Southeastern Library Association

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The Southeastern Library Association (SELA) is a regional group that links state library associations in the Southeast. Its member states are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Members are librarians who belong to both their state association and SELA. Every two years SELA holds a Leadership Conference where officers, directors, state representatives, and other leaders meet to discuss how SELA is working and to plan the Biennial Conference.

SELA works to influence library law, secure funding, and support regional projects. Its accomplishments include creating library surveys, adopting school library standards, helping establish state library agencies, founding library schools, sponsoring workshops, and publishing SELn, a regional research journal that has earned national recognition.

The idea for a southern library association began in 1920 when librarians Tommie Dora Barker, Mary Utopia Rothrock, and Charlotte Templeton talked about a regional group on their way to a meeting of the American Library Association. The first regional meeting took place in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, in November 1920. The group was initially called the Southeastern Library Conference and focused on practical issues for librarians. In 1922 the association was officially founded, and its proposed constitution was published in Library Journal. By 1924 nine states had ratified the constitution, and the organization grew from there.

Over the decades, SELA expanded its work to improve school libraries, library education, and government funding. It established a headquarters, began publishing The Southeastern Librarian, and created awards such as the Rothrock Award. West Virginia joined in 1974, and the association added new sections and roundtables to meet changing library needs. After challenges in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, SELA adapted by embracing online publishing, expanding its website, and creating scholarships and new member programs to support libraries across the Southeast.