ALA Midwinter 2012 – ALA-APA Council Meeting

ALA-APA Council meeting was primarily a discussion, albeit civil, about the proposed dissolution of the ALA-APA Council. Just as a point of background, ALA-APA is a 501c(6) and does not require a council for its legal existence. ALA-APA is a seperate entity from ALA, and was formed to work towards improving library worker salaries and well as develop national certification programs for library workers. As such, there are no actual members of the organization, and the ALA-APA board of directors is the same as the ALA Executive Board. Recently, there was a presidential task force on Council Effectiveness (I believe it was created under Roberta Stevens), and one of the recommendations was the dissolution of the ALA-APA Council. This was in part, because ALA-APA has no members and the Council is not representing a membership, per se. ALA-APA can legally be run without a council and there is overlap between items that can be covered in regular ALA Council meetings. There was much discussion, and many were opposed to the dissolution of the ALA-APA Council. For one, ALA-APA Council takes up about an hour of time per conference. Yes, there are some necessary work that needs to be done in preparations for the meeting, but it truly is not that momentous. It is fairly doable, at least at the present time. Also, we do have some financial responsibility in dealing with budgets and the ALA-APA loan that still needs to be repaid. It is important that we make sure that ALA-APA is on the right track and is going to meet its financial responsibilities. Furthermore, it was mentioned that while ALA-APA is focusing mostly on certification programs, there are other courses of action that might be recommened in the future, and the ALA-APA Council (elected by ALA members), is a good resource representing a wide variety of libraries and interests. No vote was taken at this meeting, and it wasn’t intended to be, but there might be action taken at the 2012 ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, CA. We’ll see what happens.

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