DCLA's 2025 ALA Presidential Candidates Forum
All are invited to participate in a free, virtual forum on Monday, March 3 at 5:00 PM Eastern to get to know the candidates standing for ALA president in the 2025 election. The forum will be facilitated by DCLA Board Members. DCLA members standing for election across ALA this year are also invited to participate. Please reach out to membership_director@dcla.org if you are interested in participating as an ALA candidate in the forum.
Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions during the live Q&A or submit questions in advance using this form:
https://bit.ly/dclaforumquestions
Questions can be submitted via the form until 4:00pm on Monday, March 3, 2025.
About the candidates
Lindsay Cronk, Dean of Libraries, Tulane University, New Orleans
Cronk currently serves as a member of Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures. She’s a member of the Core 5 Year Fundraising Team, and she served as president of Core in 2021-22. She was lead, Core Communications Working Group. She has also served on ALA Council, co-authoring ALA's Resolution to Condemn White Supremacy and Fascism as Antithetical to Library Work. Before that, she served on the Board of the Library Information Technology Association and edited its popular LITA Blog. She is the first woman to serve as Dean of Libraries at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.
She is Vice Chair of ARL's Advocacy and Public Policy Committee, 2024-2025. She also serves on the Board of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries, Clarivate North American Advisory, and the Serials Librarian. She is the co-creator and founder of PeMento: Peer Mentoring for MidCareer Library Workers. Her past keynotes have covered a variety of topics from leadership to team building to systems migrations while her research has focused on scholarly communication.
Cronk holds an MLIS from Valdosta State University in Georgia, an EdS from Georgia Southern University in Savannah, and a BA from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia.
Andrea Jamison, Assistant Professor of School Librarianship, Illinois State University
Jamison’s career spans school, public, and academic libraries. She is a current member of the Association for Library Service to Children, the Black Caucus of ALA, and the Intellectual Freedom Round Table. She is also a juror for the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Round Table, former CSK Breakfast Chair, and immediate past chair of the Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table.
She served as ALA Councilor at Large (2021-2019), and she was chair of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom Working Group for Diversity in Collection Development (2017). She is the Social Justice Chair for the Institute of Humane Education, a Community of Practice Group Leader for Diverse Book Finder, and library ambassador for Lee and Low Books. She authored “Decentering Whiteness in Libraries: A Framework for Inclusive Collection Management Practices,” which is part of the Beta Phi Mu scholars series. She was also the 2022-2023 Teaching Scholar-in-Residence in the area of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for Illinois State University.
Jamison has a PhD in Information Studies from Dominican University; an MLIS, also from Dominican; a Master of Teaching from Concordia University; and a BBA from Robert Morris College.
Maria McCauley, Director of Libraries, Cambridge Public Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts
McCauley, who was a Spectrum Scholar, is a current member of Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures; and Public Library Association and the Association of College and Research Libraries. She is also a current member of the Rainbow Round Table, Sustainability Round Table, Intellectual Freedom Round Table, and the International Relations Round Table. She is also a member of the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, Chinese American Librarians Association, Black Caucus of ALA, REFORMA: The National Association to Promote Library & Information, Services to Latinos and the Spanish-speaking, and the American Indian Library Association, and the Freedom to Read Foundation. She is also a member of the Massachusetts Library Association and the New England Library Association.
She has held several leadership positions, including At-Large Councilor, ALA Council, Executive Board member, and Fiscal and Audit Committee. She also was PLA president (2022-23) and a PLA board member.
McCauley holds a Doctor of Philosophy, Managerial Leadership in the Information Professions, Simmons University; an MLIS from University of Pittsburgh; a BA in Theater from Ohio Wesleyan University; Leadership Certificate Program, Northeastern University; Library Leadership for New Managers Program, Association of Research Libraries (ARL).