American Libraries

Loriene Roy: Thank you. Microphone No. 7.

Amy Harmon: Amy Harmon, personal member. I have been Twittering, by the way. Younger members aren't really very active in the leadership roles and I'm wondering what action items do you have to not only attract younger members within the American Library Association and/or foster leadership among younger members, such as Leslie Burger's Initiative of the Emerging Leaders, which is very awesome, by the way. Thank you.

Loriene Roy: Roberta.

Roberta Stevens: Well, I will mention just a few that I can think of right away. It's really been a concern that we have members involved in meeting voice and so one thing I've heard a lot about is—are you talking about at meetings exclusively? Just across the organization—good. All right. Well, there are ways to do that. And of course, there's been a lot of interest in the online access we've had programs, the webinars, et cetera. And that is a great way to get young people involved, anybody involved, quite honestly.
The other thing is in addition to Emerging Leaders, which really should continue—it's an important initiative—I would advocate that we really try to expand internships in committees and groups. I know people groan when they hear that message. But let me tell you, I started as an intern on the Committee on Legislation and it grew to be a passion of mine. You know it's a great way, being an intern, to sprinkle yourself across various areas and find what it is that you really are interested in doing, what really gets you jazzed up about the American Library Association. So that is another way to get people involved.

I would like to, if I were elected president, to convene groups, work along with the New Members Round Table to find out how do they see getting younger, newer people involved in the association? What is the most productive way to do it? And then of course we have online access and online discussion groups—they're coming forth. ALA connect will be up and running in, I don't know, six months, eight months, whatever the timetable is, and that's going to be a fabulous way to get people involved, because they can set up Communities of Interest.

Loriene Roy: Thank you. Kent.

Kent Oliver: Well, Roberta ended with something I that was going to mention—the Communities of Interest that's apparently up on the PLA section of the website is fascinating. It’s a way of really attracting people to get involved. One of the things that struck me actually, out in Anaheim, was just the whole idea of how many young members we did have. And it seemed like there had been times when I had been at conferences and it seemed like everybody was over 40. Well, when I was looking around Anaheim, I felt old; I felt like everybody was under 40.

But as far as specifics, I think when I look at what we need to do I'd like to see us expand involvement in our leadership, specifically in more diverse areas. I think the Spectrum models that we have going could be used at certain levels through the rest of the association—the electronic participation, certainly as we've mentioned. I think that we need to get the word out about ALA to library schools more effectively than we do. We've been trying to do that with intellectual freedom issues for a number of years, and we're starting to see some returns on that. And that's where you build the early leaders. I agree with the internships, I think those would be great. I think internships, again, in the area of diversity would be very effective.

I think just having our leaders be aware that we need to engage younger members. One of the things that I tried to do when I was chairing IFC is that we would always have younger members on IFC. But you can't just let them sit there and not involve them in the business of the committee. We need to engage them and give them responsibility. And as the leader, I seek to reach out and give more younger members responsibility.

Loriene Roy: Microphone No. 7.

Susan Schnuer: I am Susan Schnuer and I represent International Relations Round Table. And my question is, "How do you see the role of ALA in the international library arena?”

Loriene Roy: Kent.

Kent Oliver: Okay, this is time for true confessions: my experience in the international field is limited. Most of what I've been involved with is monitoring IFLA and issues with Cuba—if I can say that here. (Laughter) So I guess what I would see as needing to do is maybe make it more of an issue for the association and make more people in the association aware of what's going on internationally. Because I don't think most members are really aware of what ALA's role is in the international scene of libraries. We should be leaders just like we are with the rest of the things we do and maybe we need to export some of the knowledge we have here.

Loriene Roy: Thank you. Roberta.

Roberta Stevens: ALA is the premiere library association in the world. I would work to increase the number and diversity of our membership nationally and globally and to expand member opportunities, especially through virtual participation. This is something I wrote to include in my remarks, and took out because there wasn't enough time to say everything, but I really mean it. What we have and what we've continued to grow are more and more online opportunities. And it is thriving out there. And we're doing a better job of getting them delivered.
What this has done is opened up for us a marketplace that we really didn't have so available when it was pretty much participate through coming to meetings and by publications. We now have an opportunity for interactivity with the online dimension of this, and I think that we want to insure that we thrive. We need to keep our membership level either at least at this level or growing, ideally. And moving into the global marketplace and using the ALA brand, which is a tremendous brand, is an opportunity for us to continue to be highlighted, to take a leadership role as an association and to really share the incredible amount of work that we all do to make this association the success that it is.

Loriene Roy: Microphone No. 6.

Elizabeth Ridler: Elizabeth Ridler, councilor-at-large and technical dinosaur. I was at an OCLC symposium yesterday where they were looking at the future of the web and collective knowledge and how collective knowledge can contribute to our knowledge base. And my thought for, instead pop-down participation, bottom-up participation would be some way of doing some things within ALA, like LC has done with pegging its photos. They put them up on the web and people identified them and entered information. Similarly, Wikipedia—librarians like to dis Wikipedia but to my knowledge, most of what I've seen on it and have knowledge about has been pretty accurate. The wisdom of crowds—how can we make best use of it? And I throw that out to the two candidates.

Roberta Stevens: Elizabeth, I didn't quite hear the last thing you said, was it the "wisdom?"

Elizabeth Ridler: “The wisdom of crowds.”

Roberta Stevens: Okay. Well, it's an interesting question because the Library of Congress did put up the Flicker site. It's turned out to have 10 million hits in some short amount of time; there have been tons of people responding to it, we know it is a success. Well, we can do the same thing—we're doing some of those same things here in the American Library Association. We do have blogs, we do have wikis and that is definitely a bottom-up type situation. But what I was saying a little bit earlier about ALA Connect, which is soon to be launched, is it's going to really expand and allow people—it's customized to you and your interests and connects you other individuals as well. It is about as bottom-up as you can get.

Loriene Roy: Thank you. Kent.

Kent Oliver: Well, I agree with Roberta. I think the association is already doing quite a bit and frankly, the way we present it, I think, is bottom-up. You know, we have been Twittering at the privacy programs that we had at Anaheim. We had incredible participation and it was a wide base of people that were interested in that. I think as you go forward, too, not just bottom-up as far as participation, but as far as training type of models—OCLC web junction and some of the others we're using—we can use as training models as we move forward with certification and some other things. But no, I'd agree with what Roberta said. I think you just continue to push it out there, you look at the trends, you see what's most effective, and you apply that as best practice.

Loriene Roy: Microphone No. 5.

Betty Turock: Betty Turock, personal member—one of the few fortunate personal members who has had the opportunity to be president of this association. To both candidates I'd like to ask—the Office of Information Technology Policy and the Urban Library Council are both now thinking about the future of libraries in the 21st century. And what I'd like to ask is, “If you were a part of that group, what would be on your list of crucial issues that are facing of the library in this century?"

Kent Oliver: That's a big question, Betty. I think libraries have to fundamentally change. I do believe that libraries build community, that was one our president's themes years ago. And for public libraries, I think you need to be the gathering place, you need to be that third place that people that is proverbially identified as the third place in the community that people come to. You need to broaden your horizons.

My public library, for instance, is becoming the literacy place in our community, it is becoming the tech place, and it is the education place. And that's what libraries have to do. They have to broaden their horizons and provide the services that are needed if they are public libraries. As far as academic libraries, I think they need to continue to work on things such as digitization, so that they can be the storehouse of information and continue to upgrade the way people access information. They need to meet the expectations of what people are looking for, whether they're in an academic setting, a public setting, or a school library setting so we can relate to their information needs. To me that's the bottom line.

Loriene Roy: Thank you Roberta.

Roberta Stevens: This is a tough time to answer that question because what I would like to say and will say is not necessarily as easily said right now when people are piling in the doors of our libraries to use the services because they may not be able to continue to afford Internet access at home. Right now we're getting creamed—and that is in the best sense of the word—because people are using our services. The whole argument about, "Will people use the library once they have Internet access?" becomes almost a moot point now, doesn't it? Because they are coming in because they can get Internet access in the library and they may not be able to get it at home.
We don't know how long this fiscal situation is going to continue. But let's assume that things do get right in the next few years and so we have an opportunity to begin to think in a more futuristic way. Or let's assume that we want to be able to deliver our services better than we have. Well, what we need to be thinking about and getting support for, clearly, is the most up-to-date technology: we want to have broadband access accessible, we want to have lots of PCs in the libraries, we want to have staff that are really comfortable and equipped to be able to help people in accessing these services most effectively.

I think those are the really crucial issues. But what we need is we need to have money. And to have money, we're going to have to have some really good advocacy because we've got everybody piling in on the new administration saying, "Our demand is most crucial." So we have got to make a strong case about why we stand out in front.

Loriene Roy: Microphone No. 6.

Ann Newbank: Ann Newbank, personal member and past, past president of the Arizona Library Association. I was wondering if the candidates could speak to how they would strengthen the relationships between ALA and its chapters.

Roberta Stevens: I think communication is one of the biggest things that we can do to strengthen those relationships. And I think really involving the chapters more as we move forward on any of the initiatives that we have underway, making sure that we really do have that representation and that they have a place at the table. Now, the place at the table doesn't have to be a little old place at the table. We again have these opportunities through all this online access to get the chapters involved in the conversation. That to me is the way you breakdown the barriers, you just hear from people and have a conversation. We can have conversations online and we can do them through the wikis. We don't have to wait until we get to conferences to have these discussions. But really, it's to be thinking as we undertake any of these big initiatives that really affect the entire organization that we've got all stakeholders. And certainly the stakeholders are in the chapters, as well as in the divisions and round tables.

Loriene Roy: Kent.

Kent Oliver: Well, like many of you out there, I began in chapters—Kansas, Missouri, and now Ohio. And there always seems to have been a little bit of a disconnect at times between chapters. And when I say chapters, and also school divisions, state school associations that are sometimes chapters. And ALA has the mechanism to make this happen, and that mechanism is the Chapter Relations Office. And that office needs to be engaged in all the new initiatives that we begin in this association. And they do need to be at the table when we talk about rolling out these new advocacy initiatives. They need to be engaged when we roll out new toolkits, they need to be engaged when we are trying to find the future leaders of this association. We had a question earlier about leadership. Well, frankly, we have great leaders and young leaders going on in the chapters. And we need to recognize those leaders in the chapters as we're picking people to run for council, as we're picking people to be on committees. And that is a way to engage those chapters because then those people are stakeholders. They have a vested investment in making sure that what we do in ALA relates to the chapters. Certainly we can do a lot through online access.

Loriene Roy: Thank you. Microphone No. 7.

Eric Suess: Eric Suess, councilor-at-large. During the recent presidential election, people got personally involved in unprecedented numbers. Advocacy is always seen as one of the top issues that everyone thinks is very important and yet, for the most part, people want somebody else to advocate for them instead of doing it for themselves. How can we best get people to become personally involved in advocating issues that are of importance?

Kent Oliver: It's that stakeholder element. It's the other part of what I was just talking about. My experience is that you do advocacy training on the local level because as they say, all politics are really local. And the best advocates can come out of chapters and the best advocates can come out of ALTA. Because when you walk into a Congressman's office, you get a certain amount of feedback if you're a librarian or you get a certain amount of feedback if you're the president of the American Library Association. But you get a whole different element of feedback when you're a board member at a library or you're a member of the Friends.
We need to start building, start building our chapter advocacy to the level it used to be about 20 years ago. Twenty years ago when you came to ALA, you had a lot of people here from chapters; you had a lot of chapter involvement. And being in the chapter caucus, we'd talk about that type of thing and it seems like over the last few years it's just kind of fallen off. But I would say build some advocacy training on the chapter level, get Chapter Relations involved and just start bringing those people forward to help us. And they need to know the issues, because many times the chapters don't know the issues.

Loriene Roy: Thank you. Roberta.

Roberta Stevens: I hope I don't shock you when I say this, but advocacy is like public relations and you need to approach it on many, many levels. And I hate to keep saying “many levels,” but you do. We've got terrific tools in place now for local advocacy that are available to you with your membership. The advocacy toolkits that have been rolled most recently—they are phenomenal and they are pulling in work that has been done across the association in a very useful way, including research. We've got lots of research, lots of data. In the new 123 Advocacy Toolkit it's using it, you got it in a way that you can actually go out there and sell it. That's one thing.

There's local advocacy. You have to care enough about local advocacy and you've got to do the local advocacy. But then there is national advocacy as well, and that's what I'm talking about in my platform. I'm not talking about you know, Dave McCullough going to Paducah, Kentucky, no offense to Paducah, Kentucky. But what I'm talking about is putting together and crafting a campaign that is association-wide and national in its scope. So you need to focus local, statewide, and also at the national level. It's got to be all of them. We've done a really, really good job on helping people with the local advocacy. But what I propose to do is to push up—pump up—the national level of advocacy.

Loriene Roy: We have time for one more question. Microphone No. 3.

Leonard Kniffel: Leonard Kniffel, editor of American Libraries Magazine. For many years now, we've been getting a piece of advice about how the association and how libraries themselves should be run. It goes like this, "Run it like a business." Recent developments in the way that businesses have been run might give us some pause. Can you give me some views of running the association and your library like a business?

Roberta Stevens: I'm so glad you asked that question because I work for the federal government. And of course, in the federal government, guess what we heard for eight years? "Run it like a business." We are not a business, okay? So let's just take that off the table. We have providing a service. We're providing a social service; we're providing an educational service. We are not a business. So, I don't feel compelled, I think it's a moot point too. I think it's just ridiculous. We are not a business. We are there to provide services to people and that means we want to do things as effectively as possible, but we are not a business. And I might add that it sounds like those businesses weren't too effective in following their own models, too.

Loriene Roy: Thank you. Kent.

Kent Oliver: Well, we are a nonprofit in theory and hopefully we don't go into the hole. We are a service organization, and so we should be providing services that our members need at the ALA level. And we should have business models that do help us achieve those services. As far as my own library goes, we're a government entity and we're responsible to the taxpayers. And we do like to see that the money that we are putting out there is providing services that the community needs. We do strategic planning, we do cost analysis, we do those sorts of things. And whether that is a business model per se or not, I don't know.

There’s a certain element of accountability you have to have when you're a large organization or you're a library that has taxpayers to report to. So that is where I would be coming from as president. And one of the things I had down on my vision is that we do need to monitor our finances in a time of economic turmoil. And another example of that besides the e-participation is ALA-APA. I know that Keith has a report coming to the executive board this meeting that talks about a new model for ALA-APA. And I think most or us in this room would agree we need to advocate for librarian salaries and the certification program is interesting, and perhaps there's a place for that. But we need to determine priorities in the association and we need to take sure our business models for new ventures work. Thank you.

Loriene Roy: Thank you. Our time for questions is now over. Each candidate will have two minutes to make a closing statement. We will begin with Kenton L. Oliver. Kent.

Kent Oliver: Okay. After everything we've talked about this morning, what are the character assets that I bring to this job to successfully address these issues? What do you need to know about me as a person? I do not work in vacuums and I am collaborative. I intentionally listen; I think you can say I'm listener. I believe change is normal and that to repeat the same patterns of failure is dysfunctional. Libraries must continue to evolve with our society or they will die. I value diversity and diverse viewpoints. I understand that as a large and diverse association we may not always agree, but we need to agree to disagree. We need to respect each other. But as an association, we must deliver our message with one strong voice as we try to impact public policy. I also understand that in our association we must have the right people and interest groups at the table as we make decisions impacting professional disciplines.

Foremost, however, I do value libraries and I have dedicated my life to them. Libraries are the most important institution in our society, if we hope to remain a democracy. Libraries empower individuals, value access to information and the right to intellectual curiosity. They fight censors, they combat illiteracy, they educate our universities and our school children. Libraries also provide shelter on freezing nights and also overwhelmingly hot days. They build communities and social capital. I believe libraries can be the proverbial third place in our communities and the first place in our hearts. I ask that you vote for me for your president of the American Library Association. Thank you. (Applause)

Loriene Roy: Thank you, Kent. I now call upon Roberta A. Stevens to present her closing statement.

Roberta Stevens: This is an extraordinary time for our country. While we face the formidable economic situation, we have a new president and Congress who recognize the critical role libraries play in our communities and education. They understand that knowledge is the foundation of our democracy. Working with new leadership in Washington, we can shine light on how libraries become even more important during tough times.

My experience on Capitol Hill will be an invaluable asset as we pursue the passage of legislation to increase funding for libraries. ALA's president is its chief spokesperson. The president must lead, inspire, and motivate. If elected, I will be your most visible advocate. I will use my skills and work with ALA staff and members on behalf of all libraries. I will effectively represent a wide range of issues to ALA members, the media, legislators and government officials, other organizations, and the general public. Anyone who knows me knows that I employ strategy and persistence in overcoming obstacles to achieving of the organization's mission.

ALA will have my full attention and all of my energy, dedicated to accomplishing in collaboration with you, our goals. I bring knowledge and experience in many types of libraries, a commitment to ALA and its work, and a passion for our profession and its purpose to my candidacy for ALA president. I thank you and I ask for your vote for ALA president. (Applause)

Loriene Roy: Thank you, Roberta. This concludes the 2009 ALA Midwinter Presidential Candidate's Forum. It's been my pleasure to moderate this forum. I would like to thank our candidates and all who came to hear them. I would like you to clap once again for both of them.

(Applause) Few of us in this room know how nerve-racking this experience is. This year ALA members not able to attend this forum were given an opportunity to submit questions to the presidential candidates by Youtube. The questions and the candidates’ responses will be available on Youtube, as well as AL Focus beginning on March 6th, 2009. I would also like encourage you to vote this Spring and to urge your fellow ALA members to vote as well. The ballot mailing will begin on March 17, 2009. Polls will close on April 24th, 2009. We will know the results of the election on May 1st, 2009. Again, thank you for coming. (Applause)