October 4, 2019
The Academic Library Association of Ohio (ALAO)
will host its annual conference in Columbus on Oct. 18, but this year in particular is special to Ohio University because the Libraries’ own Katy Mathuews is the president of ALAO.
Mathuews is the head of collections, assessment and access and also the interim coordinating director for specialized collections at the OHIO Libraries where she oversees the circulation of the Libraries’ materials and collections analysis.
Additionally, when she is not working at the OHIO Libraries, she is overseeing executive board meetings and planning the annual ALAO conference as the president to benefit all libraries in the state of Ohio by working to promote the interests of academic libraries and librarians, she says.
Mathuews is in her second year of a three-year term as the ALAO president, where she has been planning the Oct. 18 conference for the past year. This year’s conference is themed “ Libraries Speak Up! Advocate. Collaborate. Educate ,” which will focus on advocacy in the profession. Attendees will hear from keynote speaker Char Booth the associate dean of the library at California State University San Marcos and a former OHIO librarian.
“There’s been some advocacy efforts in the profession where some folks are concerned that the vendors we buy our electronic resources from are charging some very exuberant prices and having some very restrictive access rules attached to their resources,” said Mathuews. “Booth has been an advocate for open access and information privilege.”
In addition to the day-long Friday conference, a pre-conference will be held on Thursday, Oct. 17 that will highlight diversity, equity and inclusion. Mathuews says in response to an incident of harassment that occurred earlier in the year at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting event, ALAO wants to offer real steps to show they do not support any form of harassment. In response to this, there will be a workshop on intergroup dialogue in the afternoon and a free active allyship training session, which will discuss the history of racism in libraries and provide skills to create diverse and inclusive environments, in the evening.
“We [also] want to acknowledge that equity, diversity and inclusion sometimes means that financial barriers exclude folks, so we are offering a free workshop,” said Mathuews.
At least eight OHIO Libraries staff will be attending the conference this year. However, Mathuews says ALAO benefits the OHIO Libraries through more ways than just the annual conference.
“It really creates a close network of library folks in the state … [and] with our focus on professional development, it helps us learn new things and bring it back to our own libraries,” she said. “It’s just sort of expanding our network of library expertise so that we can make libraries and library services [and] library collections as awesome as they can be for all Ohio students, not just capital letter OHIO students.”
Mathuews attended her first ALAO conference with practicum mentors from Wright State University in 2007 as a recent library school graduate and she says that ALAO has been one of the most valuable parts of her career.
“[At that conference] did I know 12 years down the road that I would be president? No, but … a theme that I think is important is that from being a student all the way to retirement ALAO supports its members to grow in the profession,” Mathuews said.