ALA Releases National Policy Agenda for Libraries

ALA’s Policy Agenda for Libraries was released today as the 2015 ALA Annual Conference gets underway in San Francisco.
The full text document is available here. A four page executive summary is also available.
A foreword to the agenda written by Deborah Jacobs from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was also published.
Policy goals in the following areas are discussed in the report:

• Education And Learning
• Employment And Entrepreneurship
• Health and Wellness
• Government Information Services
• Funding
• Copyright and Licensing
• Digital Content Systems
• Broadband Access Adoption And Use
• Library Related Functions in the Federal Government
• Information Professionals

From ALA:

The agenda was developed in concert with major library organizations that serve on a Library Advisory Committee for the Policy Revolution! initiative and with input from a public comment period. Funding for this project is provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of a three-year grant that also supports efforts to deepen national stakeholder engagement and increase library advocacy capacity.
“Libraries cannot wait to be invited to ‘the table.’ We need proactive, strategic and aligned advocacy to support national policies that advance the public’s interest in the digital age and support libraries as essential community assets,” writes Deborah Jacobs, director of the Global Libraries Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in a foreword to the agenda.
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”National decision makers often don’t understand the roles or capabilities of modern libraries,” said Alan S. Inouye, director of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy and co-principal investigator of the Policy Revolution! initiative. “Thus, an underlying imperative of the agenda is communication about how modern libraries contribute to society. Progress on specific policy goals is significantly impeded if this broader understanding is lacking.”

More on the agenda later after reviewing it.
Resources
Executive Summary (4 pages; PDF)
Foreword by Deborah Jacobs from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (1 page; PDF)
Complete Agenda Document (18 pages; PDF)

Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Funding, Libraries, Public Libraries, Resources