President Melissa shares two updates from February, the American Library Association (ALA)’s annual mid-winter meeting and the Interpreting Summit.


MELISSA: Hello, I'm Melissa. I have two important updates to share this month. First, the American Library Association (ALA) held an annual mid-winter meeting in Philadelphia. They had different forums -- one of which was about Deaf Culture, and it was ALA's first time having a forum on that topic. ALA invited librarians who were familiar or considered an expert in Deaf Culture, along with deaf community members -- including myself, on behalf of the NAD. We used the opportunity to share resources. I'll share two resources with you that I shared with ALA. First, I encouraged ALA to provide more signing stories for young children by people who sign or interpreters. The second resource I shared with ALA was to provide more books for deaf inmates across the U.S. We were able to share different ideas and discuss some in depth. I hope to see more from ALA and their work in the future. The second thing I wanted to share -- well first, remember in 2018 the delegates passed the priority that focused on restoring the deaf community's confidence in interpreters. In response to that priority, the Board decided to host an interpreting summit. The summit happened the first week of February, on Thursday and Friday. We invited different groups of people including deaf consumers, deaf and hearing interpreters, ASL teachers, teachers who teach interpreters, accreditation organizations that accredit ITP programs, interpreter agencies, representatives from states that have an interpreter licensure bill, and more! We had 55 participants that joined us while a few couldn't make it. We had eight different panels that focused on different topics with five different moderators who developed the questions in advance. We had a panel on deaf consumers to share their concerns, another panel was on interpreter organizations, another panel was on interpreter programs to share their challenges and successes, and so on. A lot of important information was shared to help us understand each other. After all the panels, on Friday afternoon we had a round table discussion on what to do next, what kind of transformation is needed, and more. I want to thank those who took the time to participate in this summit. The NAD Board will process all the information and develop a position statement on how to improve the interpreting profession and will include, in part, 1) the current status of the interpreting profession, 2) a model interpreter licensure bill for some states that want to implement licensure, and 3) determine the need to have an interpreter accreditation agency. That sums up my report for this month, thank you!