Emily Drabinski took over as president of the American Library Association in July with plans to tackle the pressing issues facing her profession, such as shoring up funding and fighting a record number of book ban attempts nationwide.
She said she wants to make sure that the LBGTQ community and Black people see themselves reflected in the books on their library shelves. And sh[Clioe’s planning to prepare libraries for the consequences of climate change, pointing to the severe flooding this summer in the Northeast.
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“I was excited to highlight and celebrate two aspects of my identity that are really important to me, and are often under a lot of scrutiny,” Drabinksi said in her first interview since taking office last month.
She said she wanted to show a sense of pride to peers who share those identities with her, some of who voted for her because of it, she said. “I didn’t anticipate these kinds of targeted attacks being used as a bludgeon against library workers across the country. I really think that is regrettable, and I wish that wasn’t happening right now.”
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Drabinski said that she doesn’t want the ALA to “get stuck talking exclusively on the terms that they have set for us rather than the terms that I think the rest of us operate on every day.
“My own personal political viewpoint is a target right now, but my personal agenda doesn’t drive the association,” she said. “It’s the agenda of all of us together.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
