Críticas Magazine

Bruce Jensen

Champion of multiethnic library services wins ALA presidency
May 3, 2008

On Friday the American Library Association announced the results of this year's election. One-quarter of the ALA's 65,000 members voted, and most of us who did picked Dr. Camila Alire for president. Her year at the helm will begin in 2009.

This is welcome news for fans of inclusive library services. Dr. Alire coauthored both editions of Serving Latino Communities, an eminently worthwhile book. Not only that, the Colorado Library Association chose her for its CLA Exemplary Library Services to Ethnic Populations Award not once but twice. She was REFORMA’s Librarian of the Year in 1997. That same year she became the first Latina to head an ACRL operation as dean of the Colorado State U. system. Hispanic Business Magazine in late '97 chose her as one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in the country.

Dr. Alire's honors and accomplishments are many.  You can read about some of them at her campaign site, but there is stuff she doesn't even mention there. I dug up this email sent last spring, to a community & junior college libraries list:

 Subject: [cjc-l] Re: RE: ALA Elections

I'm glad to see so many folks from cjc-l@ala.org voting this year - and for Camila, to top it off! She was the group leader of the academic librarians with the People to People Ambassador Program to China in 2006; and the organization couldn't have chosen a better group leader. Dynamo is the word that comes to mind when I think about Camila. She kept us all organized, energized, active and positive. Now if we could only get her to run for U.S. President!  [Emphasis added]

Martha Kruy
College Librarian
St. Vincent's College

Indeed. Dr. Alire ran a high-energy campaign, that's for sure, but there was none of that Hillary-versus-Barack sort of thing going on. 

The ALA's online voting system makes participation easy. They don't use any Diebold machines, there are no hanging chads, and you can't find even one superdelegate in the whole process. So why did only 25% of the members vote? Beats me.  

Many members are kind of fuzzy on the sequence of succession, too: Dr. Alire will take over next year from Jim Rettig, who next month will succeed current president Dr. Loriene Roy.  Got that?  If not, the ritual is explained here on the ALA site.

Posted by Bruce Jensen on May 3, 2008 | Comments (0)