 When I was a kid, I listened to a soap opera, because I was ill for a period of time. And the name of it was Orgal South. And the tagline was, how did a little girl from a mining town in the West grow up to marry a rich and famous lord? So Anne, how did a school librarian from Alaska get to be a president of ALA? I didn't marry a rich and famous lord. I'll tell you that. Well, it's really interesting. I grew up not far from here. I grew up in San Bruno. How many of you here were in the Bay Area in 1978? Ooh, lots. You guys haven't moved far from home. In fact, when I look at my high school graduating class, they haven't moved far from home either. But when I was in high school and I went to Cappuccino High School in San Bruno, my government teacher was Leo J. Ryan, who was killed in the Jonestown Massacre in 1978 in Guyana. And we had student government day. I wanted to be the mayor. And he made me the librarian. You know, at the time, I should have taken a word of wisdom from Leo J. Ryan, because if I had, I wouldn't have waited until I was 30 to go to library school. I would have gone when I was 22. But now, when I think back on it, Mr. Ryan was right. I got to be the librarian. And I got to be the mayor. And that's my job this year to be the President of the American Library Association. But we moved from the Bay Area and eventually ended up in 1972 in Alaska. And the only job that was there available was in a school library. And I thought, well, OK, I can do this. I've now been with the Juneau School District for 27 years. And I'm really amazed that I'm still a school librarian when I started out as a cereals cataloger. But when you work in a one-person library, there isn't anybody else to talk to, at least in terms of your professional colleagues. And so one of the things that I did was I got interested in association activities. And that was the Alaska Library Association. And for many years, I did just about every job that one could do in the Alaska Library Association. But walking down the street in San Francisco in 1983 when ALA conference was here, 81, sometime in the early 80s, I thought, I kind of like ALA. This is kind of fun. Maybe I'll run for ALA chapter counselor. And for those of you who don't know, ALA is governed by a council of 170 people, all of whom have different ideas about how ALA should run. But each state gets one. So I decided to run for Alaska chapter counselor, which I did. And I spent four years. I mean, you come in and you know absolutely nothing about ALA. You're so green. You don't know how it works. You don't know what the issues are. And you kind of sit there. And so for four years, I didn't say a word, except for the state of Alaska brings a check for $50 or something. But I worked behind the scenes because I've always been a hard worker. And somewhere along the way, I looked at the ALA executive board. And I thought, this executive board, those people who are elected to govern us or to be our leaders, they don't represent me. I feel like I'm an average member of ALA. I work in a one person library. I live in a small town. I live in a state that's quite isolated. We didn't have the internet back then. And I thought, this board is only, excuse me, big public library directors, deans of library schools, directors of academic libraries. And I thought, where are just the regular people? Those of us who've been in ALA for 100 years. So I thought, I could run for the ALA executive board. But before I did that, I thought, well, I'll call one of the ALA past presidents to be nameless, not you. And she said to me, oh, dear, you're certainly not qualified to do this job. You couldn't possibly do this job. You don't understand the issues. They're very complex. So I thought, OK, scratch that one. I'll go on to the next person I know. And I really want to spend a moment here. Regina has been, I think, a mentor to so many people throughout the American Library Association. Because she has that kind of personality. I didn't know Gina. She was president when I was on council. And then she was past president. And one of the things I found is that you don't have time at conference to talk to people. But I always felt like she was a person that I could just call up and say, can I talk to you? So I did. And I think I even called you at home. I think so. Horror of horrors. You know, I just, as a librarian, I'm very, what's the word? Resourceful. Yes. Resourceful. That's a good word. I'm very resourceful as a librarian. So I found her home phone number. And I called her up. And I said, Gina, do you think I could run for the ALA executive board? Now, whether she was just being presidential and lying to me or not, she was very, very gracious. And I think that, to me, that was, you know, as just one of these regular members, she gave me the assurance that I had a place there at the table that I could indeed learn what the issues were, that this wasn't a job that was out of the realm of possibility for anybody. That's right. And it's not painting herself as brightly as you might think. I mean, she knows how to organize. When you ran for ALA executive board, people knew Ann because she had talked to people. People knew Ann because she made good statements. And didn't you win again by one of the largest number of votes? It isn't luck. You plan where you're going to do. You plan what you're going to say. She's one of these people. She says, now, how do I do this? And I said, well, Ann, first you do this, and then you do that, and then you do this, and then you do the other thing. And then she turns around and does it, and it works. Always amazes me. Well, you know, what's very interesting because I was really actually petrified when I ran for the ALA executive board. I was afraid somebody would ask me a hard question. But one of the other people who'd been on the executive board, a colleague of Gina, said, all you have to do is walk up to people and put out your hand and say, hi, I'm Ann Simons. I'm running for the ALA executive board. And that's what I did. I met every single person on council. Nobody ever asked me a hard question because they don't have any. So I got on the ALA executive board, and I almost missed the first meeting because they didn't tell me where it was. But I do remember sitting with Gina because she was just going off the board, and she told me everything I needed to know, except when the meeting was and where it started. We met in executive session our very first meeting, and the person, we were doing some IFLA nominations or something really. But we had all these resumes, people's resumes. And one of the people sitting across the table from me, Dr. Bob Stewart, who was wanting an IFLA position, had a resume. It was 34 pages long. And I'm going, whoa, what am I doing here? My resume, I could barely get it on one page at that time because, of course, I'd only ever had one job or two jobs. But when you get on the ALA executive board, again, I met another person like Regina, who decided I could be the treasurer of ALA. I didn't decide I was going to be the treasurer. It was our current then treasurer, Carla Stofel, who thought, I'll train this woman. She can be our treasurer. But when you get on the ALA executive board, what you find out is that any given minute, everybody on the board is running for president of ALA. All 12 people are running, except for the president and the past president and the president-elect. Everybody's running for president. And somewhere along the way, I decided, oh, I could do that, too. And I think one of the things, Gina will tell you that the odds of being president of ALA coming from a state with 208 ALA members, kind of zip. But from a one-person library. But you're a politician. Oh, thank you. She knows how to work the crowd. I learned it from you. She knows. Well, I always have three things to say to people. You know, when I go to key messages, I always have three things that I can say, and I say them over and over and over again, so that it seems like new stuff. But you ran a campaign and you ran a sensible campaign based on some issues and based on what, I mean, Anne thought, she thinks, which is a really nice thing. And you ran on issues and you ran on a program. And at least for me, one of the things that pleased me a lot is I had a good opponent, somebody who wasn't a close personal friend. And the thing that you find when you work in ALA is that you make a lot of friends. And you make a lot of friends that you keep for life. And I never wanted to run against somebody who was a really close personal friend. Staff may remember who that other candidate was. So we'll go on. We'll go on. But it was, I had a great, I had a great opponent. That's right. One of the issues that we all face right now, all of us, no matter where we work or in what library, is the internet. And all over the country, librarians and others are defending the fact that we don't want to filter. And we all need help and support in this issue. And often the intellectual freedom stance is hard to defend because I recall talking to my sister, who's a grandmother. She had seven children now. She has seven grandchildren. And one of my great nephews, every time he comes down to San Francisco, gets online at my sister's house and surfs. And surfs where you might expect a 15-year-old who was curious to surf. Now, my sister says, why should I allow him to do this? And I say, well, Vic, there are lots of other places that he can find these photographs. And so she says, well, you shouldn't do that. Children shouldn't be allowed to do that. And she's a reasonable person. And the difficulty is that many people who want filtering are reasonable people and they have reasonable concerns about their children and about what happens to children. So, and the sexually explicit sites that kids can access, even though we all know they're only thumbnails, et cetera. So, and what's ALA doing to help us here? Everything. This has probably been one of the hardest things that ALA has had to deal with is the issue of what it is people want children to see or not see on the internet. And this is not a new issue because this goes back when you look at the number of book challenges that we've had every year over the last many years since the Office for Intellectual Freedom has been keeping statistics several hundred people. And we know that's just a tip in the bucket. Challenge what kids read. And generally it is kids. But the internet has really added a new dimension to this. And I think one of the problems that we have is that when you split the argument into the value of access to information over the value of protecting children, this is not an either or argument. And the way people want to set this up is that if you believe in access to information, then you don't believe in protecting children. Or if you believe in protecting children then you've got to limit access to information. And what we know is that that's not true. I mean, I think that librarians, as much as anybody care about children, they care about what children see, what they watch, what they do. And one of the ways we do that is by educating kids and educating parents. And so I think that we've been painted into a corner often as we don't protect children. What we have to do is recapture that language to say, yes, we do protect children and these are the ways that we do it. This is an argument that's not winnable. It's the kind of when did you stop beating your wife lately? And so we've had our three sound bites here and we've moved on to our next three sound bites and we're moving to our next three sound bites. But I can honestly say that things are getting better because I guess there's several reasons. We have a parent's corner on the ALA website. It's www.ala.org. And then just right up in the right hand corner you can click on parents. We all want kids to have a safe rewarding experience online. And we want parents to take the responsibility for that. In, you know, Gina going back to Gina's nephew, you know, people can do whatever they want in their home and in terms of filtering, I see nothing wrong with encouraging parents to filter in their home if that's the way they feel that they can best protect children. Interestingly enough, in this week's USA Today, I think it was Wednesday, yeah, Wednesday, in the technology section they actually rated filters for the home. Interesting. And I think that those are things, I mean I think every librarian should know about filters, they should know how they work, they should know what they do, what they do with it, come on. My paper is. They're somewhere in. My paper is. I was interested to see what kind of star ratings they gave to the filters. Come on, paper. But the most interesting thing that they said in this whole, oh, look, look, my paper's defective. Actually, it's not even here. I must have taken it out. The most effect, the thing that they said in this article, even talking about filtering in the home, is that the most effective filter is still the parent. Absolutely, no question. And so, when you talk about libraries, but when you move then to a public institution, particularly a public library, we know that the internet is protected by the First Amendment, so I think that we have to come up with other strategies. And one of them that ALA has come up with is, you know, certainly tips for keeping kids safe online. And the America Links Up campaign which we encourage libraries to do classes for parents and kids. And the good news to me is that the questions are turning around. I mean, I would always hate it when a reporter called because they would say, so tell me, why are you letting kids access smut on the internet in your library? That's usually the question. That's the question. At ALA this last midwinter, the questions from the media were all exactly the same. Tell us how technology is changing the face of libraries. That's a better question. Which is a better question. You know, we're trying to move away and getting rid of the word use of the word filtering. How about web management? Hey, hey, sounds better than how about some sort of management for that anarchy that is the internet. Right, you know, and our three now, our three key soundbites are that people have the right to access what it is that they kids, and that includes children, what it is they need to live, work, learn in their communities, that these are local issues, that each local community gets to make the decisions about how the internet is managed and that libraries have internet access policies. Yes, and so, the LA City Library, LA Public Library has just recently, I meant to mention this last night, has recently determined that in their children's rooms, when they put up the web browser, that it will default to a search engine called Yehuligans, and another one whose name I can't remember, but only in the children's areas. Now this isn't filtering, it's just that they're using a specific search engine, and if the kid is savvy enough, and believe me, they probably all are, they can back right out and get out to where they want. What do you think about that as an approach? I think it's fine, and the kids can also go anywhere in the library, they won't use any other terminal. Right, and you know, I have no problem with any of that. I think where I have a problem is when the library, the library board, decides what it is that individual people in their community should and should not see. We, there has not been, you know, what's happening is that we are winning in the court of law, we're not winning in the court of public opinion. Yeah, the decision at Livermore, for instance, recently, this is the second dismissal of that suit, which we believe is going to go now to the state appellate court, and might possibly go as far as the Supreme Court. And quite frankly, because of the way the suit has drawn, it's so narrow, I believe the gist of it is that they have a right to be protected from sexually explicit information, and nobody thinks that the Constitution actually says that. And therefore, the argument that it's a constitutional issue has not been raised. So we'll have to see what happens as the Livermore case progresses. Well, and that was so different than the Loudon case. The Loudon case was, the library was sued by citizens of their own community called Mainstream Loudon because they were filtering. Now in Livermore, they were sued because they weren't filtering. So you know, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. That's right. And isn't that fun? That's one of the joys of working with the public. The case that I'm really looking forward to is a case that involves children. We know that schools have more, that the courts are gonna allow schools more limitations than they are. But I work in a school district. We have 40 internet access terminals in my high school library. We're not filtering any of them because in schools, it's never gonna be appropriate, never for a high school kid to go look at www.hornyhousewives.com during a school day. Right, send them to the public library. Right, we'll have that, right. Okay, let's go on. National Library Week is, Alan, did you have a question? We have a mic because we're taping. So I bet you're gonna talk about the 700 plus great websites for kids, aren't you? Sure, I'll be glad to talk about it. I think the 700 plus great websites is a great site but actually that wasn't what I was gonna talk about but you should check it out because it's a great site for kids to use and it's a positive approach to the whole issue which I think is the best note for the whole thing. But I was real excited to find out about the search engines that actually have filters connected to them that you can choose to use. Only on the basis, and I guess I'm kind of asking for a legal opinion, that maybe some of these objections from the public would not have as firm a foot to stand on because you are in the position where you can choose a filter or not choose a filter right from the start and that parents then could be told that that is an appropriate thing for them to make a decision about with their kids. I'm just kind of asking whether you think that's important or not really. I do think it's important and I think that as technology changes, I think what we're gonna see are a lot of changes in technology and as technology changes, I guess it's my hope that where we get to is a place where you can walk into your public library, that the terminals are unfiltered and then you have a choice of what you wanna do. If you wanna hit the Christian Coalition filter on the touch screen or however you can hit that and your information's filtered. If you wanna use a search engine that's filtered, that's fine. I mean, we as the American Library Association, I think our whole mission is individual choice. If you want to limit those choices for yourself, that's fine. I think that the problems are gonna come in is what that means when you limit that access for kids. Or for others. For others. Right. Okay. Do you need affirmative parental permission for a 17 and a half year old to use the internet? All right, let's move on. Okay, good. National Library Week is coming up, April 11th to 17th. Now I've always wondered why we have it during National Income Tax Week. Ah. Before my time. I tried to change it but the date seemed immutable. What are the themes and plans this year for National Library Week in? Well, I'm really pleased to announce that one of the things that the president gets to do or doesn't get to do depending is help set the National Library Week theme. And the National Library Week theme this year is Read, Learn, Connect at the Library. Now, I'll tell you, last Saturday I was in Chicago. I packed a whole box of stuff for you. Buttons, decals, all sorts of things. And they didn't show up here in the box. The brochures came. The brochures came. And they are in the back. If any of you didn't get them, be sure to pick them up. But I think National Library Week, it's a good time to focus media attention on what you're doing in your library, the services you've had in the last year, the successes you've had, the programs. It's something that's celebrated all over the United States at a local level. It's also School Library Medium Month in April. So it's a good time to work with the schools. But Read, Learn, Connect at the library is the theme. Special plans, you'll find in the brochures. Lots of suggestions, lots of ideas. Suggestions, yeah. Okay, so I just wanna make sure everybody got them if they want them. What are you doing to celebrate National Library Week? What are we doing? I haven't got a clue at this moment. I'm sure Marcia can tell us what we're doing to celebrate National Library Week. I'm sure it's extensive. I'm sure there's a lot of things and I'm sure things are going on everywhere. Some people say, you know, why have a special week because we celebrate libraries every week of the year and every day? And I think that's a real part of my key message this year is that I like the celebrating part. I do too. I think it's really important to celebrate what we do and to celebrate each other. Okay, tell us a bit about what it's like to be ALA president. I remember, but maybe these folks would like to know what you think was the most fun, what was the most interesting, what do you find to be most difficult, and what do you think you're gonna have as a lasting accomplishment? Well, it's a lot of hard work. I'll tell you that. I mean, even being for almost 10 years on the ALA executive board and watching every president before me, I never believed them when they told me how much work it is. And I think a lot of it is, you know, the work that you do out representing the association but there's a lot of behind the scenes work too. And that's the part that you just don't, and now with email, I mean, in fact, I don't know how we ever operated without email because at least now the communication back is so easy but it also is, you know, I can't let a day go by that I don't do my email because there are hundreds of messages. And I get messages from all sorts of people. I got a message this week from a man in Pakistan telling me how excited he was to be coming to ALA annual conference in New Orleans. And would I please make the arrangements for his airline ticket? That's the kind of thing sometimes you get. That's what you get. And you did it, didn't you? You arranged for his tickets in his hotel. I asked the ALA staff to write him a letter saying, you know, it's just I wrote back and said please draft the letter that says thank you but no thank you. Fun things, I mean, really every president has highlights in their year. And you know, things you'll always remember. I think some of the things that I remember will be going to Paris to the American Library in Paris. They had a Gala Fund raising dinner with Gregory Peck. Yeah, and I got to sit at Gregory Peck's table. That was okay. I enjoyed that. A couple of weeks ago, I was on the Today Show and Katie was the Newbury Caldecott Awards. It was the announcement of the Newbury Caldecott Awards and what was so fun about that was that we were the second to the last segment just before the Groundhog. And because we were then essentially last, it went from Katie and the Newbury Caldecott to Matt and the Groundhog. They didn't kick us out of the studio. We got to stand there on the edge of the set and watch them do the Groundhog and watch them finish up the program. In fact, eventually we went from there to the Rosie O'Donnell Show because they gave everybody in the audience a copy of the Newbury and the Caldecott-winning books that day, which was really exciting. I happened not to have enough to do during ALA. That's what happens to dinosaurs. And I was in the room watching Rosie when they did that. I had no idea you were the audience. It was lots of fun. But it was really neat because she gave everybody a copy of both winners, which I think was great. I mean, those were certainly some of the highlights. One of the most interesting things I did was testify before the National Commission on Libraries and Information Sciences Services. And they had a hearing called the Internet, Kids in the Internet, the Promise and the Peril. And it was like sitting through an old-fashioned reconsideration hearing where the only thing they focused on was the peril of the internet. And practically by the end of the day, they were all taking the pledge. I believe in protecting children. And I believe in protecting children, too. But I think that our National Commission has to take up the same banner of the First Amendment and protecting access to information. I guess I found that interesting. Have they redone that? I understand they were redone. They're working on it. They are working on their brochure. And it actually came out more positive. The first version of it, the first draft that I saw anyhow, had librarians as one of the perils. Yeah, I had a pickup lunch with one of the commissioners who was showing me this. And I looked at that and said, where's this coming from? Librarians who don't have time to work with kids. Now, tell me, we're all busy. But when has a kid ever come to you? And a librarian has said to them, I'm sorry, I don't have time to work with you. Not very often, I hope. I work in a school district. We have a contract that says Other Duties as Assigned. That's in all your job descriptions. I think that probably the hardest thing about this job is the Other Duties as Assigned. You never know what they're going to be at midwinter, unfortunately, very early in the morning. One of our, the wives of one of our members called us and she says, Anne, this is Polly Marvin died last night. One of our members died at annual conference. Anne, the person she called was the ALI president. Mm-hmm. And that's what happens. And I think that, and Marvin, this is Marvin Skilkin from the Unabashed Librarian. And he's been on ALI counsel for many, many years, at least, I think he was the only permanent seat left. And he's a great guy, one of the guys who could come up and ask the seemingly simple question that has incredible ramifications. And he also led the fight to get booksellers to give libraries better discounts without a whole lot of support many years ago. So that's one of the things that happens when you're ALI president is you get the highs, but you also get the lows. And most people don't see the lows. Right, they don't, because they're all behind scenes. And you have to make the public presentation. Now, what I've warned Anne is that during the annuals, she has to really be careful because you smile so much your face hurts. You know, you wake up in the morning with a smile. And you end the day with the same smile on your face. And the day is from 6 AM to 1 AM. Yeah, usually. People think, Anne, that when you're ALI president, all you do is go to these wonderful dinners and meetings and chauffeurs drive you around. Not, not. You work here or whatever. But give us your best pitch, Anne, for coming to New Orleans this summer. I haven't told you what my greatest accomplishment was yet. Excuse me. OK. ALI Council passed the first new intellectual freedom policy since, I guess we revised the Library Bill of Rights in 1980. It's called Libraries in American Value. Everybody will get a copy in the June, July issue of American Libraries along with tip sheets on how to use this. And it's a 21st century intellectual freedom statement that's designed for the public, not for librarians. That's great. I've seen it in draft. And so I think we've just, you know, it's just been in draft form to now. But I hope that that's one of my accomplishments. And the other, I think, is the fact that we spend a year really celebrating the freedom to read. Good. You know, in the 30th anniversary of the Office for Intellectual Freedom. Annual conference, my best pitch. Yeah, give us a pitch. Why should we go? Well, first off, it's in New Orleans. And everybody loves it. Aside from the good food, why should we go? Gina remembers the time when the mayor of New Orleans had to come and convince ALI Council that New Orleans was a good place for us, that we were a good fit, because our members did not seem to want to go to New Orleans. Now they can't seem to want to stay away. New Orleans is a great convention center, convention city. And I think, like San Francisco, it's one of the few cities in the country that has some character. And I think that's why our members like to come to San Francisco, too. Any special programs you've got? Yeah. Colin Powell would be the opening general session speaker. We're having, instead of the all conference reception, we're going to have an end of the century scholarship bash, in which we raise money to ensure that there's a generation of librarians who follow those of us who have gray hair. And we're hoping to raise a lot of money. We're going to have world-class entertainment. We're hoping to have the Neville brothers that night. Great. Yeah, we're this far from signing the contract. We actually sold tickets at midwinter and not having the contract signed yet. It's like being a little bit pregnant by the end of conference. We were very pregnant. We still don't have the contract signed. But my president's program is going to be called the First Amendment Conversation. It's going to be similar to this. It's going to be with Kristi Hefner from Playboy Enterprises, the CEO of Playboy Enterprises, Nadine Strassen, president of the ACLU, and Bruce Ennis, who's argued more cases before the Supreme More First Amendment cases, before the Supreme Court than anybody else today living. Yeah, Bruce has been the judge's counsel for the freedom for the freedom. Yeah, he's been counsel for quite a while. And he also argued the CDA case before the Supreme Court. So good food, good networking, lots of people to see, lots of good programs. Lots of good programs. Sign up early. Don't miss. OK. I hear you're doing a book. I am doing a book. Tell me about it. This is the plug for the book. Coming out before annual conference. Tell us about it. It's called Speaking Out, Voices in Celebration of Intellectual Freedom. We kind of took a cut through the intellectual freedom community, asked people to pick a quote, and then tell us why it was important to them. But we also just took a very, very long list of celebrities, wrote to them just cold, and then said, you know, would you do something for our book? And we got back some very interesting contributions from Ed Asner, from Barney Frank, US Representative Barney Frank, Pat Schroeder. I don't have the list in front of me, but it's a nice mix of librarians and non-librarians. Great. Short essays, things that you can figure out how to use in your library. We'll be autographing at the ALA store, Sally Reed Nye, who edited the book. OK. Well, we're doing really well. You have a clock up there? Yeah, we got a clock, so we can check here. Let's hear from these people. Well, yeah. A frequent question that I get from the media, and I'm sure Ann does too, is what will happen to libraries in the 21st century? Do you still need books? Do you still need all that space? What will be the most important issues libraries will face? So Ann and I have decided that instead of telling you what we think, we'd like to hear what you think. So what do you guys think is going to be some of the most important issues of the 21st century? What's going to be hot as we move into the 21st century? This may not be a very exciting issue, but I think it's crucial for library services. And that's the whole question of changes in intellectual property and copyright. You may not know it or not, but there's a move afoot to revise the uniform commercial code to apply contract law instead of copyright law to electronic publications. Would you talk about this whole area, because I don't sure it's really realized the impact that it could have on library operations for all types of libraries? I think it's an incredibly complex issue. And absolutely right, it's one that comes to the top of everybody's list right now, is copyright, especially copyright in the digital age. Are we gonna have to pay per use, per packet? How is information, what does fair use mean in the digital environment? It's an incredibly complex subject. It's really not one I can talk about knowledgeably. And that's one thing I have learned is that as ALA president, you cannot talk about every single subject knowledgeably. ALA is involved, although I believe that in the discussion is represented. Along with the seven other US library associations, ARL, the Association of Research Libraries, the Special Libraries Association, we have a Digital Futures Coalition. We're certainly trying to impact legislation in this area. The publishers are trying to, and they have lots more money than we do. But I think the one thing that pleases me is that the ALA Washington office is at the table. We're very definitely at the table. We have our own lawyers, our intellectual property lawyers who are there trying to make sure that we're there and that the issues that the rights and the needs of people who use libraries are represented. Yes, because it could be incredibly, I mean it could really make an enormous change in the way people can access information and in the way libraries are able to provide it. So this is where having a proactive national organization with some cloud is really important to libraries throughout the country. That's what ALA does. That's right, what ALA does best actually. Any other hot topics people wanna talk about? Yeah. I just wanna bring it up. Literacy, helping the have-nots get access. Literacy, absolutely. In fact, ALA has identified its five key action areas for the beginning of the next century. Literacy is there, diversity is there, intellectual freedom, continuous learning, continuous and lifelong learning, access to information, equality and access to information. We just hired a new literacy officer at ALA, our first ever literacy officer. So clearly, and we're seeing that we're able to partner with big national corporations in the literacy effort and that's, in fact, in terms of priorities for the Fund for America's libraries and going out and raising money for programmatic issues, the Spectrum Minority Scholarship was one of our areas and literacy was another one. And I think literacy needs to encompass as well, computer literacy. Absolutely, all types of literacy. It has to be all types of literacy for all kinds of people. Adult literacy, children. Yes. This is probably a good way to segue into the demographic shifts, not only in the Bay Area but throughout our country. How will we take a more proactive rather than a reactive approach to the language needs? Because not everything is universally accepted in terms of English. And because of the shifts from the Asian Pacific Rim as well as the European needs and all throughout the world, how will we take a more proactive? Well, I think ALA has already started doing that in that this last year we entered into a partnership, a three-year partnership with FEEL, which is the for, let me just, my Spanish isn't that good, the Guadalajara Book Fair people. And we sponsored, between the two of us, we sponsored 200 people to librarians to go to the Guadalajara Book Fair. And I think this is one of the ways to see the materials, to be able to buy the materials on the spot, to have programs for librarians who went for them to be able to get the best out of the fair for their patrons. And it was very interesting because there were many librarians from the Bay Area who were there, who've been going for many years, who told the rest of us, bring lots of suitcases, bring lots of cash, get your director to give you cash so you can buy on the spot. But I think that Hispanic materials are just one of the languages. And I think that one of the ways that ALA, we have an ethnic materials roundtable, but I think one of the ways is that we are looking at these Book Fair programs, getting librarians to the source of the materials so that they can buy, so that collection development people can buy on the spot and talk to publishers who are publishing materials that people back your need. It's a continuing issue in cities like San Francisco. And in California and other Pacific Rim states, the school district in San Francisco, I believe, teaches in 140 or 150 different languages. And we buy in about, Ann, how many languages? We buy 45, 55 different languages? 35, and then maybe, I think, Tony told me it was, thank you, thank you. I know that children's was doing more. It's a lot of book fairs, but it's also what happens here, and I think this is part of what Virginia was leading up to, is what happens to the rest of the collection also, I mean your emphasis has to be, you need to provide the materials in the languages that people want to read, and that's in addition to all of the things we have always been doing. And that's one of the things I think, it's like everything is a value added. Don't stop anything you were doing, but start doing all these other things and do it with the same amount of money. Now, a lot of libraries are lucky and they have relatively good budgets, but those libraries who don't have good budgets are in a real bind. And I think it's a political issue as well as a social issue, and it's a thing that has to be dressed at the local level just as much as it does at the national level. Now I saw Laura over here, yeah. I want to ask you a question first. Do you remember what the theme of your presidency was? Yes, diversity. It was the challenge of diversity. And I think that one of the marks of a good ALI president is that that theme is just as hot, just as valid today as it was 12 years ago, 13 years ago when Gina was president. And I think that those are issues that we're definitely working on. We must address. Jackie. Yes, I'd like to bring up the issue or go back to the issue of literacy and focus in on information literacy, especially since you are a school librarian. And that is information literacy is one thing that really differentiates school libraries and their mission versus other libraries yet the public doesn't know it. In California, I know that there's legislation, once again, encouraging partnerships or joint use facilities between public and school libraries. But a lot of that is because they don't understand the difference of the missions. And although there's a lot of good reasons to combine, I think the whole issue of information literacy could be brought further into the public's mind by the ALI and I wanted to hear a few words about that. I mean, I think as a school librarian, our job is to graduate kids who know how to be critical thinkers. And I think that's the most important thing that we can do in an information age. I've worked in a community where we've had joint public school libraries. I don't think they, I mean, unless you can convince me, I haven't seen them work well. I think a lot has to do with the planning and the siting and how entrances and exits are done. And frankly, it's my opinion that if a school and a public library shares space, the public library should manage it. Mine too, and that's absolutely. And I have a very good reason for that. And that is because the material that we have in a public library has a greater span of interest than the material that a school library will have. And it's very important that a public library does not become restricted to the educational level in the school. And I think we have one more question in the back. Is that right, Laura? And this will have to be our last one, I'm sorry. Thanks to the ALS International Relations Roundtable, Travel Grant that I got last year to go to the Zimbabwe International Book Fair and also the support that I got from my library. I was really very delighted to be at the book fair and probably I was the only American librarian at the book fair. And I want to ask you, Ms. Simmons, what would ALA do to encourage American librarians to go to the Zimbabwe Book Fair? It's really a great book fair and there are really very good books. And also to encourage American librarians to buy books published in Africa. It would support African publishers and also we can have really very good books that are not available in any of the distribution channels here in the States. I'm glad you asked that question because ALA has entered into the same kind of partnership with the Zimbabwe Book Fair that we have with the Guadalajara Book Fair. And we're taking people back again this year. If you go to ALA's website, they are now seeking applications for people to go to Zimbabwe Book Fair. They're providing free registration. They're providing money, part of the money toward airfare. And so I think that we're looking at these type of partnerships with many different areas of the world where there are book fairs and librarians can find value in them. Okay, good. Is there anything you'd like to add in closing in? Yes, I hope you'll all, if you're not a member of ALA, I hope you'll consider joining. ALA has a lot to offer. Whether you go to conferences, whether you don't, whether you use our website and be sure to go to www.ala.org. There's always something there. There are many listservs that you can join. That's right. There's 89 active listservs. So if you don't get enough email. I get enough email. I do too. Anna, I want to thank you for coming. We really are honored to have you here with us today. Thank you. It's a delight to be here. And thank you all for coming. And I'll send stuff.