Washington Office News

For the second time in my first five months on staff with ALA Washington, we welcomed an international delegation of librarians. Alan Inouye, Shawnda Hines, our summer Google Fellow Alisa Holahan and I were delighted to spend an hour of our morning with a group from the Republic of Kazakhstan, including: Ms. Darikha Dyussibayeva, Director of the Scientific Library at Kostanai ... Read More »

ALA’s Office of Information and Technology Policy is pleased to support the University of Maryland’s iSchool YX Graduate Certificate program as part of its Youth & Technology portfolio. We will be working closely with the YX partners to explore how the participating students’ work can augment our Libraries Ready to Code (RtC) initiative. Dr. Mega Subramaniam and Linda Braun, faculty ... Read More »

The White House is currently seeking public input on how the federal government can be better organized—with a focus on which government agencies should be reformed or eliminated. The official survey follows an Executive Order “directing the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to propose a plan to reorganize governmental functions and eliminate unnecessary agencies, components of agencies, ... Read More »

If you’re part of or connected to the library world in any way, you know that the President’s “skinny budget” released in mid-March proposed eliminating the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the small and respected federal agency that administers bulk of federal library funding. It also “zeroed out” virtually all such appropriations anywhere in the federal government, including ... Read More »

This past week, I had the privilege of attending a part of the New American Jobs Summit organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), a member of the American Library Association’s Public Policy Advisory Council. This was a wonderful event and my only regret was being able to attend only a part of the day. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Chairwoman ... Read More »