State of America's Libraries Report 2012

State of America's Libraries Report 2012

American Library Association

released April 9, 2012

and

"ALA Releases State of American Libraries 2012 Report"

Gary Price

April 9, 2012

Infodocket  / Library Journal

count: 5 pages (1 for news release and 4 for executive summary)

It's never a good thing when the words draconian and libraries appear in the same sentence. But the Executive Summary begins with "2011 was a year of grim headlines." 

The news release concludes this year's SOAL report is that of "stagnating budgets, unsustainable costs, increased student enrollments and reduced staff" (Price, para. 5).

But there is no institution able to view the silver lining outlook than a library, and there were positive points as well.

• Use of libraries and their resources is way up!
• The library profession continues to work for minorities and under-represented groups
• Librarians continue to fight censorship
• Libraries and other First Amendment groups managed to rally effectively to oppose the SOPA and PIPA legistion
• ALA and sister library associations continue to advocate against and highlight the problem of "overly aggressive filtering of educational and social websites used by students and educators" (Ex. Summ, para 19).

Of note also is ALA's "Top Ten List of Frequently Challenged Books in 2011." I nodded at some of the titles, but groaned at a few as well. And, really: 50 years later and we're still challenging To Kill a Mockingbird??

 I hope to make it back to read beyond the Executive Summary -- rich stuff here, and SO MUCH INFORMATION!