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ALA explores role in economic recovery

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With the economic downturn deepening and more and more Americans turning to their local libraries for no-fee Internet access and free employment-related services, the ALA Washington Office in 2008 continued to explore ways to secure funding for libraries as part of an economic stimulus package. ALA Washington staff met with advisers for Barack Obama and John McCain in October to discuss ALA priorities, and in a Dec. 2 address to the National Governors Association, President-elect Obama cited library closures as one of the “drastic measures already being taken to balance state budgets” and recognized the effect they have on communities.

ALA President Jim Rettig submitted a post-election report, “Opening the ‘Window to a Larger World’: Libraries’ Role in Changing America,” to the Obama-Biden Transition Team. In conjunction with the report, the ALA Washington Office also worked with the Transition Team and later with members of Congress on many other issues, including:

  • Proposals for libraries to help the public in looking for work, an effort that would include two years of supplemental funding for public and community college libraries to stay open longer and help people prepare for job certifications, GED exams, and résumé preparation.
  • Possible funding for construction projects to strengthen libraries’ infrastructure.
  • Possible modifications of the e-rate program and broadband connectivity.

The Washington Office also suggested that an effective way to create 68,000 new, professional jobs in a predominantly female profession would be to require that every K-12 school have a school library headed by a school library media specialist.

Administration pushes broadband connectivity as an economic engine

The Obama Administration is placing a priority on broadband connectivity as an economic engine, and the ALA Washington Office is continuing to emphasize the key role libraries should play in this arena. In a study, Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2006-2007, 73 percent of public libraries reported that they were the only source of free public access to computers and the Internet in their communities, and 52 percent reported that their connectivity speed was insufficient some or all of the time, an increase of about 6 percent from a year earlier.

Working with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) began to provide research and expertise that will help state library agencies develop and implement strategies to ensure library broadband connections are sustainable. The OITP continued work on the “Encouraging State Library E-rate Participation” project in 2008, holding two training sessions attended by state library E-rate coordinators from nearly every state. This project continues to show positive results in terms of the number of libraries participating in the e-rate program and the improved quality of library applications submitted.

In April 2008, the OITP released “Regional Library Cooperatives and the Future of Broadband,” a report detailing the best practices, successful strategies, and challenges of regional library cooperatives (RLCs) as they help libraries obtain high-speed connectivity. The report came out of an invitational meeting organized by the OITP for selected RLCs that provide broadband services to develop a model or models of how these cooperatives organized, implemented, and operated these services. One goal of the meeting and the report was to help other RLCs evaluate the feasibility of becoming broadband providers themselves.

Loan forgiveness for librarians in low-income areas

Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in 2008 demonstrated Congress’s understanding of the critical role libraries and librarians serve in education. The act extended loan forgiveness for librarians, promoting a more diverse population of librarians by encouraging more students to pursue a career in that field. Specifically, the act applies to librarians with a master’s degree working in an elementary or secondary school eligible for aid under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act or a public library serving an area containing such a school.

The bill authorized discretionary forgiveness of most kinds of loans of $2,000 a year (to a maximum of $10,000) for service in “areas of national need.” Under this program, librarians are specifically listed as an “area of national need” as long as the individual is employed full time in a high-poverty area for five consecutive years.

Good grades for Literacy Program

The second evaluation of the Improving Literacy Through School Libraries (LSL) Program released by the U.S. Department of Education indicated that students attending schools participating in LSL do better on state reading tests than students in non-LSL schools. Specifically, the study stated that in schools that participated in LSL in 2003-04, the proportion of students who met or exceeded the proficiency requirements on state reading assessments increased by 2.7 percentage points more than the increase observed among non-LSL schools.

LSL grants help Local Education Agencies improve reading achievement by providing students with increased access to up-to-date school library materials; well-equipped, technologically advanced school library media centers; and professionally certified school library media specialists. The evaluation also noted that grantees roughly tripled their expenditures on books, subscriptions, and computer hardware, while non-grantees showed little change.

LSL is one of the most successful programs in No Child Left Behind but has never been funded at even 10 percent of the authorized level.

Library advocates work with World Intellectual Property Organization

The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) continues to support the work of three international copyright advocates who represent library- and user-rights interests in meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The advocates participate in WIPO sessions on programs of Traditional Knowledge; Genetic Resources and Traditional Cultural Expressions/Folklore; the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights; and the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property. The LCA comprises five major library associations: the American Association of Law Libraries, the ALA, the Association of Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association.

The OITP has also been exploring concerns regarding access, preservation, and protection of traditional cultural expressions. In November 2008, librarians, archivists, scholars, and members of indigenous communities met in Washington, D.C., for an OITP-sponsored conference titled “Cultural Heritage and Living Culture: Defining The U.S. Library Position on Access and Protection of Traditional Cultural Expression.” Key issues and viewpoints of traditional cultures and libraries were presented through case studies and discussion of various models for access and protection. Participants also explored intellectual freedom concerns, such as freedom of speech, open inquiry, and respect of diversity.

The conference was the first step in bringing these issues to the broader ALA and library communities, and the OITP has begun drafting library principles for addressing traditional cultural expressions.

Around the nation’s capital . . .

The ALA Washington Office began an initiative in November 2008, Veteran’s Information @ your library, designed to respond to a need for veterans’ information to be more readily available in U.S. libraries. During the week of Veterans Day, a pilot program of libraries participated by displaying information about the Post-9/11 GI Bill and posting it to the libraries’ websites.

Other activities focused mainly on addressing specific library closings or threats of closings, as well as developing larger strategies to advocate for federal libraries:

  • The Army moved its Reimer Digital Library behind a password-protected firewall— but after the ALA took an interest decided to make it available once again to the public. The Reimer Digital Library, the Army Training and Doctrine Command’s digital library, contains field manuals, technical manuals, and other publications.
  • Discussions were held with key military librarians as well as with the chair of the Federal and Armed Forces Libraries Round Table (FAFLRT) on the most realistic options for preventing the closure of more base libraries.
  • The ALA monitored the compliance of the Environmental Protection Agency in reopening the libraries it had closed in 2006. The fiscal year 2008 omnibus appropriations bill signed by President Bush in December 2007 ordered the EPA to re-open many of its libraries, which it did by Sept. 30, 2008. ALA staff attended the reopening of the EPA headquarters library.
  • Librarians from all branches of the military came together in September 2008 to announce new additions to Military OneSource, an effort that increased online library offerings for all service members and their families. The new offerings will provide a more convenient way for service members and their families to access materials, and the collaboration will also save the different branches from buying the same materials separately.
  • Finally, the ALA, in conjunction with the FAFLRT, made site visits at local military libraries and the public libraries that serve those areas to learn the specific needs and challenges of military families and what role it would be appropriate for the ALA to take in meeting the needs of military libraries.

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