Idaho Librarian
Vol. 57, No. 2

An Interview with Carol Brey-Casiano,
ALA Immediate Past President

by Sandi Shropshire

I have some questions specifically related to being President of ALA. What was your involvement in ALA prior to then?

Well, you know I had a really interesting, varied ALA career, I guess you could say. I started out working primarily with the Public Library Association. I was a member of the PLA Awards Committee. I was involved in what used to be the small-and-medium-sized-libraries round table, and it's now become something else within PLA. I think that sort of whetted my appetite for doing more at the national level. I really enjoyed that opportunity of feeling involved nationally. And as I mentioned in my talk earlier today, the thing that really catapulted me to being involved in ALA governance was being elected Illinois Chapter Councilor. I represented ILA, the Illinois Library Association, in the early '90s on ALA Council, and during that time I was asked to serve on the Publishing Committee, I think, and also chaired the Policy Monitoring Committee, as I mentioned. And those were really interesting and very different jobs. And I started to think a lot about how interesting it was for me to be involved in ALA leadership, because I could see how leaders could really shape the future of ALA and make a difference for all of us as librarians and library stakeholders. So, I was involved with-- I think it was Barbara Ford's years and some of the things she did as ALA President. And then I ran for Council again, I ran for Councilor-at-Large. And I think I ran three times before I got elected. You know that one really requires name recognition, because everybody votes for those positions. I was elected when I was working in New Mexico, but I actually moved to Texas right after that, so I ended up representing more Texas, I guess; but at any rate, I think that's when I really started to see the possibility of being more involved on a higher level with ALA. I was on Mitch Freedman's Better Salaries Task Force, which was sort of his presidential advisory group. And then someone I had worked very closely with was chairing the Nominating Committee, and I got the call--I really had not ever advocated to be President of ALA--but I got the call and from them asking if I would run, and I couldn't say no. I thought it would be a great opportunity, and it has been. It's really been a delightful experience in many, many ways. It's been a lot of work, but it's been worth it.

It sounds like once the term of President is over, you've still got your fingers in it.

Right. You can be as involved as you want to be. In some ways, the fun part of being Past President is that you can really get involved in the things that interest you. You know, I still have some responsibilities that I have to do for ALA, but I have a lot more time to focus on the things that I'm really interested in, which are really the international issues and literacy issues, so that's what I'm spending my time on now.

What do you think of the movements inside of ALA to require MLSs of all public library directors?

Yeah, that's an interesting situation. You know, definitely the Master of Library Science, or whatever it's called in variant institutions, has been our standard for what is termed a librarian, but I certainly have worked with librarians who are acting as librarians who don't have that master's degree; and while I think the master's degree is very important, I think we should not discount those people who have been working in libraries and don't have that master's degree. You know, in fact, I will say that ALA has been trying to really promote involvement of support staff, people who are working in libraries, or anyone who doesn't have a master's degree but wants to be involved in ALA. We're trying to recognize that there are many different career paths and, in fact in most libraries, 70% of your staff is probably not degreed, or they have degrees in other areas, but not necessarily in library science, and I think we need to recognize the importance of those individuals and their contributions, as well. I think that it's probably good that ALA continues to uphold that standard of the master's in library science, because I think it's good to have standards. But I don't think that it necessarily means that someone is a bad librarian because they don't have that master's degree. I've certainly known some excellent librarians who have gotten their education and training in other ways. I think what the master's really provides is more of a theoretical background in a lot of cases, and I think it's valuable.

So, the idea of grandfathering in existing directors or something like that would be consistent with what you're saying.

Is that an issue in Idaho right now?

It is, in a lot of small rural libraries, as you might expect.

I don't know what the process is in Idaho. I know when I worked in New Mexico we had a process for certifying librarians. And you took some classes and took tests and were able to certify yourself up to a certain level if you didn't have a master's degree. I think that worked fairly well, because it did give librarians who didn't have the master's degree some additional training. It helped them to work toward a level that everybody sort of understood as being the standard we want to uphold in New Mexico. So maybe that's something that could be looked at in Idaho. There are certainly ways that you can establish standards for librarians, and it doesn't have to always involve the master's degree. We just want to be sure that our librarians have the training and education that they need.

You've talked about grassroots advocacy as being one of the basic elements of your presidency. What might you have done differently, looking back on it?

I wish the year had been longer. You just never get everything done that you would like to do, it seems; but we were able to accomplish a lot of what we wanted to. I think the regional institutes that we're now going to be holding--advocacy institutes to help train people around the country--are something that came out of a grant that was written by ALA staff which wasn't really part of our original planning. So I'm very thrilled that we're going to be able to carry the idea of these advocacy institutes and the grassroots advocacy beyond my year, because when we first started my year, we really didn't have a good plan for continuing the effort. But now we have an advocacy institute task force which I'm chairing, we have the money from the Ford Foundation, so there is an opportunity to continue the work we've been doing. Next, I think the other thing that is going to become important which we didn't really work on very much during my presidency was, how do we know if we've been successful? How do we know when we are a nation of advocates? How will we know that? As I said, ALA has been working on this for 12-13 years now--it's been going on for a while, since Pat Schuman's presidency (President, ALA, 1991)--that we've really focused on advocacy, and how do we know when we're there, or are we ever going to get to the point where we can say, "Yes, we've done it all"? I doubt it. I think we're always going to have a need for a certain level of advocacy. But I think being able to measure what we've accomplished so far and where we need to go is very important.

Do you think you got through to Gonzales?

That's a good question. I really thought we had that day. But my understanding is that following our discussion someone from his staff was to have gotten in touch with the Washington Office. And the last time I checked with Emily Sheketoff, who's our Washington Office Director, there had not been any follow-up. Now, that was a couple of months after our conversation. I don't know where we are now, I don't know if any discussions have come to be. I really would encourage the Attorney General's office to keep that dialogue going, because nobody should administer in a vacuum in my opinion. And we as librarians can be, I think, very helpful to the government, to the Attorney General's office, in understanding how the average citizen perceives the Patriot Act, how we as librarians perceive it as a potential threat to intellectual freedom and, essentially, to our democracy, if you really think about it. So, I don't know what kind of strides we'll continue to make, if any, with the Attorney General's office. I think we need to continue to work in that direction. I think we need to not give up, as I said earlier. Keep the pressure on and work at it from different angles, as well. We were talking earlier about working with the Idaho delegation, for example. Individual states have done a lot in this area, as well, working with their own individual members of Congress. 

Maybe the outcome of the court case will tell.

We are optimistic that that case has a very good possibility for accomplishing some things for us that we really need to see. We'll see what happens.

I wanted to ask you about the bond election in 2000 that was successful, to give hope for other public librarians. What worked and what didn't work?

Well, you know, I was not working for the library then. I came right after the bond election was passed. But I can tell you what they did. Again, it was a very grassroots approach. The library board and members of the friends partnered with it called it the quality-of-life bond issue. And there were issues on there for the libraries, parks, the zoo, and a history museum, and all of those boards and stakeholders got together and decided on one presentation that they would make to the community. They went out, they went to every group that you could imagine. They went to people's homes for little coffees. And they met with people all across the community. Quite frankly, the city had had some credibility issues; there'd been, in the past, some bond money that had not been used for what the public had thought it would be used for, and the city needed to reestablish its credibility and trust with the community; so these folks went out and said this is how the money will be used and we guarantee that this is what is going to happen, and it worked, because the bond issue was passed by an overwhelming majority. In the case of the library, in fact, I think the library issues got the most votes, with 77% Yes votes on that bond issue. And following that, then, the city established a bond overview advisory committee, and that committee's role, with representatives from all of those entities, is to make sure the bond money was spent the way they had told the voters it would be, so I think that's really important. I have run a couple of successful campaigns to increase tax rates both in Oklahoma and in Oak Park, Illinois. And in both cases it's again that grassroots effort. It's going door to door, it's talking to any one who will listen about what the tax measure or the ballot measure is going to do for the library and then making sure you follow up, and you do exactly what you said you were going to do, and I think that's how you build your credibility with voters.

Since you've been head of El Paso Public, what has been the most difficult situation you've faced?

That's a good question. I would say it's probably been budget issues. You know, quite frankly, like many of us, our budget is stretched very thin this year. As I mentioned, we are opening essentially three new facilities this year because our main library is doubling in size from 65,000 square feet to 110,000 square feet, so we're essentially doubling the public service area. We're adding two large branches, and so we're going to be very busy. And we happen to have a new regional branch that we just opened last fiscal year. But along with all of that, I am not receiving—I will receive some--funds for new staff, but not to the level I really need. So I actually have a task force of library staff who are studying this whole issue, figuring out, how can we make the best use of the staff that we already have? Will we have to reduce hours at some facilities? That is a possibility—we've already told the public that. Will we have to redo some of our programs and services? That's possible. We've already cut money for some of our programming that is being made up for by our friends groups—our wonderful friends groups are helping us to make up the shortfall there. We have reduced our security forces. We no longer have security guards at any of our branches. We only will have them at the main library. We're looking at an option of creating an operations staff. People that will do some general building maintenance, backup security, cleaning and maintenance of buildings. We haven't had those people, we've relied on the city for that in the past. So we're trying to move to more self-service, we're putting self-check machines in all of our libraries. We're going to a PC management system, some software that we haven't had in the past. So, like libraries all across the country, we're trying to stretch our dollars as far as we possibly can. We have a new City Manager in El Paso, and she is trying very hard to listen to our concerns at the same time as balancing the budget. She's assured us that she knows the library has a lot of support in the community and she will definitely do what she can for us, but there's a pie only so big, and we have to do the best with what we have. But, of course, our stakeholders continue to advocate for more funds, as well. We recently had a City Council election, and we have several advocates that were elected to council, so that is a good thing. I think we're going to be looking at a brighter period. I mean it's a good picture right now—because we have new libraries being built, the community's extremely excited about that. They're not so excited about the fact that their libraries may not be open as much as they'd like them to be. And that's something we're having to look at now and figure out how we can make the best use of the staff we have now and where we are going in the future. How are we going to continue to provide service if our funds are limited? Like everybody. Which is why we need grassroots advocates!

About your teaching. You're an adjunct professor at three library schools. What sort of subjects do you teach?

I teach primarily library administration, and in related issues I've taught. I'm not currently teaching, but I really love to teach. I started out, actually, teaching library administration at Dominican University. That was back when it was Rosary College in the early '90s. And then I taught some for a couple of programs where I am right now. At the University of Texas at Austin I've taught. For them I taught library history, which I love. I love teaching history. I come from a family of history buffs, so that was an appropriate thing for me to be teaching. And then it was a library history and a current library issues course that I taught. So I would start with early history and talk about how you can relate to that history today and the basic principles that librarianship is based on and all that kind of thing. And, let's see, I've also taught collection development and acquisitions. In Mexico I teach on just about any topic they ask me to teach about because there are so many needs down there. I've taught strategic planning, I've taught quality service. Most recently, a lot about advocacy and promotion. Now there's a growing interest in fund raising, so even though I don't consider myself the best fund-raiser in the world, I've certainly done a lot of it. So, I think I'm going to be working with them on some of that. And I'm hoping to do some work with this new library in Guadalajara, this new state public library that they're building down there. So that may be my next teaching gig.

Does that illuminate for you any of the reforms that might be needed in higher ed of librarians?

It has been very interesting for me. I really can relate to Michael Gorman's (President, ALA, 2005) very strong interest in some standards for library education.  Because teaching in different programs helps you to see how different schools do things. For example, at one institution where I taught I remember the students saying to me, "You know, you're the first teacher we've had in some time who's actually working in the field." I think that's a challenge for library educators today--is how you continue to keep abreast of what's happening in the field while you're teaching. That's something I've really seen at just about every institution where I've taught. That somehow as educators you need to keep your hand in, you need to know what's actually happening in the field because you're teaching people who are forming. I don't know about you, but when I got my master's in library science 25 years ago, those basic principles that I learned then about intellectual freedom, about access to information, that's still the basis of what I do as a librarian every day. That will never change, so we're forming librarians for the future, and it's a very critical time in the development of a librarian when they're getting their master's degree, and we want to be sure that we're providing the best education we can and that we have some idea of what kind of education people are getting, because that's important.

I remember when I was in library school the basic reference professor worked the reference desk at the library.

That's great. He had wonderful stories for you, I imagine.

I think I've finished my planned questions. My final question is something that occurred to me during the lunch session, and that is, where do you get your energy?

I'm not really sure. I think it's just because I'm so passionate about libraries and literacy. I will have to say that being in El Paso has really contributed to that. It's hard for me to explain it, but I live in a place where every day people cross that border with hope on their faces. They come wanting a better life, and that's what we all want. And the library can provide that. That's what's so exciting about being a librarian today. People come to our libraries because they may not have computers at home, they can't afford to have access to the Internet, so that they can get that at the library.

They can't buy every book they want ...

Exactly, they can get the books they want, the magazines they want to read. They can keep up to date at the library. And one of the things that I'm constantly talking about in El Paso--and I'm hoping that I'm making an impact--is how important the library is to the quality of life in a community and subsequently to economic development. Because when you think about it from two points of view, first of all the library contributes a lot to an individual's quality of life, and that can help that person gain skills to get a better job, to improve their standing in life.  And I hear stories like this all the time. Just the other day I was talking to our city information technology department--one of the managers--and he said that everything he learned he learned from the library. Then he said he went off in the service, and they taught him some other things. But when he wanted to learn about something, he would go and read about it in the library, he would go and look it up. Another advocate. I think also the other part of that is if you as a community are trying to draw new industry in, and people who are thinking about bringing in a new company or a new industry, they want to know, what kind of libraries do you have? What kind of schools are here? What are the universities like? before they bring these families in and put them there, so I really think that the library is just critical to the basis of democracy. We need to be able to know how to read. We need to be able to get access to the information we want. We need to be able to interpret that information, and it really does all start with the library. And sometimes, as we were saying in the session earlier, even as librarians it's easy to forget that sometimes. I get so wrapped up in city politics and what's going on with my budget, or I get involved with ALA politics and what's going on there. I try every day to stop and just remember the reason I'm really here is because I want people to be able to read, to have access to the information, and to have better lives. That's what I do. And that helps me be excited about getting up every morning and doing what I do. It never gets old, and I think that's good. I think I was lucky to stumble into this profession that I love.

Is there any thing you'd like to say to the librarians of Idaho?

Well, I have felt so welcomed here, and that has been a wonderful thing. And actually I've been talking to several people about possibly coming back and doing some more advocacy training, and I hope I have that opportunity. But if not, certainly I have really enjoyed this conference and felt very welcomed, so I just want to say thank you to the librarians of Idaho for all the good work you're doing here and for being so welcoming to me.

Thank you very much.