Speech Introduction to Elizabeth Martinez

Greetings. My name is Sigriet Ferrer, and on behalf of the students, faculty, and staff of the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University, I am pleased to welcome you to our Fall 2008 Expanding Information Literacy for Minorities Conference.

Today, we are honored to have a speaker whose experience and achievements will best accentuate the theme of this conference. Our speaker Elizabeth "Betita" Martinez has dedicated her life to defending civil rights and information policy. She has been a social justice activist and organizer for over 50 years. She has published six books and countless articles on social justice movements in the Americas. She has also been an active advocate of Information Literacy and defender of easy accessibility of information to all minorities.

Elizabeth Martinez, as a minority who's both female and Mexican, understands the significance of easy access to information especially to the disadvantaged. Unfortunately, many impoverished communities where minorities reside face the problem of underfunded libraries with little technology and a lack of valuable resources. The primary goal of the public library is to provide access to information freely and easily accessible to everyone, especially those who need it the most because they are financially lacking. Ms. Martinez managed to successfully break through the financial borders that many poor communities faced by teaming with Bill Gates and providing funding to help increase technology access in libraries, open new public libraries, and provide scholarships for minority librarians. Ms. Martinez was profiled on the AMC "Cool Women" program for her proposal to Bill Gates that resulted in $200 million to connect over 4000 public libraries in poor communities to the Internet. Her ALA Goal 2000 program established the Office for Information Technology Policy, expanded the Washington Office, and created the $1.5 million Spectrum Initiative of 150 scholarships for librarians of color. She opened the new Los Angeles Public Library, and established the Foundation of the LAPL. She built nine community libraries for Orange County, and established the Asian Pacific Islander, Black, Chicano, and Native American resource centers for the County of Los Angeles. Elizabeth Martinez has attained several awards for her excellence and outstanding service and commitment in the Hispanic community. "Ms. Martinez received the Pen West Award, Hispanic Librarian of the Year, MANA Award and others, and was one of the 100 most influential Hispanics." (http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/martineze/martineze.php)

Before coming to SLIS in 1999 to work as a lecturer, she previously was the former Executive Director of the American Library Association (ALA), director of the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL), and the Orange County Public Library (OCPL) system. Ever since, Ms. Martinez continues to emphasize the significance of library services in underprivileged communities. She currently teaches LIBR 275: Library Services for Racially and Ethnically Diverse Communities and LIBR 281: Information Policy and Cultural Perspectives. Please join me today in welcoming the insights of our successful and renowned civil rights and information literacy advocate, Elizabeth Martinez.

Refererences:

Speak Out. (2008). Retrieved August 10, 2008, from http://www.speakoutnow.org/userdata_display.php?modin=50&uid=92

Elizabeth Martinez. (2008). Retrieved August 10, 2008, from http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/martineze/martineze.php