ALA Annual–Day Two

Ala Council report–Chapter 2

Sunday morning I was up bright and early for the ALA Council/Executive Board/Membership Information Session. The Budget and Analysis Committee (BARC) report by Marilyn Hinshaw was detailed and informative.  The challenges facing ALA in this year of serious inflation have been considerable.  The Endowment Fund Report by Chair Robert Newlen was also informative and encouraging.  Despite a highly volatile market, the endowment fund only declined by 1.7% during the past year. 

Immediately following this meeting was the ALA/APA Council meeting.:  Revenue results for ALA-APA we said to have fallen short by about $11,000. There seems to be a feeling that the viability of ALA/APA, the lobbying arm of ALA, is tenuous.

The rest of the morning was taken up with the first regular Council Meeting.  Resolutions Committee Chair, Peter McDonald, presented a significant revision to the guidelines for developing Council Resolutions. The new, redesigned ALA web site is expected to be launched in September 2008.  Preview site:  http://staging.ala.org/home.cfm  Efforts are underway to reduce the length of Mid Winter and Annual Meetings for Council as early as 2010 so that Council sessions could end on Tuesday rather than Wednesday. During the afternoon I went through a small section of the exhibits and in the evening attended the ALA President’s reception. Later I attended a private screening of WALL-E the new Pixar movie at Disneyland, courtesy of MovieLicensing USA.

Nancy Wilson

 

Report from ALA annual

I am delighted to continue to serve as your representative on the ALA Council. Here is a report on my first day at this year’s conference in Anaheim, California.

 

After the councilor’s orientation on Saturday morning my first business meeting was the Chapter Relations meeting Saturday afternoon. This is a meeting of the Chapter Relations Committee and the staff of the chapter office in Chicago. The office is in charge of all dealings with chapters. This is the office you might call if you needed some advice from ALA about library issues. During this meeting I listened to reports from various divisions of ALA and caught up with chapter news. Some important highlights were the extension of the Capwiz advocacy website to all states and reports from officers of various ALA divisions.

 Immediately following the chapter relations meeting was our first membership meeting.  The primary agenda item was the report of Janet Swan Hill of the Task Force on Electronic Member Participation.  It was not only received well, but seconded by practically every remark uttered.  The urging was for full fledged electronic member participation to begin ASAP. The Membership Meeting also approved unanimously a “Resolution on Improving the Federal Depository Library Program and Public Access to Government Information”.

I’ll post more shortly.

Nancy Wilson

 

Attorney General’s opinion and other new statute guidelines.(revised)

What follows is the gist of the Attorney General’s opinion on the new confidentiality statute.

  1. Public libraries must keep records of patrons 16 or older confidential unless the patron waives that right.
  2. Public libraries have “limited discretion” expanding the scope of confidentiality of library records. The opinion says they must disclose the records of patrons under 16 if requested by parents.
  3. Read more

Attorney General's opinion and other new statute guidelines.(revised)

What follows is the gist of the Attorney General’s opinion on the new confidentiality statute.

  1. Public libraries must keep records of patrons 16 or older confidential unless the patron waives that right.
  2. Public libraries have “limited discretion” expanding the scope of confidentiality of library records. The opinion says they must disclose the records of patrons under 16 if requested by parents.
  3. Read more

New Confidentiality Statute

Librarians have many questions about the new Confidentiality Statute that becomes effective July 1, 2008.

State Librarian, Sybil McShane asked the Attorney General to review the law in reference to existing statutes and in consideration of some of the questions we have. Once the AG’s office has reported back we will provide more specific guidelines for implementation to all VLA members, VT Libraries and Trustees. VLAIFC will offer policy writing workshops throughout the state for the above mentioned groups in the near future.

An updated sample public library privacy and confidentiality policy is available on the website as part of the Intellectual Freedom Toolkit. It can also be found at www.sherburnelibrary.org.

Keep watching the VLA website for more information.

Gail Weymouth

VLAIFC chair

802 422 9765

Reference Roundtable at St. Michael’s College

Date: Wednesday, August 20, from 1-4 pm
Location: Durick Library at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester.

The topic is Innovations in Reference service and in Promotion of reference service in light of the national trend of declining reference statistics

RSVP to Michele McCaffrey by August 1. More details to come as well as parking information, directions, etc.

Michele R. McCaffrey
Reference & Instruction Librarian/Reference Coordinator
Durick Library, St. Michael’s College
Box L, One Winooski Park
Colchester, VT 05439
mmccaffrey@smcvt.edu
802-654-2411

Reference Roundtable at St. Michael's College

Date: Wednesday, August 20, from 1-4 pm
Location: Durick Library at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester.
The topic is Innovations in Reference service and in Promotion of reference service in light of the national trend of declining reference statistics
RSVP to Michele McCaffrey by August 1. More details to come as well as parking information, directions, etc.
Michele R. McCaffrey
Reference & Instruction Librarian/Reference Coordinator
Durick Library, St. Michael’s College
Box L, One Winooski Park
Colchester, VT 05439
mmccaffrey@smcvt.edu
802-654-2411