Daniel J. Montgomery Photo courtesy of Illinois Federation of Teachers

Among all the encouraging dispatches coming out of this year’s American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference, one of the most welcome was ALA’s announcement that Daniel J. Montgomery has been appointed as the association’s next Executive Director.

Dan Montgomery has served as president and COO of the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) since 2010, managing and executing policy and programs on behalf of 400 local affiliates and members. Previously, he served as head of the North Suburban Teachers Union, AFT Local 1274, for nearly 10 years and was a vice president on the IFT Executive Board from 2002 until his election to the IFT presidency. He is also a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), where he sits on the Executive Committee with AFT President Randi Weingarten. Montgomery holds a master’s degree in education from the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

He will start in the role on November 10, succeeding Interim Executive Director Leslie Burger. LJ sat down with Montgomery at the Pennsylvania Convention Center to talk about coming to the role from outside of libraryland, goals for ALA, and the potential need for an acronym cheat sheet.

LJ : You’re most likely a new name to most of our readers. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Dan Montgomery: I’m President and Chief Operating Officer of the Illinois Federation of Teachers. That’s a state federation of the AFT, with over 100,000 members throughout Illinois. Chicago is our largest affiliate, with about 30,000 educators and staff, and we’ve got some tiny ones that are locals of six people. I’ve been all over the globe with schools and teachers and teacher union development. Before that, for 17 years, I taught high school English in Skokie, Illinois.

I was born in Detroit and raised in the suburbs there, and we had a great public library at Bloomfield Township Public Library—we’d go every weekend. When our kids were little, we had a couple of great branches of the Chicago Public Library. When I taught in Skokie, the Skokie Public Library and the schools worked together closely.

When I decided I was going to end my term in office at the IFT, it just so happened that it coincided with the ALA search. They reached out to me and said, “You’ve run a large membership organization doing a lot of advocacy in an allied field of education. Have you thought about this job?” I hadn’t, but of course everybody knows what an important institution ALA is for our libraries and librarians, especially at this time in our country. This was a great next phase for me to continue to work to protect education and knowledge and these institutions that are really the bedrock of our democracy. That’s how I feel about education, and it’s how I feel about libraries.

Beyond those initial thoughts, what was it about the role that appealed to you?

I’ve known a lot of librarians in my life professionally, working with them and as friends. I love teaching. I feel so fortunate to have taught, to have been a union leader on behalf of teachers and educators, and now for the ALA on behalf of libraries and librarians. It’s just joy to work in advocacy.

And I think the time we’re in, with the threats, we see that in education and in libraries. I saw it even in Illinois in the last few years, where there were pitched battles over library trustee elections—just like in school boards, where police were having to be called to settle near fist fights and things like that. I think it’s all of a piece for me, the calling to protect these fundamental bedrocks of democracy. Plus, I love books and reading and libraries.

It sounds like there’s a lot of overlap, moving to ALA from education and unions. What are some areas that you feel like are going to be bigger shifts for you to focus on?

I think it’s learning the culture of the ALA. What I’m finding is a very articulated universe. There’s the ALA, but there are all these affiliates—state-level library associations and round tables and divisions and committees and subcommittees and working groups and task forces. There’s a heck of a lot of acronyms in the ALA world that I’m still struggling to learn—I need a scorecard.

One of the things that I’m hearing, from the executive board when I got hired and at this conference, is there’s a strong desire to bring a little more coherence to the ALA world. I’m looking forward to both learning that landscape and trying to figure out how we can make it more functional.

That’s definitely a solid goal. Are there other things that you want to tackle within the organization?

I’m struck by how hungry the membership is to have a new executive director. I’ve been joking that I’ve never felt so loved and wanted and welcomed in my life, which is really wonderful. I think there’s just been a thirst for someone at the helm, because it’s been interim for a long time. Leslie [Burger] is doing a great job. But I think sometimes in organizations, when you don’t have that person, some things get put on hold for too long, so it’s sort of about revving up the machine again. There’s great staff that I’ve already met and worked with, and to the board’s and council’s credit they’ve done a lot of thinking and strategic work already to tackle some of the real issues. I feel so privileged to come into this incredible organization going into its 150th year celebration.

Do you have any thoughts about how to help ALA celebrate its upcoming 150th anniversary?

It’s a great opportunity for ALA, for partnerships, for donors, for people in the American public sphere who realize the necessity of the freedom to read and freedom to access information, the necessity to fund our libraries, to really take that message out in a very celebratory way and capitalize on it. There’s some synergy on a bunch of fronts. That’s my hope, and that it’s also a yearlong celebration, and the conference next year in Chicago, my hometown, will be a tremendous success.

What are some of your main takeaways from the conference?

One of the things that I just find mind-boggling—I’ve been to lots of conventions, and this is the biggest show I’ve ever been at. It’s this massive enterprise, going off for the most part without a hitch, and so much of it is done by volunteers. That’s the thing that I’m just blown away by—the level of member volunteer engagement is just extraordinary. The ALA staff isn’t that huge. They do this so well with the number of staff they have, and how this whole thing works like a big machine is really impressive. I had a lot of time on the exhibitor floor today with some of the folks that run it, and that was a real eye-opener.

There are almost exactly 14,000 attendees, and one of the things that we’re excited about is that there are over 2,000 brand-new first-time ALA members attending. Obviously not all 14,000 are librarians or ALA members, but a very high percentage of the membership actually attends the annual conference, much higher than in other associations or unions I’m aware of, and that’s a real strength of the ALA. I think we can capitalize on that even more.

I’m going to need a lot of people’s help. I have a lot to learn. I’m sensitive to the fact that I’m not a librarian. And I said during the interview process at one point, “Don’t hire me if this is really not the right fit. Because no matter who you hire, I want you to get this right. It’s too important right now for you as an organization, and for our country.” So, I feel good that no one has said to me, “It’s a problem you’re not a librarian.” In fact, just the opposite. So many people say, “I’m glad you’re coming from the union world,” or from education. I think there was a thirst to have someone who was maybe a little bit of an outsider to come in and help, and hopefully I bring a fresh set of eyes and some new perspectives to the job.

We think of that too in the union world. A lot of our staff is coming out of the membership, but not all of it. I felt it was always good to bring in a mix. You want to bring some outside people so you don’t get too insular. People have different experiences. And some of the best people we’ve brought in have been from outside, because they bring a new set of ideas and approaches.