By Mary Ghikas, ALA Senior AED

The American Library Association (ALA) is pleased to announce the appointment of Jenifer Grady as Director, American Library Association-Allied Professional Association (ALA-APA), effective December 22, 2003. She will meet with the ALA-APA Salaries and Status Committee and other ALA members at the upcoming Midwinter Meeting in San Diego. Grady has an M.S.L.S. (1993) from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and an M.B.A. (2003) from Case Western Reserve University.

"I expect Jenifer will be exactly the kind of fighter we need to improve the salary and status of library workers," said Maurice J. (Mitch) Freedman, ALA Immediate Past President and chair, ALA-APA Salaries and Status Committee. "The committee was impressed with her energy, enthusiasm and the depth of commitment she has applied to every aspect of her professional and volunteer work."

Grady comes to the ALA-APA from a position with Battelle Memorial Institute, where she has been a client services specialist on the Garrett Morgan Commercialization Initiative in Cleveland, evaluating the readiness of women-owned and minority-owned firms to transfer and commercialize NASA technology, developing marketing plans and assisting in the development of grant proposals for clients.

Previously she was knowledge management librarian and informatics apprentice at the Eskind Biomedical Library, Vanderbilt University; assistant director for informatics at the Library, Meharry Medical College; information specialist at the Academy for Educational Development; and outreach coordinator at the New York Academy of Medicine, National Network of Libraries of Medicine. She also was an associate (one-year fellowship) at the National Library of Medicine.

Grady co-authored "Print versus Electronic Journals: a Preliminary Investigation into the Effect of Journal Format on Research Processes" in the Journal of the Medical Library Association, April 2002. She also wrote "Get 'Em While They're Hot," an article about researching African American history through cookbooks, for North Carolina Libraries, Winter 1992.

While earning her M.B.A., Grady directed the Tax Assistance Program for Low-Income Workers. She also was president of the Black MBA Student Association. She is a member of the American Marketing Association and the American Medical Informatics Association and on two committees of the Cleveland chapter of the National Black MBA Association. She has participated in many volunteer activities, including MedWish, the AIDS Task Force of Greater Cleveland Speakers Bureau, Habitat for Humanity and others.

The ALA-APA Director Search Committee members were: Freedman, search committee chair; Diane Fay, president of Library Support Staff Interests Round Table (LSSIRT) and a member of the ALA-APA Salaries and Status Committee; Keith Michael Fiels, ALA and ALA-APA executive director; Mary Ghikas, ALA senior associate executive director; Lorraine Olley, executive director of the Library Administration and Management (LAMA); Dorothy Ragsdale, director, ALA Human Resources; and Lorelle Swader, director of ALA's Human Resource Development and Recruitment (HRDR) office.

The ALA-APA is a nonprofit professional organization established in 2001 "to promote the mutual professional interests of librarians and other library workers." Its two broad focus areas are: certification of individuals in specializations beyond the initial professional degree and direct support of comparable worth and pay equity initiatives and other activities designed to improve the salaries and status of librarians and other library workers. The ALA-APA is a companion organization to the ALA.

LAMA is a division of the ALA.

Providing a Financial Foundation for the APA

By Teri Switzer

Advocating for America's library workers is taking on a new look with the establishment of ALA's Allied Professional Association (ALA-APA). As a 501(c)(6) professional association, the ALA-APA actively supports and promotes many of the issues that have long been priorities for ALA members, but could not be assertively addressed by ALA due to its 501(c) (3) (non-profit educational association) status.

However, as a 501 (c)(6) professional association, the ALA-APA can aggressively address issues such as pay equity and certification, but it has to be a completely separate, self-supporting association. This means that the ALA-APA cannot receive any financial support for programmatic and operating expenses from ALA. In order to be self-supporting, the ALA-APA is generating revenue from ALA member donations and by offering the following services and products:

1. Certification programs. The ALA-APA certification programs will certify individuals who have achieved an advanced level of competency in a specialized area in the library field. The Certified Public Library Administrator certification, a joint endeavor of LAMA, PLA, and ASCLA, is the first program that will be offered. Depending on the success of the pilot program, it is anticipated that additional certification programs will soon follow. All of the certification programs are being developed using the standards for professional practice developed by the ALA divisions and will establish a measure of proficiency while also recognizing personal and professional growth. The pilot certificate program is projected to bring in $89,000 each year by year five.

2. Research reports. There are three different research-based reports being developed:

a. standard job descriptions that will help with benchmarking and comparable worth studies and reclassification initiatives;

b. detailed statistical analyses that cover all types of libraries, organizations, and positions and provide comparisons among libraries and their counterparts in the private sector; and

c. specialized research reports on recruitment issues, staff development, and legal changes affecting library administrators.

It is anticipated that by year five, specialized reports will generate $96,000.

3. Electronic publishing. Library Worklife: HR E-News for Today's Leaders, a subscription-based electronic publication that replaces the former Library Personnel News and includes information to increase the effectiveness of human resource officers and other library administrators seeking to better the workplace, improve salaries, and develop successful recruitment strategies, is making its debut with this January, 2004 issue. Subscriptions are available to both ALA-organizational members as well as personal members and revenues of $120,000 annually are planned.

4. Consulting and training. A variety of consulting services aimed at library administrators, trustees, and employee organizations conducting comparable worth studies and other pay equity analyses will be offered. In addition, training programs based on toolkits like the @ your library Toolkit for Academic and Research Libraries are also being developed to provide libraries with the skills and tools needed to become more effective advocates for their professional concerns. By year five it is anticipated that consulting programs will add $35,000 annually to the ALA-APA revenue mix.

Although the road to financial solvency is a long one, the ALA-APA has an aggressive agenda and it is anticipated that within five years, the APA will be entirely self-supporting and will have repaid the $250,000 "seed money" loaned by ALA. Voluntary donations from ALA members and the products and services described above provide a diversified revenue mix that will not only provide a solid financial foundation to the APA but will also support the association's mission.

Teri R. Switzer is the ALA-APA Treasurer.