Happy New Year! There are so many great opportunities awaiting APALA in 2018, including many collaborations with other caucuses and ALA units. Last December, I had a meeting with the ALA ODLOS office, ALSC, and YALSA to discuss the possibility of the inclusion of APALA Youth Literature Award into the ALA Youth Media Award announcement at ALA Midwinter each year. The feedback was very positive and the APALA Literature Award (Youth Categories) will be included in the 2019 ALA Youth Media Award announcement. In addition, the APALA board has approved the proposal to collaborate with the YALSA Award Winning book database so that all of the APALA Youth Literature winning and honor titles will be listed in that database.
In February, APALA members are invited to attend the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA) Southern California Chapter’s spring program and a visit to the Bower Museum. It will be on Saturday, February 27, 2018. I encourage all to attend, especially those who are in southern California, to show our support and make our presence!
Continuing with the theme of collaboration, all the caucus presidents and vice presidents are invited to attend a meeting during ALA Midwinter with the Joint Council of Librarians of Color (JCLC Inc.) Board to discusses further collaboration and opportunities for the five caucuses to work closely together besides the Joint Conference.
The APALA board welcomes Paolo Gujilde, who is filling the vacancy of Vice President/President Elect after Brian Leaf’s resignation. Paolo Gujilde is the Associate Professor/Collections & Scholarly Communications Librarian at the National Louis University, in Chicago, IL. Paolo has been an active member of APALA and had served as Member-at-Large, Chair of Program Planning Committee, Mentoring Committee, Task Force on Archives and Handbook, and Local Arrangement Task Force. Paolo was an Emerging Leader and is active in ACRL and ALCTS. For the coming months, I will be assisting Paolo to transition into the Vice President position as quickly as possible. Please welcome Paolo and give him all the support!
Many of the committees are working hard this year to support our members. The Communication and Media Committee is working on bringing back Member Highlights and Updates so that we can look find out the current status of members who were featured several year ago and what they are doing now. In addition, the committee is working on a new design for APALA informational materials to promote APALA memberships and activities. The Membership Committee is seeking recruitment ideas; they will be working on sending snapshot of membership to all members and post a monthly list of new/renewing members via listserv. The Mentoring Committee matched up 10 mentors and 15 mentees. The Award Committee is looking into policy and guidelines to establish a Lifetime Achievement Award for APALA member. The Finance and Fundraising Committee is looking into ways that we can further support our programs and activities. The Literature Award Committee has finalized the selection of winner and honor titles for the five categories: Adult Fiction, Adult Non-Fiction, Children’s Literature, Youth Literature and Picture Books. The winners will be announced at ALA Midwinter, on the APALA website, and the APALA listserv. I am so proud and thankful that we have so many great committees and hard working board members to support all of our activities and programs. As APALA is solely run by members who volunteer time and effort, it is essential that we all take part and take ownership of the association and make it ours. I heard this story on the radio recently about why Japan is so clean. There is practical no trash on the streets. The reason is because each citizen is being told that this is your country and it belongs to you, treat it like your own home. One would not want garbage everywhere in the house, so one will not dare to leave trash around. That is why the country is amazing clean. The same thing applies to APALA–it belongs to all of us and we want to make it strong and viable, so we all should contribute and volunteer our time and talents to support it no matter how small a part that we can take part in. As Paolo will be making committee appointments soon, I want to encourage everyone to participate in at least one committee for next year!
Respectfully,
Dora Ho
APALA President 2017-2018