the Communications Decency Act. Under her leadership, ALA filed suit in 1996, challenging the CDA, a provision of the Telecommunications Act that President Clinton had signed into law, as an unconstitutional violation of the free speech rights of adults while failing to accomplish its intended purpose of protecting children from inappropriate online content.
Perhaps her greatest disappointment was the 2003 Supreme Court ruling that the Children’s Internet Protection Act was constitutional, ending a battle over internet filtering that cost ALA over a million dollars. Adults, the court decided, could ask that filters be turned off for unrestricted access and Congress could require libraries to install filtering in exchange for funding. It was a decision that Krug had fought hard.
“She was a purist, uncompromising,” said Plotnik. “Anyone else would have caved with the exceptions people would throw at her.” He recalled working many a late night across the hall from Krug. “I never remember her turning away a cold call from a librarian who needed help,” he said. “She would stay long hours to give the most elaborate advice to people calling from the field.”
Krug believed that it was ALA’s role to help libraries set standards and create policies. “If I’ve done nothing else in my career but convince people that they have to have policy and then help them develop good policy, I will have considered my career a success,” she said.
Judy Krug famously attributed her open-mindedness to her unflappable mother, revealing that at the age of 12 she had obtained a sex education book and was reading it under the bed covers with a flashlight when her mother suddenly threw back the covers and asked what she was doing. Young Judith shyly held up the book. “For God’s sake,” her mother said, “turn on your bedroom light so you don’t hurt your eyes.”
But Judith Krug wasn’t doing her job just for librarians; she was doing it for her country, and for the rights and privileges her children and grandchildren enjoy as Americans. From the beginning of her career as a
librarian, she thought big, and she inspired countless librarians to do likewise. She shattered the image of
libraries as the benign sanctuary of the meek, and she forever altered the image of librarians, from bespectacled guardians of the respectable to articulate and unyielding defenders of the freedom to read.
American Libraries Focus has posted a video tribute to Judith Krug, featuring messages from colleagues, appearances by her on local and national television, and photos from throughout her career.
Judith Krug, center, receiving an honorary doctor of humane letters degree during the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's 134th commencement May 14, 2005.
ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels notified the staff this morning of very sad news to start the week: Judith Krug, executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation and director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom for more than 40 years, passed away on Saturday morning.
In cooperation with OIF and ALA’s Public Information Office, American Libraries will be developing a retrospective on Judy’s career for the May print issue, as well as a video memorial for AL Focus. Until then, I’ll share the obituary that Keith sent:
Judith Fingeret Krug, 69 passed away April 11, 2009 at Evanston Hospital. Advisor, author and public servant, she was a remarkable leader in the struggle to educate the public concerning the right to the free expression of ideas. Judy was an inspiration to all who knew her.
She was the Executive Director of the Freedom to Read Foundation and Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association for over forty years. She worked tirelessly to guarantee the rights of individuals to express ideas and read the ideas of others without governmental interference. Through her unwavering support of writers, teachers, librarians, and above all, students, she has advised countless numbers of librarians and trustees in dealing with challenges to library material. She has been involved in multiple First Amendment cases that have gone all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In addition, she was the founder of Banned Books Week, an annual week-long event that celebrates the freedom to choose and the freedom to express one’s opinion.
During a time in our nation’s history when an individual’s rights to access information are constantly under attack, she worked to ensure the public’s right to know through traditional means, as well as through the Internet. Her legacy is a lifetime of passionate commitment, advocacy, and affirmative actions to protect the Constitutional rights of citizens granted under the First Amendment.
Recipient of countless awards and offices including: the Joseph P. Lippincott Award, the Irita Van Doren Award, the Harry Kalven Freedom of Expression Award, and most recently the William J. Brennen, Jr. award, from the Thomas Jefferson Center for Free Expression. In July, she will be honored by the Freedom to Read Foundation for her years of vision and leadership. In addition, she served as a senator and Vice President of the Phi Beta Kappa society.
Born in Pittsburgh, Judith graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and received a Masters degree from the University of Chicago and a PhD from the University of Illinois.
She is survived by her husband Herbert and her loving children Steven (Denise) of Northbrook, and Michelle (David) Litchman of Glencoe and five adoring grandchildren: Jessica, Sydney, Hannah, Rachel and Jason. Additionally, she is survived by her brothers, Jay (Ilene) Fingeret and Dr. Arnold (Denise) Fingeret of Pittsburgh PA, and her sister and brother-in-law, Shirley and Dr. Howard Katzman of Miami, FL. She was preceded in death by her sister Susan (Steve) Pavsner of Bethesda MD.
Services will be held at Beth Emet Synagogue, 1224 Dempster St., Evanston IL, Tuesday April 14 at 10:00 a.m, followed by internment at Shalom Memorial Park. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to The Freedom to Read Foundation, 50 East Huron, Chicago Illinois 60611, or www.ftrf.org.
Edited: ALA’s official press release, with some additional information, is now posted.
