I’ve always been bummed that Depository Library Council meeting and conference usually doesn’t take place during the annual library legislative day. But now we can all take part despite being thousands of miles away from Washington DC. We urge all our readers to take Part in Virtual Library Legislative Day. Email or call your representatives and senators and let them know how important libraries are to education, community life and civil rights across the US. I’m especially pleased that ALA Washington Office’s email template refers to continuing funding for the Govt Printing Office and to privacy/surveillance and other civil rights issues in which libraries are leading the way to support.
I would add, besides open access, the need for copyright reform and the need for govt publications and data to be in the public domain AND include a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license and kill S.2206, the “Let Me Google That For You” Act and more fully fund NTIS, OSTI and other agencies critical to the President’s open access/open government initiatives. Congress needs to do all its power to maintain and expand the public domain!
When you contact your representatives, please feel free to add any other library issues for which you’re concerned. Thanks for taking the time to let your representatives know that libraries are an important part of society’s fabric.
On May 6, hundreds of Library supporters will take to Capitol Hill to meet with their legislators to discuss issues that impact libraries. Even if you can’t be in Washington, DC this week you can still speak up for libraries by taking part in Virtual Library Legislative Day (VLLD).
The issues library advocates will be discussing are:
- Early Learning (pdf)
- ESEA (pdf)
- IAL (pdf)
- Key Issues (pdf)
- LSTA (pdf)
- Open Access (pdf)
- Surveillance (pdf) (see updated press release)
- WIA (pdf)
You can take part in VLLD by calling your elected officals or by sending them an email.
via Legislative Action Alert – Take Part in Virtual Library Legislative Day.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
As Co-Chair of the SC Legislative Cmte. I was responsible for preparing the handouts we were giving to the legislators. The list was lengthy as recommended from ALA. While all of these issues are very important, I noticed issues important to those of us in Government Information did not make the list. I found this very disconcerting.
Last year when the DLC Conference was cancelled, a few librarians still made the trip to DC and used this time to meet with representatives of the Joint Cmte on Printing. This group included myself, FGI blogger James R. Jacobs, Bernadine Abbot Hoduski and Susan Jackson. We discussed the difficulties caused by the government shutdown, concerns about born digital documents and several other topics we felt the staffers needed to hear.
It has occurred to me that due to all of the issues needed to be addressed on National Library Legislative Day, FDLP concerns aren’t able to be addressed. I think maybe we should consider making a visit to the JCP an annual event possibly as an advocacy event sponsored by GODORT. Hopefully this year we won’t have another shutdown, but there are many other important issues in which the JCP and our legislators should have our input. Among them the the GPO name change, the Let Me Google That bill, the Census Reform Act, the cuts to BLS publications, and the proposed federal defunding of IMLS. I feel very strongly about being proactive in protecting access to government, as do most of FDLP librarians.