November 2014 581 C&RL News

Jazzy Wright is press officer of the ALA Washington 
Office, e-mail: jwright@alawash.org

W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n eJazzy Wright

Net neutrality advocacy continues
ALA and the Center for Democracy & Tech-
nology recently urged the Federal Commu-
nications Commission (FCC) to adopt strong, 
enforceable net neutrality rules essential to 
preserving freedom of speech, educational 
achievement, and economic growth online. 
In a letter to the FCC, the organizations call 
for the FCC to set the bar higher than the 
“commercially reasonable” standard the 
agency had proposed—whether using Title 
II for reclassification or Section 706 of the 
Communications Act, for a standard of In-
ternet reasonableness to preserve the open 
nature of the Internet. 

In October, John Windhausen, network 
neutrality counsel to ALA and president of 
Telepoly Consulting, represented libraries 
and higher education institutions as a panelist 
for an Open Internet roundtable discussion 
hosted by the FCC.

ALA launches educational 3-D printing 
policy campaign
In September, ALA announced the launch 
of “Progress in the Making,” a new educa-
tional campaign that will explore the public 
policy opportunities and challenges of 3-D 
printer adoption by libraries. The association 
released “Progress in the Making: An Intro-
duction to 3D Printing and Public Policy,” a 
tip sheet that provides an overview of 3-D 
printing, describes a number of ways librar-
ies are currently using 3-D printers, outlines 
the legal implications of providing the tech-
nology, and details ways that libraries can 
implement simple yet protective 3-D printing 
policies in their own libraries. 

Over the next coming months, ALA will 
release a white paper and a series of tip 
sheets that will help the library community 
better understand and adapt to the growth of 
3-D printers, specifically as the new technol-

ogy relates to intellectual property law and 
individual liberties.

OTIP leaders attend ICMA Conference
ALA staff attended the International City/
County Management Association Conference 
in Charlotte, held September 14–17. Larra 
Clark, OITP deputy director, shared findings 
and new tools from the Digital Inclusion 
Survey, with a particular focus on how lo-
cal communities can use the new interactive 
mapping tools to connect library assets to 
community demographics and concerns.

OITP director appointed to University 
of Maryland Advisory Board
The College of Information Studies at the 
University of Maryland has appointed Alan 
Inouye, director of ALA’s Office for Infor-
mation Technology Policy, to the inaugural 
Advisory Board for the university’s Master 
of Library Science degree program. The 
Advisory Board comprises of 17 leaders 
and students in the information professions 
who will guide the future development of 
the university’s MLS program. The board’s 
first task will be to engage in a strategic “re-
envisioning the MLS” discussion. 

6. For further discussion of this phenom-
enon, see Carla B. Tracy, “Fast-Forward: The 
Transformation of Excellence,” in Excellence in 
the Stacks: Strategies, Practices, and Reflections 
of Award-Winning Libraries, ed. Jacob Hill and 
Susan Swords Steffen (Oxford: Chandos Publish-
ing, 2013): 55–56.

7. Tracy, “On Mistakenly”; Tracy, “Fast-
Forward”; Steven Bahls, “When a President 
Needed to Recalibrate His Thinking,” In-
side Higher Ed, 11 September 2013, www. 
insidehighered.com/blogs/alma-mater/when-
president-needed-recalibrate-his-thinking (ac-
cessed October 8, 2014). 

(“The lives of books” cont. from page 562)