The post by Fritz Snyder contained some interesting figures, but I can't help
thinking there must be a semantics problem here. ALA maintains a Washington
Office with a staff of ten people, and has just created a new arm called the
Office for Information Technology Policy, which I assume means adding staff.
The purpose of the Washington Office is to "educate and work with legislators"
and the new OITP's purpose is described as "support[ing] ALA Washington Office
staff in carrying out ALA's legislative and regulatory policies..." That sound
s like lobbying to me, though I don't know how ALA describes it in the budget
documents. Check my sources at the ALA home page: http://www.ala.org/
ALA and SLA jointly sponsor Legislative Day every year in which librarians talk
to legislators. That also sounds like lobbying, and it must cost SLA more
than $0, the amount Fritz was told SLA budgets for lobbying. I don't have
any more information about SLA and I've run out of time to do any more hunting.
Maybe some AALL members who also belong to SLA could add some light to this
discussion.
Ann Puckett
Director of the Law Library and Professor of Law
University of Georgia School of Law Library
Athens GA 30602-6018
Phone (706)542-5078
Fax (706)542-5001
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 14 2007 - 20:48:58 PST