MEDIA ALERT: Candidates Announced for ALA Presidency
Joyce Kelly (jkelly@ala.org)
Fri, 12 Dec 1997 10:41:49 -0500
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 10:41:49 -0500
Message-Id: <199712121545.KAA16861@comet.connix.com>
From: Joyce Kelly <jkelly@ala.org> (by way of mgolrick@sclc.org (Michael A. Golrick))
To: Multiple recipients of list <conntech>
Subject: MEDIA ALERT: Candidates Announced for ALA Presidency
ALA NEWS RELEASE
American Library Association
Public Information Office
For Immediate Release
Contact: Emily Melton
312-280-3203
Dec. 11, 1997
Two seek election as ALA president
Two candidates will seek election as president of the American
Library Association (ALA) for the 1999-2000 term.
The candidates were nominated by the ALA Nominating
Committee. They are Martin Gomez, executive director of Brooklyn Public
Library, and Sarah Long, director of the North Suburban Library Systems
(NSLS), an organization of 680 academic, public, school and special
libraries north of Chicago.
ALA members will vote on the spring 1998 ballot. The candidate
elected will serve as ALA-president-elect in 1998-99 before becoming
president the following year.
Martin Gomez
Appointed to his position in September of 1995, Gomez heads the
fifth largest library system in the United States, which has an annual
operating budget of $65 million and provides services to 2.5 million area
residents.
Among his initiatives at Brooklyn Public Library, Gomez has
spearheaded the installation of Brooklyn's first Multilingual Center - a
gateway to library service for the borough's immigrants; the
establishment of the library's first foundation board to raise private
monies for library programs; and the creation of an online wide-area
network that will provide free public access to the Internet in Brooklyn's
public libraries.
Gomez is a board member for the Metropolitan New York Library
Council, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, and the
Regents Advisory Council on Libraries. He is on the ALA Executive
Board and is active in numerous other committees.
He served as chair of the 1997 Third National Institute for
Hispanic Library Education at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N. J.
In 1996, he received the Eileen C. Dugan Public Service Award
presented by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.
Prior to his current post, Gomez served five years as director of
the Oakland Public Library in Oakland, Calif. He also has been director of
the Chicago Public Library Cultural Center and president of REFORMA,
the National Association to Promote Library Services to the
Spanish-Speaking.
Gomez holds a bachelor's degree in English from the University of
California, Los Angeles and a master's degree in library science from the
University of Arizona at Tucson.
Sarah Long
Since accepting her position at NSLS in 1989, Long and her staff
have pioneered Internet access in libraries; established NorthStarNet, a
community information network for the north suburban area; and entered
into innovative partnerships with the Ravinia Music Festival, the Chicago
Wolves hockey team and the Chicago Tribune. Long is exploring ways
to develop and implement innovative organizational structures and
models of lifelong learning at NSLS and its member libraries.
Long has worked with the NSLS Board to help establish the North
Suburban Library Foundation, an independent foundation that presents
the Literary Circle. This annual series of author events features
world-class authors such as Toni Morrison, Tom Wolfe and Isabel
Allende. The foundation also has sponsored grants to member libraries
and has created a project to develop youth librarians in technology.
Long is currently chair of the ALA Awards Committee and chair
of the National Conference Planning Committee of the Public Library
Association (PLA), a division of ALA. She served as PLA's president in
1989-90.
Prior to her current position, Long was director of the Multnomah
County Library in Portland, Ore. Before that, she directed the Dauphin
County Library System in Harrisburg, Penn. and the Fairfield County
District Library in Lancaster, Ohio. She was a consultant at the State
Library of Ohio and an academic librarian in England.
The native Georgian received a bachelor's degree in education
from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta and a master's degree in
librarianship from Atlanta's Emory University.
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