The American library association is a non-profitable organization based in the United States that promotes library and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world with more than 62,000 members.
The American library association was founded by Justin Winsor, Charles Ammi Cutter, Samuel S. Green, James L. Whitney, Melvil Dewey, Fred B. Perkins and Thomas W. Bicknell in 1876 Philadelphia and chartered in 1879 in Massachusetts. The head office of American library association is in Chicago.
American library association membership is open to any person or organization, though most of its members are libraries or librarians. Most people live and work in the United States, with international members comprising 3.5% of total membership.
The American library association is governed by an elected council and an executive board. Since 2002, Keith Michael Fiels has been the American library association executive director. Policies and programs are administered by various committees and round tables. One of the organization’s most visible tasks is overseen by the Office for Accreditation, which formally reviews and authorizes American and Canadian academic institutions that offer degree programs in library and information science. The American library association’s current prime minister is Molly Raphael.
The official purpose of the association is to promote library service and librarianship. Members may join one or more of eleven membership divisions that deal with specialized topics such as academic, school or public libraries, technical or reference services, and library administration. Members can also join any of seventeen round tables that are grouped around more specific interests and issues than the broader sets of American libraries association divisions.
The American library association id affiliated with regional, state and student chapters across the country. It organizes conferences, participates in the library standard development and publishes a number of books and periodicals. The American library association publishes the magazines American libraries and Booklist. Along with other organizations, it sponsors the annual Banned Books Week the last week of September.
The American library association positions on United States political issues that it believes are related to library and librarianship. For court cases that touch on issues about which the organization holds positions, the American library association often files amici curiae briefs, voluntarily offering information on some aspect of the case to assist the court in deciding a matter before it. The American library association has an office in Washington, D.C., that lobbies congress on issues relating to libraries, information and communication. It also provides material to libraries that may include information on how to apply for grants, how to comply with the law and how to oppose a law.
The primary documented expressions of the American library association intellectual freedom principles are the Freedom to Read Statement, and the Library Bill of Rights; the library bill of rights urges libraries to challenge the censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment. The American code of ethics also calls on librarians to “uphold the principal of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources”.
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