Library Worklife

Volume 2, No. 6 • June 2005

ALA-APA News

Focus Groups at Conference: What Can the ALA-APA Do for Me?

Have you found yourself asking, "What can the ALA-Allied Professional Association do for me? I work in a (fill-in-the-blank) library and there's nothing than can be done about my salary!"

Find out if your assumptions are valid by attending a focus group at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago in June. ALA-APA may already be doing something for you, but you are invited to make suggestions for how ALA-APA can serve you better. There are two opportunities to voice your opinion:

Friday, June 24th, from 10:30-11:30 am and Monday, June 27, from 5:30-6:30 pm. Reservations are required and we're limited to 20 people per session. Send an email indicating your interest in participating to Jenifer Grady, jgrady@ala.org.

HBCU Library Alliance Leadership Institute is Scheduled to Begin: Pilot Institute Set for June

The HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) Library Alliance Leadership Program, funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has been scheduled. The primary objective of the Leadership Program is to provide theoretical and practical instruction and useful resources to encourage the development of leadership skills within the HBCU library community and on their own campuses. The Leadership Program consists of seven components: The Pilot Institute, Institute I, Institute II, an exchange between HBCUs and non-HBCUs, fellowships to SOLINET workshops, site visits, and mentoring.

The Pilot Institute is scheduled for Saturday, June 11 through Wednesday, June 15, 2005 at the Marriott Evergreen Conference Resort in Stone Mountain, Georgia. The attendees of the Pilot Institute will undertake the intensive task of critiquing the program and developing skills to serve as mentors. The nine institutions that will participate are Alabama State University, Atlanta University Center, Bowie State University, MD, Florida A&M University, Kentucky State University, North Carolina A&T University, Southern University at Baton Rouge, LA, Tennessee State University, and Virginia State University.

Institute I is scheduled for August 13 through 17, 2005. Twenty-five libraries will be selected to participate. Each institution will send the dean or director and one librarian recommended for leadership potential.

Institute II will be held in April 2006. The same participants will reunite to consolidate the gains made over the year.

HBCU libraries serve as unique and indispensable gatekeepers for history, culture, and the African-American experience. Created by the deans and directors of these libraries in 2002, the HBCU Library Alliance seeks to ensure excellence in HBCU libraries through the development, coordination, and promotion of programs and activities to enhance members' collections and services.

Contact: Loretta Parham (404) 978-2018 or lparham@auctr.edu or Lillian Lewis (404) 592-4820 or 1 (800) 999-8558 ext. 4820.

Districts' and Teachers' Unions Sue over Bush Law

Reprinted from the Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast, April 22, 2005

http://publiceducation.org/

Opening a new front in the growing rebellion against President Bush's signature education law, the nation's largest teachers' union and eight school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont have sued the Department of Education, accusing it of violating a passage in the law that says states cannot be forced to spend their own money to meet federal requirements. Some legal scholars said that the union, the National Education Association, had assembled a compelling cause of action. Still, they added, since the case has few close precedents, it was difficult to judge the suit's prospects, reports Sam Dillon. But it was clearly another headache for Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education, who is trying to resolve a federal-state conflict over the law, known as No Child Left Behind, that has taken on new forms in recent days. A day before the suit was filed, Utah's Republican-dominated Legislature approved the most far-reaching legislative challenge to the law. Both the Utah measure, which requires educators there to spend as little state money as possible in carrying out the federal law's requirements, and the union lawsuit rely heavily on the same section of the federal law, which prohibits federal officials from requiring states to allocate their own money to fulfill the law's mandates. This month, Connecticut's attorney general also announced the intention to sue the department on the same grounds, saying that the testing the law requires costs far more than the money the state is given to pay for it.

http://www.nea.org/lawsuit/nr050420.html