LISNews: Librarian News

I asked all three ALA candidates one simple, final question. Why should we vote for them.
Here is his answer:
\"From my teen days as a page at the Newark [N.J.] Public Library through the years at U.C. Berkeley\'s School of Librarianship & the Free Speech Movement, the Library of Congress, Hennepin County Library, New York Public Library, Columbia University\'s library school, and the Westchester Library System (WLS), I have fought for free access and information equity. Today, as our libraries face laws mandating filters, the loss or privatization of government information, a growing digital divide, and the outsourcing of library service and management, we need a strong ALA more than ever.\"

Plenty more, so read on... -- Read More

Mitch Freedman\'s answers to you questions from a
couple months ago have come in. You can read them
below.

In case you missed the first two, or need to refresh
your memory before you send in your ballot:

Ken Haycock\'s answers.

William Sannawald\'s Answers

Also, you can expect final words from all three
candidates, right here, towards the end of the week. -- Read More

I interviewed ALA Presidential Candidate Mitch Freedman for Library Juice and published it this week. It\'s fairly long, and worth reading if you are trying to decide whom to vote for. I am supporting Mitch, and I hope it is not an abuse of my posting privileges to publicize an essentially supportive interview. It is informative though - by reading it you may decide you like him or don\'t like him (though I think you will like him). I have no plans to interview the other candidates. The interview is here: -- Read More

Ken Haycock was the second ALA Presidential Candidate to ring in with the answers to your questions. The questions are bolded, followed by the answers.

I was overwhelmed with the number of questions I received from librarians in the US and from around the world (the total was somewhere around 50). Normally I am lucky to get 10 responses to a call for submissions from people, so this seems to be an important topic for the LISNews audience. I chose what I felt were the best ones, omitted the duplicates (most popular were questions on pay and image), and ran them through a spell checker. What you see are the unedited questions I received, more or less in the order I received them.
I did move the very first question to the first position in this list, it struck me as being the simplest question, but yet the hardest question to answer. They were free to answer or ommitt any of the questions. I removed the names to protect the innocent, and did not number the questions.

Why should I continue to pay my dues and remain a
member of the ALA?
ALA serves well the continuing education needs of
members and support for defending issues of importance to
libraries and librarians. The programs, journals and collegiality
of ALA have always been beneficial to me from the time I joined
27 years ago. While I believe that ALA is an important, even
critical, association for our profession and institutions I
cannot answer this question for another. There is a plethora of
library associations while strength comes in numbers, focus and
resources. -- Read More