CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Maurice “Mitch” Freedman, the president-elect of the American Library Association (ALA), will speak at the University of Illinois on Saturday (March 2).
His talk, on “The Changing Role of the Information Professional,” will be from 11 a.m. to noon in Room 126 of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science Building, 501 E. Daniel St., Champaign. The event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.
Freedman will assume the ALA presidency in July, and will serve a one-year term. As president, he will be chief elected officer for the oldest and largest library organization in the world. Celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, ALA has a membership of more than 61,000 librarians, library trustees and library supporters. Its mission is to promote the highest quality library and information services and public access to information.
According to Freedman, the three key positions of his campaign for the presidency were “to fight externally imposed filtering software; to work vigorously to support diversity in the organization, librarianship and the society; and to improve the salaries of librarians and library workers and achieve pay equity.”
The UI Graduate School of Library and Information Science is consistently ranked among the best library schools in the nation.
Freedman’s visit and talk are sponsored by the ALA Student Organization (http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/ala/) and by the Student Organization Resource Fee.
