Thursday at Midwinter

I am the ALA Executive Board liaison to the Committee on Legislation (COL) and the Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP). They both had retreats today, so I bounced back and forth between both.

OITP discussed a variety of items. Time was spent on some of the offices' priorities including international copyright/WIPO, e-rate, net neutrality, and the OITP E-Book Task Force. Considerable time was spent on the Traditional Cultural Expression (TCE) document, which was described as an attempt to clarify the issues.

The other major component of the meeting was a guest speaker panel called "Libraries: Where SHOULD We Be Going? Libraries, Library/Information Schools, LIS Research, LIS Industry, and National Public Policy". Jorge Schement (Rutgers), Michael Porter (WebJunction and Library Renewal), and Roger Levien (OITP Fellow) each presented. Each added interesting ideas to the conversation, and all of their observations and insights dovetailed well. It was a rich conversation to set the tone for a productive Midwinter Meeting.

Michael Porter and Jorge Schement