Sara Dallas is the director of the Southern Adirondack Library System (SALS), a public library consortium located in rural NY. She works with public library staff, volunteers and trustees in thirty-four public libraries to help them provide the highest quality of library services to their communities. As chair of the MVLS/SALS Joint Automation Project’s Policy Committee, Dallas helped develop a privacy policy to protect patron data that must be signed by anyone who accesses the records in the Integrated Library System. She also works with member library staff and trustees when they are approached by law enforcement requesting information about people who use the libraries and borrow materials. Dallas assists library staff and administration in understanding and adopting fundamental documents like the ALA Library Bill of Rights, Freedom to Read Statement, Freedom to View Statement, and the ALA Code of Ethics. She works with library staff and trustees to develop and approve enforceable policies regarding collection development, meeting rooms, library programing, social media, and internet use, among others. Dallas is involved with intellectual freedom issues on a local, statewide, and national levels. She serves as a member of the New York Library Association’s (NYLA) Intellectual Freedom Committee. She previously served as board member of the NYLA Intellectual Freedom Roundtable. Nationally, Dallas serves as a member of the ALA Executive Board and is a member of the ALA Intellectual Freedom Round Table and the Freedom to Read Foundation. She has served on numerous working groups that have developed or revised ALA policies on ethics and intellectual freedom, including the revision of “Meeting Rooms: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights” (approved Jan. 29, 2019) , “Copyright: An Interpretation of the Code of Ethics " and chair of the ALA Task Force to review the ALA Core Values. She has presented programs about meeting room and library use, writing enforceable policies, collection development and reconsideration policies and ethics at annual conferences hosted by ALA Public Library Association, and the New York Library Association. She serves as a consultant to libraries facing censorship issues. Dallas was elected to the on the Albany Public Library's board of trustees. She owes her career to being selected as a train the trainer with the PLA Planning for Results.
Dallas began her three year term as a member of the ALA Executive Board in July 2022.