ALA Council – Winter Session Report ALA Council met for our annual Winter Session, which used to be at LibLearnX and before that MidWinter Conference, but this year for the first time is a standalone virtual event. We covered a lot of stuff. If you follow me on Bluesky, some of this will be a repeat of what I posted there, but I have more room here to go into details about my thoughts.

My fuller thoughts on the business of ALA Council at our Winter Session! Also comes with free cat pictures! #ALA #ALACouncil

Hey @amlibraryassoc.bsky.social ! Governance ballots are out this week and I hope you'll take a moment to cast your vote for Leah Richardson for ALA Councilor-at-Large! Organizing with her on the council floor is the most effective fun I've ever had.

#ALACouncil @rareleah.bsky.social

Welp, #ALACouncil Day 2 has concluded. Much less chaotic today, so I want to commend the ALA Staff and Leadership who learned quickly from yesterday's issues & implemented fixes. @amlibraryassoc.bsky.social

Today started off with reports from the Intellectual Freedom Com & Com on Legislation.

< chair of an ALA standing committee. Someone did the math and this will likely at least triple the number of people who can be eligible for election to Executive Board, which is good for diversifying the viewpoints at the top of ALA! #ALACouncil

Slightly contentious #ALACouncil meeting today, but not really more so than in-person meetings. This was our first full meeting fully virtual (either in some time or possibly ever?) so there’s some hiccups in procedures but we got most of the agenda for today done.

a close up of a young boy 's face with a sad look on his face . Alt: a close up of a young boy 's face with a sad look on his face .

I was just appointed on the ODLOS Advisory Committee for this year so that kind of sucks for me but ya know... we do what we gotta do #ALACouncil

Discontinue Office for Diversity, Outreach, Literacy, Advisory Committee (relocate core committees to Committee on Diversity)

Discontinue Public and Cultural Programs Advisory Committee

Change composition of Policy Monitoring Committee from 11 to 5 members

Motions 1-10 Pass #ALACouncil

Merge Committee on Professional Ethics and Intellectual Freedom Committee

Merging Leadership Development Committee and the Council Engagement and Training Committee

Merge Publishing Committee and American Libraries Advisory Committee

#ALACouncil

1st vote Committee on Organization's 10 motions to discontinue, merge, etc. various committees. These include:

Change everything about the Budget Analysis and Review Committee into a Finance Committee.

Move Committee on Status of Women in Librarianship under Committee on Diversity. #ALACouncil

Today's the first Winter #ALACouncil Meeting! I will try to post updates as we move through business. Not only does it help me process/remember what's happening I hope it's engaging for those who can't tune in live.

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Apologies for the extreme belatedness, but here is my conference report for #ALAAC25 at last, with #ALACouncil insights & personal journey news.

onequeerlibrarian.com/2025/09/13/conference-re...

Members of #ALACouncil including myself are asking for an emergency Council meeting around this. If the Exec Board grants this, what questions & points would you like me to bring to Council? #Library #Librarians

#ALACouncil 2/2 #liblearnx
Trust nom com
cost savings
Bylaws time clock
71 y 74 n 2a not pp
CD #48
“Legos in fruit salad” current voting
Data, info, consult, 7 yrs discuss
TAG Complexity of seats, elections, noms, not working
$32k savings less 2 seats
Stop vote 99y 39v 4a
Vote motion 90 y 49n

#ALACouncil #liblearnx
CD48 long debate
Size & cost exec board, put together elec slots
Reset to prior size - diverse
Changed from full membership, org effectiveness SCOE, forward together,
No longer resembled coupled w rest of rec of those groups
broader pool, cleaner election
1/2

Some #ALACouncil notes #LiblearnX
This was the Last LiblearnX, ALA midwinter(109 years)

There Will be an event in Chicago around this time 2026
#ALA

That's pretty much it I think. Again, feel free to ask me questions, I'll do my best to answer though I am by no means an expert on #ALACouncil or anything else, I can only share what I heard & my impressions of it, & my brain is swiss cheese, so the sooner you ask the more likely i am to remember 😆

As it was not discussed in #ALACouncil I can't say more about it than is in the document but it's basically about not having conferences in states where abortion is restricted. You'd have to ask someone on Exec Board what happened with it though. www.ala.org/sites/defaul...

One last thing, something we did NOT discuss at #ALACouncil yesterday b/c it was moved to Executive Board meeting today which I did not attend. A resolution from the Committee on Women in Librarianship on conf locations & equal access to emergency medical care.

Because it is a major By-laws amendment, all of ALA Membership must vote to approve it, so it'll be on your April ballots if you're a member. Feel free to ask me about the pros & cons mentioned in #ALACouncil by people much smarter than me. Happy to report what I can remember.

I tried to get us to put it off until Annual to give people more time to consider & also not have us voting to remove diversity slots at this specific moment, but the vote to delay was split & ultimately failed. The resolution was passed & will now go to full membership #ALACouncil

Most of the other votes were more admin-related (by-laws language clean-up, etc). I already mentioned on here the resolution that passed to amend the by-laws on Board Composition: www.ala.org/sites/defaul... #ALACouncil

That full resolution can be found here, albeit without the amendment suggested on the floor to specify the committee to look at ways to diversify the board such as but not limited to: www.ala.org/sites/defaul... #ALACouncil

If I remember correctly, the goal is for that Committee to report to Exec Board by October on recommendations. I could be mixing this up with another resolution but I'm pretty sure that was for this one. #ALACouncil

This committee will be specifically (but not only) looking at the possibility of allowing non-council members to run for Executive Board positions. It will be exploring how this might be done, what voting would look like, etc. #ALACouncil

Another resolution we passed (can't remember if unanimous or not sorry) was one to create an Ad-Hoc committee to explore ways to make the ALA Executive Board more diverse. #ALACouncil

The full text of the resolution can be found at the bottom of the Intellectual Freedom Committee report, which I believe is available publicly here: www.ala.org/sites/defaul... #ALACouncil

This interpretation basically says that Prisoners retain a right to read behind bars, regardless of status & that the only books that should be restricted are those required to be restricted by law, administrative decision, or court order. #ALACouncil

So! #ALACouncil meetings this past weekend. Sunday was a more productive day, and one of the first resolutions we passed unanimously was a resolution to adopt "Prisoner's Right to Read an Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights"

Hey thanks for asking! I was gonna talk about it today along with another resolution! I’ll use #ALACouncil as a tag & not do it in a reply so more people see it! I’ll work on those skeets right now though!

ALA Council II went on forever today and I’m too brain dead to talk about it tonight, but I’ll definitely try to talk about it tomorrow when it feels less like my brains are escaping out my ears. #ALACouncil