The Social Responsibilities Round Table works to make ALA more democratic and to establish progressive priorities not only for the Association, but also for the entire profession. Concern for human and economic rights was an important element in the founding of SRRT and remains an urgent concern today. SRRT believes that libraries and librarians must recognize and help solve social problems and inequities in order to carry out their mandate to work for the common good and bolster democracy.
Learn more about SRRT on the ALA website.
Hi COL members,
ALA and ACRL, along with the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries, filed comments with the National Center for Education Statistics opposing the planned elimination of the Academic Libraries survey. We mentioned this at the previous COL meeting.
Data is crucial to understanding libraries' impact, as well as the challenges they face. Federal data collections are some of the most useful sources of such information. ALA recently has advocated for improvements to federal data collection about school, academic, and public libraries.
As the name suggests, the Academic Libraries survey collects data about academic libraries. It is the only source of federal data about academic libraries, and has been collected in some form since the 1960s. The data is widely used by academic libraries. I particularly want to note the nearly 700 other comments in the docket on this proposal, most of which are from individual academic librarians opposing the elimination of the survey.