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Macey Morales
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For Immediate Release
December 30, 2004     

ALA President presents "Creating an Advocacy Epidemic"
at Midwinter Meeting in Boston, January 14-19

Malcolm Gladwell to keynote

CHICAGO - With libraries in almost every state facing funding cuts, American Library Association (ALA) President Carol Brey-Casiano will launch a nationwide advocacy 'epidemic' for libraries January 16, at 3 p.m. during ALA's Midwinter Meeting.

Brey-Casiano welcomes keynote speaker Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author of  "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference," and a panel of speakers to discuss how to enhance the image of and increase support for libraries, librarians and library workers. The panel also will discuss how to bring increased attention to critical national issues such as literacy and equity of access; and how to expand the global reach of librarians.  Attendees will develop new strategies for raising awareness of the value of libraries in today's society.

Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" has become one of the most influential social explorations in recent times. The book is an examination of social epidemics and suggests that ideas can be contagious in the same way a virus is.  In his new book, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking," due out January 2005, Gladwell analyzes social intuition, or how we know what we know in social situations.  Gladwell also is a staff writer for the New Yorker and a former business and science reporter at the Washington Post.

Patricia Glass Schuman, past president of ALA and founder of ALA's Library Advocacy Now (LAN) initiative, will moderate the panel discussion following the keynote presentation.

She will be joined by:

Margaret Blood, founder and president of Strategies for Children, a Boston-area non-profit organization devoted to improving the well-being of children and families by moving their issues to the top of the agendas of communities, states and the nation.  Blood specializes in public policy, advocacy and constituency-building.

Nancy Talanian, director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, an organization that encourages communities to take an active role in guarding their civil liberties against the USA PATRIOT Act and other laws and policies that threaten them. The ALA Intellectual Freedom Round Table (IFRT) awarded the Committee the 2003 SIRS State and Regional Intellectual Freedom Achievement Award for helping to lead a national, grassroots movement in which nearly 400 communities and states have passed resolutions upholding civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

Sergio Troncoso, award-winning author and library advocate from New York, who has never forgotten his hometown library in El Paso, Texas.  Troncoso's work includes "The Last Tortilla and Other Stories," which won the Premio Aztlán and the Southwest Book Award, and "The Nature of Truth," a novel about righteousness and evil, Yale and the Holocaust.  Troncoso graduated from Harvard College, and studied international relations and philosophy at Yale University.

Little, Brown and Company is the sponsor of this event. For more information on this program and others in Boston, please visit www.ala.org/midwinter.