Camila Alire Elected ALA’s Next President

by Lynn Blumstein, Library Journal -- Críticas, 5/1/2008 9:00:00 AM

Camila Alire, dean emeritus of the libraries of both the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and Colorado State University, Fort Collins, won the election as 2009-10 American Library Association (ALA) president, with 8,956 votes, or 55.8 percent of the total. J. Linda Williams, coordinator of library media services for Anne Arundel County public schools in Annapolis, MD, got 7,102 votes.

Alire will become president-elect at the ALA annual conference next month and take the top spot the following year. Sari Feldman, executive director of the Cuyahoga County Public Library, Parma, OH, has been elected vice president/president-elect of the Public Library Association (PLA). Before joining Cuyahoga in 2003, Feldman served as deputy director of Cleveland Public Library. She also held numerous positions in the Onondaga County Public Library, Syracuse, NY.

In an interview in Library Journal in April, Alire stressed advocacy training for librarians “back home,” pushing for enhancements to what she calls “grassroots advocacy” by front-line librarians. “That means getting the front-line people, both librarians and other staff, involved. I want them to be trained and to become better able to advocate for themselves and their libraries.” Alire’s lobbying priorities include gathering support for the initiative to make federally sponsored research freely available, a “tooth and nail” fight to defeat any laws that force libraries to charge users for each use of information, and making all government information available electronically.

She supports efforts to ensure that school libraries are added to funding mandates in No Child Left Behind legislation. ALA members also elected 34 Councilors-at-Large who will serve from 2008 to 2011 and one who will serve from 2008 to 2009. A complete list of winners is available at www.ala.org. The top vote-getters were Barbara Stripling, director of library services for the New York City Department of Education; Carla Stoffle, dean, University of Arizona Library, Tucson; and Bonnie Kunzel, a youth services and adolescent literacy consultant, Germantown, TN.