Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community (2022)
Tracie D. Hall (born 1968)[1] is an American librarian, author, curator, and advocate for the arts who served as the executive director of the
American Library Association from 2020 to 2023.[2][3] Hall is the first African American woman to lead the association since its founding in 1876.[4]
Early life and education
Hall was born and raised in the
Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.[5]
Prior to her appointment as ALA executive director, Hall served as the director of the
Joyce Foundation Culture Program.[8] She also served as Chicago's Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. In libraries, Hall was vice president of the
Queens Public Library and assistant dean of
Dominican University Graduate School of Library and Information Science. She was the director of the Office for Diversity for the American Library Association from 2003 to 2006.[9] Earlier in her career, she had worked at the
Seattle Public Library and
Hartford Public Library and run a homeless shelter in
Santa Monica.[10] In the private sector, she worked as community investment strategist at
Boeing’s Global Corporate Citizenship Division.[5]
On October 5, 2023, the American Library Association (ALA) announced Hall's resignation. Hall had been executive director since 2020, leading the Association through the COVID-19 pandemic.[3]
Tracie D. Hall has written about community transformation,[15] the digital divide,[16] community disinvestment,[17] the right to read for the incarcerated,[18] and eradicating information poverty.[19] She has written foundational work on the need for diversity in the library profession.[20]
Hall has been a frequent speaker at scholarly conferences. She gave the Bobinski Lecture at the
University of Buffalo in 2022: "The urgency of information equity."[21] In 2022 she was also keynote at the
Connecticut Library Association: "Information Redlining: The Role of Libraries in Disrupting the Growing Socioeconomic Divide."[22]
Hall presented the keynote lecture at the United Kingdom Library Association in 2020: "Information Redlining: The Urgency to Close the Socioeconomic Divide and the Role of Libraries as Lead Interveners." In 2009 Hall keynoted at the
International Federation of Library Associations in
Bologna, Italy: "The 10 Ways Visionary Librarianship Can Change the World."
Writing in Time magazine in 2023 Hall quoted Senator
Wendell Ford: "If information is the currency of democracy, then libraries are its banks."[23]
^Hall, Tracie D. (2021) Information Redlining: The Urgency to Close the Digital Access and Literacy Divide and the Role of Libraries as Lead Interveners, Journal of Library Administration, 61:4, 484–492
^Hall, Tracie D. "Revolutions Where We Stand: We must connect the fights against library and community disinvestment." American Libraries (March 2021).
^Hall, Tracie D. "Defending the Fifth Freedom: Protecting the right to read for incarcerated individuals." American Libraries(January 2021).
^Hall, Tracie D. "Necessary Trouble: Eradicating Information Poverty." American Libraries. September 2020.
^Davis, Denise and Tracie Hall D. Diversity Counts: Demographic Study of the Library Workforce in the United States. American Library Association, 2006; Hall, Tracie D. "Making the Starting Line-Up: Best Practices for Placing Diversity at the Center of Your Library" in Achieving Diversity: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians, eds,Barbara I. Dewey and Loretta Parham. Neal-Schuman, 2006; Hall, Tracie D. and Jenifer Grady. "Diversity, Recruitment, and Retention: Going from Lip Service to Foot Patrol." Public Libraries 45 (Jan/Feb 2006):39–46.