ASB in Washington D.C.
February 26th - March 2nd, 2018 | Alternative Spring Break, Washington D.C. | Natalia Holtzman | MSI 1st Year
For Spring Break this year, I and a few dozen of my classmates from the University of Michigan’s School of Information took a bus (a long, slow bus) to D.C. to spend the week working and learning with a variety of organizations. Sophie, Adrienne, and I were lucky enough to land at the American Library Association. Together, we attended a few events, toured some of the capital’s grandest (Library of Congress) as well as more esoteric (Commerce Department Library) libraries. The rest of the time, while Sophie and Adrienne roamed about taking photographs, I managed to interview just about everyone who works in the ALA’s Washington Office.
For those who don’t know, the Washington Office, or “the library voice in the nation’s capital,” as it refers to itself, works as a kind of centralized advocate for libraries and the values that libraries hold dear. The ALA lobbies Congress on behalf of issues like net neutrality (a big one right now), copyright, privacy, and equitable access to information. But the ALA Washington Office doesn’t do all this itself. It works with chapter members to help those members learn to be effective advocates themselves.
When I arrived at the ALA office Monday morning, I was happy to dive into a couple of interviews with Kevin Maher, Deputy Director of OGR, and Megan Ortegan, Manager of Public Policy. During those interviews, I got the chance to learn more about what the ALA Washington Office actually does, and how individual staff members contribute to the mission. Maher is a lobbyist who focuses mainly on attaining funding for library programs. Ortegan works on initiatives to increase library visibility on the Hill. She provides congresspeople with the information they need to confidently advocate for libraries. She also trains new advocates so they know what to say and how to say it to be most effective.
The next morning, I took a break from the interviews for a field trip with Sophie and Adrienne. We dashed off to the Center for Data Innovation for a panel, “What Can Be Done to Protect Endangered Government Data?” featuring Gavin Baker, Assistant Director of the American Library Association, and Patricia Kim, Co-Founder of Data Refuge, among other speakers. Panelists discussed the importance of government data, ongoing risks to that data, and the urgent need for protection of government data. But as Baker explained, the question is “not how do we protect data from government, but how do we protect data with government?”
Other speakers emphasized the connection between power and access to information. Denice Ross, Public Interest Technology Fellow at New America, said, “The power of government data is it’s fair; it covers everybody in the country.” Patricia Kim went further: “Access to data,” she said, “is access to power.”
After the panel, Sophia, Adrienne, and I headed to the Commerce Department Library (managing, like any good tourists, to get lost along the way). In the Reading Room, we admired the lovely painted ceiling, whose rich but muted tones, we were told, had been carefully chosen to harmonize with the red, brown, and green books that lined the shelves.
From there, we zipped over to the Catholic University of America, where Kevin Gunn, Coordinator of Digital Scholarship and Subject Librarian for English, Modern Languages, and Philosophy, gave us an extensive tour of the library. He described the massive budget cuts the library had endured, the extent of which, he said, was akin to that of a weed-whacker. With many libraries within the CUA system closing down and moving their materials into storage, the question of which materials to make available, and how best to utilize the physical space they’d been given, was paramount.
Despite this grim news I managed to admire a bust of Dante that seemed to be rolling his eyes.
In the back, we observed offices lined with empty desks. These were once filled with catalogers, Gunn told us, but there just wasn’t a need for them anywhere. Still, the old card catalogue stood hulking against a wall, a dinosaur if there ever was one--but a lovely one.
Back at the ALA office on Wednesday, I packed my schedule with staff interviews. I wanted to know how the work of the ALA Washington Office had changed since the new administration took office last year. During our conversation on Tuesday, Kevin Maher had expressed disappointment in the fact that Trump’s administration doesn’t see a lot of positive things that government can do. Likewise, Carrie Russell, Director of the Program on Public Access to Information, said that Trump’s team places little to no value in knowledge and information. Like the panelists at the Center for Data Innovation, she decried the censoring of data that has become nearly ubiquitous.
But there are other effects that Trump’s office have had on the ALA’s work. Lisa Lindle, Manager of Grassroots and Advocacy Outreach, told me that there’s been a huge increase in community interest in advocacy under Trump. On the other hand, the ALA has had difficulty making progress on various projects due to gaps in mid- to senior-level agencies; the president has left many positions vacant. “There’s nobody home,” Alan Inouye, Director of Public Policy, told me. And in our Thursday interview, Daniel Sneddin, Manager of Public Policy, expressed regret at having to “pick a side and fight for the team” at the expense of working together on a bipartisan basis.
Luckily, we didn’t just talk about Trump. I also asked each interviewee what they thought my #1 takeaway about the Washington Office should be. Daniel Sneddin described the concept of a “hierarchy of needs.” Making use of the whiteboard in the ALA’s “war room” (I couldn’t tell if he was joking about the room’s name), he drew a pyramid with a broad base and steadily narrowing trunk. The base of the pyramid, he said, always needs to be funding, because without funding, there’s nothing that an organization can do. Once you’ve established that base, you can move on to focus on the programs and legislation that the organization cares about. It’s Sneddin’s job to help secure that base.
Shawnda Hines, Assistant Director of Communications, emphasized the importance of service. The ALA, she told me, serves as the Washington, D.C. presence for ALA members, providing the resources those members need to reach their representatives on Capitol Hill. The ALA, Hines added, stays on top of the national policies that affect the work that libraries do, and works to ensure that those policies are in the best interest of the public, broadly, and libraries, specifically.
After this whirlwind of interviews, I wasn’t sure how much more information I could absorb. But you can always absorb more. On Thursday, I met Adrienne and Sophia at the Library of Congress for a tour of the Newspaper Reading Room with Erin Sidwell, Reference Librarian. I also managed to find some important tips from an 1847 edition of the New York Star.
And suddenly, that was it -- that was the end of the week. On Friday I woke up to an advisory that much of the city was shutting down due to the winds. Then we were leaving, getting back on the bus and heading to Michigan where, I wasn’t too happy to learn, several inches of snow had just buried our campus.
A Week in the Life of an ALA Intern
For those who don’t know, the Washington Office, or “the library voice in the nation’s capital,” as it refers to itself, works as a kind of centralized advocate for libraries and the values that libraries hold dear. The ALA lobbies Congress on behalf of issues like net neutrality (a big one right now), copyright, privacy, and equitable access to information. But the ALA Washington Office doesn’t do all this itself. It works with chapter members to help those members learn to be effective advocates themselves.
When I arrived at the ALA office Monday morning, I was happy to dive into a couple of interviews with Kevin Maher, Deputy Director of OGR, and Megan Ortegan, Manager of Public Policy. During those interviews, I got the chance to learn more about what the ALA Washington Office actually does, and how individual staff members contribute to the mission. Maher is a lobbyist who focuses mainly on attaining funding for library programs. Ortegan works on initiatives to increase library visibility on the Hill. She provides congresspeople with the information they need to confidently advocate for libraries. She also trains new advocates so they know what to say and how to say it to be most effective.
The next morning, I took a break from the interviews for a field trip with Sophie and Adrienne. We dashed off to the Center for Data Innovation for a panel, “What Can Be Done to Protect Endangered Government Data?” featuring Gavin Baker, Assistant Director of the American Library Association, and Patricia Kim, Co-Founder of Data Refuge, among other speakers. Panelists discussed the importance of government data, ongoing risks to that data, and the urgent need for protection of government data. But as Baker explained, the question is “not how do we protect data from government, but how do we protect data with government?”
Other speakers emphasized the connection between power and access to information. Denice Ross, Public Interest Technology Fellow at New America, said, “The power of government data is it’s fair; it covers everybody in the country.” Patricia Kim went further: “Access to data,” she said, “is access to power.”
After the panel, Sophia, Adrienne, and I headed to the Commerce Department Library (managing, like any good tourists, to get lost along the way). In the Reading Room, we admired the lovely painted ceiling, whose rich but muted tones, we were told, had been carefully chosen to harmonize with the red, brown, and green books that lined the shelves.
From there, we zipped over to the Catholic University of America, where Kevin Gunn, Coordinator of Digital Scholarship and Subject Librarian for English, Modern Languages, and Philosophy, gave us an extensive tour of the library. He described the massive budget cuts the library had endured, the extent of which, he said, was akin to that of a weed-whacker. With many libraries within the CUA system closing down and moving their materials into storage, the question of which materials to make available, and how best to utilize the physical space they’d been given, was paramount.
Despite this grim news I managed to admire a bust of Dante that seemed to be rolling his eyes.
In the back, we observed offices lined with empty desks. These were once filled with catalogers, Gunn told us, but there just wasn’t a need for them anywhere. Still, the old card catalogue stood hulking against a wall, a dinosaur if there ever was one--but a lovely one.
Back at the ALA office on Wednesday, I packed my schedule with staff interviews. I wanted to know how the work of the ALA Washington Office had changed since the new administration took office last year. During our conversation on Tuesday, Kevin Maher had expressed disappointment in the fact that Trump’s administration doesn’t see a lot of positive things that government can do. Likewise, Carrie Russell, Director of the Program on Public Access to Information, said that Trump’s team places little to no value in knowledge and information. Like the panelists at the Center for Data Innovation, she decried the censoring of data that has become nearly ubiquitous.
But there are other effects that Trump’s office have had on the ALA’s work. Lisa Lindle, Manager of Grassroots and Advocacy Outreach, told me that there’s been a huge increase in community interest in advocacy under Trump. On the other hand, the ALA has had difficulty making progress on various projects due to gaps in mid- to senior-level agencies; the president has left many positions vacant. “There’s nobody home,” Alan Inouye, Director of Public Policy, told me. And in our Thursday interview, Daniel Sneddin, Manager of Public Policy, expressed regret at having to “pick a side and fight for the team” at the expense of working together on a bipartisan basis.
Luckily, we didn’t just talk about Trump. I also asked each interviewee what they thought my #1 takeaway about the Washington Office should be. Daniel Sneddin described the concept of a “hierarchy of needs.” Making use of the whiteboard in the ALA’s “war room” (I couldn’t tell if he was joking about the room’s name), he drew a pyramid with a broad base and steadily narrowing trunk. The base of the pyramid, he said, always needs to be funding, because without funding, there’s nothing that an organization can do. Once you’ve established that base, you can move on to focus on the programs and legislation that the organization cares about. It’s Sneddin’s job to help secure that base.
Shawnda Hines, Assistant Director of Communications, emphasized the importance of service. The ALA, she told me, serves as the Washington, D.C. presence for ALA members, providing the resources those members need to reach their representatives on Capitol Hill. The ALA, Hines added, stays on top of the national policies that affect the work that libraries do, and works to ensure that those policies are in the best interest of the public, broadly, and libraries, specifically.
After this whirlwind of interviews, I wasn’t sure how much more information I could absorb. But you can always absorb more. On Thursday, I met Adrienne and Sophia at the Library of Congress for a tour of the Newspaper Reading Room with Erin Sidwell, Reference Librarian. I also managed to find some important tips from an 1847 edition of the New York Star.
And suddenly, that was it -- that was the end of the week. On Friday I woke up to an advisory that much of the city was shutting down due to the winds. Then we were leaving, getting back on the bus and heading to Michigan where, I wasn’t too happy to learn, several inches of snow had just buried our campus.
