Legislative Network Representative's
Annual Report

This year I continued to forward messages from the ALA’s Washington Office, from the ACRL’s Legislative Network, and from state coordinators alerting the chapter membership to opportunities for action in support of libraries and issues pertaining to information services.

For the third year running I also attended the ALA’s National Library Legislative Days in Washington DC as the Chapter’s Representative. This year the ALA was asking legislators to support the President’s request of $226.18 million for the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). We were also asking to increase the Fund the Improving Literacy Through School Libraries program to $100 million. Future librarians will be glad to hear that the outcome for the LIBRARIAN Act of 2007 is looking good. This measure, if passed, will provide for Perkins student loan forgiveness for librarians that are employed in low-income schools and public libraries.  In the realm of Copyright, we asked legislators to Co-sponsor H.R. 1201, the FAIR USE Act of 2007, to amend Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to allow bypassing a technological lock that controls access to and use of a copyrighted work in six narrow circumstances. These exceptions would facilitate education and preservation activities, without causing any harm to copyright owners.  In support of open government legislation, the ALA supports opening up access to the reports created by the Congressional Research Reports to the public.  We also voiced our appreciation to Congress for interceding and conducting investigations into the EPA library closures while expressing our concern about the future of other federal libraries and the potential loss of access to important resources used for the public good. While the PATRIOT ACT is not a current issue, we did ask members of Congress to support ongoing investigations into the FBI abuses of National Security Letters (NSLs).

Suzanne Wones
ACRL/NEC Legislative Network Coordinator

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