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AILA Goals and Activities

The following list presents the AILA goals and activities in unranked order.
    AILA:

    1. promotes the establishment, maintenance, and upgrading of Indian libraries on or near reservations and in other rural and urban areas;

    2. develops criteria and standards for Indian libraries, and works for their adoption by other associations and accrediting agencies;

    3. provides technical assistance to Indian tribes on the establishment and maintenance of archival services;

    4. builds support for the development of Indian information networks, facilitating the exchange of information among Indian tribes, and also among these groups and major institutions maintaining Indian archives;

    5. educates legislators, public officials, and the general public about the library/information needs of Indians communities;

    6. brings together those interested in Indian libraries and cultures at ALA conferences and other library and educational conferences;

    7. helps members of individual Indian communities to gain access to and use existing libraries to their best advantage;

    8. works to enhance the capability of libraries to assist tribes and individual Indian authors in writing tribal histories and other Indian-related works;

    9. encourages and helps to coordinate and plan the development of courses, workshops, institutes, and internships on Indian library services;

    10. develops grant proposals and conducts fund-raising activities to support these and other Indian library projects;

    11. helps develop awareness in the majority society that Indian people desire library information resources to help unlock their potential.
Excerpted from "Retaining Cultural Identity in a Transformed Future: The American Indian Library Association Response to ALA Goal 2000" by Loriene Roy. In Equal Voices Many Choices: Ethnic Library Organizations Respond to ALA's Goal 2000. American Library Association , 1997, pp. 23-24.