View from 39,000 feet: Reflections on the 2019 American Library Association Midwinter Conference

While airplane trips make some people anxious, they make me reflective. As I write, I’m flying back to Los Angeles from Seattle, having been to Seattle for the American Library Association Midwinter Conference. Once again I was privileged to have my daughter Rachel with me: her 6^th time to an ALA conference. She is building a network of colleagues as she starts her career as a librarian.

While some people in the library profession do not enjoy going to ALA Midwinter or ALA Annual, I have always found the conferences interesting, provocative, and an opportunity to build a network of interesting, informed, and sometimes raucous colleagues. As always, the conference provided an opportunity to catch up with other library leaders from across the country and to meet new ones. I was able to attend sessions on Virtual Reality, research support, and building 3-D exhibits, the FOLIO library services platform, as well as half day,  catching up with a variety of shared print initiatives across North America. Meeting with vendors, as well as participating in the ARCL Leadership Council and the International Relations Committee, rounded out the conference.

One of the wonderful things about both ALA Midwinter and Annual are the major national/international speakers that come to speak. This year, with a bit more flexibility in my schedule I was privileged to hear four speakers. Here are a few reflections on this year’s speakers.

Melinda Gates, provided the opening keynote, sharing some of the work she has been doing to create transformational improvements in the area of global health. In a conversation with noted librarian and bestselling author, Nancy Pearl, Melinda shared from her forthcoming book “The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World”; personalizing her perspective on the role that women have in the world, and how by supporting women and giving them a full voice, raises the whole of humanity. For me, the most poignant point was Melinda’s struggle with her own Catholic faith, and the need to provide contraceptive help for millions of women in the developing world. This needed contraceptive help allowed women to not have babies they could not support and feed.

The most difficult and challenging talk was by Robin DiAngelo, the author of the New York Times best-seller “White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism”. This challenging talk challenged me and others to exam how my own white race has shaped my world view and the view of others. No one wants to think of themselves as racist. DiAngelo helped us to see how racism is built into our social and government system and that we must work to break down those systems to give people of color and other marginalized people a chance at full participation in our society. Certainly, much to think about.

One of our favorite events every Midwinter is the early Monday morning (6:30 am) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Observance and Sunrise Celebration. A time of reflection on MLK’s work, but also the continued need to work on overcoming the systemic racism that still marginalizes and oppresses African American’s and other minorities in the United States. This year’s speaker, Dr. Jeanne Theoharis, shared from the research of her latest book, "A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History", which details the ways in which we have created a hero myth around MLK and Rosa Parks. This hero myth simplifies MLK’s role to showing the US the problem of racism and in the spirit of American Exceptionalism, the white majority solved it with the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voter Rights Act of 1965. Not only is this untrue (eliminating racism), it ignores the real and sometimes very violent and uncomfortable struggle that was the Civil Rights movement. Theoharis shows that when white leaders try to downplay the activism of current groups, like Black Lives Matter, by appealing to MLK, they ignore the historical MLK and the activist struggle that he led. Just like today’s members of Black Lives Matter, MLK was asked/told to be quiet, to be more circumspect, to accommodate. Today’s appeal to MLK’s nonviolence ignores both King’s actions and how he and his work struggled against white dominance and hatred. Once again this celebration was a clarion call to action to combat racism in all of its forms.

Noted British CNN journalist Isha Sesay closed this year’s ALA conference. Born and raised in Sierra Leone, a daughter of professional parents, educated at Cambridge, worked 13 years as a front-line correspondent for CNN International, often reporting from difficult and dangerous places. She talked about her forthcoming book “Beneath the Tamarind Tree”; the story of the 2014 kidnapping of 276 girls in the Nigerian village of Chibok by the Boka Haram. She was captivated by the story of the kidnapped girls, and the fact the government was doing little if anything to find them. She worked to keep the story alive and when half of the girls were released she visited them to provide help for them to re-establish their lives. Since the return of the girls, Isha has stepped away from her career at CNN and established a foundation to work with girls in Africa; providing leadership training so that girls have opportunities to flourish and change their world.

In spite of the strong emphasis on diversity and inclusion at the conference, I was disappointed to hear of the ways that people of color attending the conference were mistreated and their contributions minimalized. We still have much work to do.

Seattle, also known as the Emerald City, is a fascinating city with its mix of historic and new; the Pike Place Market and the ultramodern Seattle Public Library. It is also a city of Coffee, with a Starbucks on almost every corner, including the very first Starbucks store. While known for its gloomy weather and copious rain, our five days in Seattle sported not a drop of rain, and on our final day, there was not a cloud in the sky.

At the end of the conference, we went to the University of Washington to visit the Research Commons and tour the libraries. Visiting the Research Commons was a way to discover how the UW was providing research support for graduate students. Certainly an interesting space and set of services.

After our meeting with the Research Commons manager, we took time to visit the Suzalo Library, UW’s main research library. Visiting the historic reading room one can easily see the manifestation of the metaphor “library as temple of knowledge. It was interesting to see students in that grand and reflective space and how moving out from the reading room, the library merged into more active and social learning spaces.

Our visit later in the day to Seattle’s iconic glass and steel Central Library provided an interesting juxtaposition of library metaphors. The library’s glass and steel structure provide open and interesting public spaces, living rooms of sorts, while the print collection is showcased in a multi-story book spiral that allows users to interact directly with the collection. The library is a mixture of “library as living room” and “library as public square”; allowing the city to see the library as a central intellectual hub.

Next up: ALA annual in Washington DC!!!. Hope to see you there.