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The value issue
The library profession is focused on value more now than at anytime in its history. This increased attention has developed for several reasons:
- A conservative political climate means that elected leaders talk a lot about "making government" (including libraries) more "efficient" and "doing more with less."
- Scandals like those at Enron, the United Way and the Red Cross, drew attention to the scams that were possible in organizational operations. In response, the United States Congress passed laws like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (officially the Public Company Reform and Investor Act) of 2002 and the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 that force organizations to rethink and reorganize their financial standards and practices.
- A disgruntled citizenry, increasingly distrustful of their public agencies, have become concerned about how little they seem to receive back for all the taxes and user fees they pay to all levels of government.
- Lots of other issues - like the ceaseless Middle Eastern "oil wars" wages that seem not to keep up with inflation, low returns on savings, the high incidence of poverty amid growing riches, the low quality of the public schools, rising crime rates, limited returns on "solid" investment, high-poverty rates, seemingly endless rising crime and the loss of American manufacturing hegemony in items as variant as automobiles, textiles and Christmas decorations - make US voters grumpy about trusting the "experts" who claim special expertise in running government and private-sector agencies.
Stating library value is strategic
Recognizing these significant shifts and the country's grumpy mood, ALA has decided that "value" is the new name of the library communications game. The organization's official shift came in a new 2010 strategic plan issued in January 2006.
The strategic plan, entitled "ALA Ahead to 2010," proclaims that "ALA and its members are the leading advocates for libraries and the library profession." As a major theme in that advocacy, ALA states that the plan's strategic initiatives should be to:
- "Increase public awareness of the value and impact of librarie s of all types."
- "Increase support for research and evaluation to provide evidence regarding the value and impact of libraries."
- "Increase public awareness of the value and impact of librarians and library staff "...