Washington Office News

Last Friday, we said goodbye to our 2017 Google Policy Fellow Alisa Holahan. The week before her departure, she and OITP hosted a lunch and discussion for this year’s cohort of Google Policy Fellows. Similar to the six Policy Fellows lunches we have hosted in the past (in 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011), the gathering was an opportunity ... Read More »

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 »