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Molly Raphael: GSLIS Alum Runs For ALA President

By Katharine Dunn, Dean's Editorial Fellow


In the early 1970s, Molly Raphael ’69LS worked alongside a handful of hearing impaired library assistants in her job as a reference librarian at the D.C. Public Library. In doing so, she began to wonder about the services the American Library Association provided for deaf patrons. It turned out there were none. “I naively thought, well, I’ll just call a meeting of people who might be interested,” says Raphael, whose previous exposure to ALA was minimal; she’d attended one conference two years earlier. Raphael published a story about her concerns in a Public Library Association newsletter and organized a meeting to talk about the issue. To her surprise, 50 people showed up, and she soon found herself requesting that the ALA Executive Board appoint an ad-hoc committee to look at library services for deaf people. The committee eventually became a section of an ALA division, which she chaired in its first year.

It was a promising start with the nation’s largest library organization. Since then, while working her way up the ranks in public libraries, Raphael has served on more than a dozen ALA committees and several boards. This spring, she hopes to reach the culmination of her ALA career, by becoming ALA president. Her campaign is focused on advocacy, diversity, and intellectual freedom, issues she says she’s been passionate about her whole library career, 33 years of which she spent in the D.C. Public Library. Until she retired in May, Raphael spent six years as director of libraries in Multnomah County in Portland, Oregon.

After the ALA Midwinter conference in January, Raphael visited GSLIS, her alma mater, on an early stop in her election campaign, where she met with students, faculty, and staff to talk about her career, the ALA president’s job, her love of travel, and how students and new graduates can get involved with ALA.

After the ALA Midwinter conference in January, Raphael visited GSLIS, her alma mater, on an early stop in her election campaign, where she met with students, faculty, and staff to talk about her career, the ALA president’s job, her love of travel, and how students and new graduates can get involved with ALA.

You grew up in Pennsylvania and went to college in Ohio. Why did you choose Simmons?
I’m one of those people who backed into going to library school. I had a really good liberal arts degree from Oberlin College, and I thought people would
be dying to hire me. I got to Boston, and people wanted to know how fast I typed. This was 1967. Typing was pretty much what most women did then. Library school seemed like a good place because I thought I might like working in an art library.

In the meantime [waiting for Simmons to start], I sold nightgowns and pajamas at Jordan Marsh department store for four months. It was a high motivator for going to library school. Even though I was bored stiff, it made me think about how you serve the general public because people come in with all this different “baggage” that they have from whatever their day is or whatever happened to them that morning.

As you moved into administrative positions in your career, did you miss working with the public?
Yes and no. Public library work, particularly in urban environment, can be very hard. The people who come into the public library are a microcosm of society. If there are thieves out there, there are thieves in your library. Whatever is in the
community is in your library. Sometimes, I’d just think, “Oh, I don’t know if I can do this another day,” because I’d have several difficult interactions. But when I left public service and began to work in administration, I did miss that, although I always had jobs with a fair amount of interaction outside.

You talk in your platform about how as librarians we have to become better about telling our story. Is this a new issue, or is it perennial?
It’s a perennial issue I think, but we’ve been getting better at it. I think the story we need to be telling is the effectiveness story. Right now, the Association of College and Research Libraries has hired somebody to do a study on the value of academic libraries. They want an outcome that shows this is what they do to support the education of students and the mission of the university.

A lot of work that’s being done in public libraries, too, is because there is pressure from local governments around accountability: “We’re spending this money, but what are we getting for it?” We used to just be able to say, “What you’re getting is a wonderful public library.” But now there are studies that show, for instance, that children and kids exposed to language development and literacy activities from birth to two are much more likely to enter kindergarten ready to read. So we can go in and cite data that talks about why those programs are important. We’re getting better at putting that data forward, rather than just saying you should fund us because we’re good.

I think as bad as things are [economically], often when things are at their worst is when you have a real opportunity to make a change in how people think and look at something. We have that opportunity with libraries now. I work in the public sector, and for years we’ve heard, “We can’t cut police, we can’t cut fire, we can’t cut schools, and everything else is on the chopping block.” I believe we can move the conversation to put ourselves on the other side with police,
fire, and schools. So my description of that is “Libraries, essential for learning, essential for life.”

What is the ALA president’s job?
There’s a whole lot that’s scripted for you: events, big issues that you testify on and speak to the media about. Sometimes there’s a topic that consumes the world about libraries. When Ann Symons was president back in the late 90s, it was all about Internet filtering in libraries, and she spent her whole year pretty much doing interviews around that topic. But then there’s an opportunity for
ALA presidents to choose areas they want to focus on.

Why did you decide to run for president?
When I retired in May, I decided it was time to travel. You can’t do a lot of travel when you’re a library director. I wanted to go for six weeks or two months. And then I got a phone call asking me if I’d consider running for ALA president. I had a long conversation with my life partner, who said go for it if you want to, and I did. I wouldn’t be doing this now if I weren’t so committed to what ALA
has given to me professionally. I’ve been able to give back with service, but I truly believe that ALA gave my professional life rich and interesting and creative opportunities that I wouldn’t have otherwise had. And that’s why I’m sitting here.

Have you gotten to do the six-week trip wanted to do?
[My husband and I] did a four-week trip to Europe, which included a two-week cruise in the Baltic. Then we took an 11-week trip with our RV and went to British Columbia. We spent a month on Vancouver Island and about three weeks on the Olympic Peninsula. We just did a 25-day cruise that went 1,000 miles up the Amazon River. We’ve done three big trips since I retired, so I’m not feeling deprived.

Do you have advice for new and/or young librarians, in terms of getting involved with ALA and in general?
My first advice to new professionals is to seize every opportunity put in front of you. My experience in the library world is because I was willing to move and do something different. Sometimes I did it not because I really wanted to but because I was being asked to and it would help the library or the profession. I was asked to serve on the budget analysis committee at ALA, one of the most difficult appointments to get. It was an absolutely fascinating and, to me
now, fundamental experience as part of my qualifications for ALA president. Most people don’t really care, but the ALA president should know how ALA budget and finance works.

Also, volunteer for stuff. You have your regular job, but if they’re looking for a taskforce to do x, y, or z in your library, volunteer to do it. It gives you opportunities to see different things. It’s very easy in a career to get set in your ways.

And find a part of ALA where you think you’d like to get involved. You’d be amazed at how welcoming people are. If you know someone who is active in the association, get them to help you through that process. And don’t be disappointed if you don’t get appointed the first time you fill out a committee volunteer form. You have to be a little persistent. Don’t be afraid to write to the
president-elect of an association and say, “I’m a new professional and I want to get involved in ALA, here’s what my interests are.” You sort of have to help us find you, I guess is what it is.

Polls for the ALA election open March 16 and close April 23. Visit http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/governance/alaelection/index.cfm for more information, and http://mollyraphael.org/ for more on Raphael’s platform and experience.