I went to the library, briefly, when I was in Toronto for Superconference. I was mildly surprised that they didn’t have wireless, but I enjoyed messing about in the stacks. Now Joe Clark has started a blog for Fans of Toronto Public Library with insider tips on how to use the library as well as an estimate of just how much money he saves going to the library instead of purchasing books from Amazon. Admit it, you love the library.
Month: March 2009
My local library gets an award!
Librarians at my town library — Kimball Library in Randolph Vermont — win the Paul Howard award for Courage. I wish I could say I had anything to do with any of this, but I was away at ALA while all of this was going down. This award is good news. Just yesterday at town meeting the head of our our library trustees had to defend the decisions that the library made during that difficult time whch included the fact that the library received an apology from the police for their illegal request of the library’s public computers. Meanwhile, the library has to reduce hours due to decreased funding.
what it’s like to be an NPR librarian?
NPR’s blog As a Matter of Fact should help you figure that out, and learn some neat stuff besides. Though really, using the OED to answer a question about Twitter? [via]
SAA’s Equal Opportunity/Non-Discrimination Policy
Just a little “yay team” note, the Society for American Archivists has added language to their non-discrimination policy protecting people in “gender identity/expression,†“religion,†“sexual orientation,†and “veteran status†categories from discrimination. The policy is here with a strong support statement; some bloggish discussion here (and see the previous post linked form that one) and here. [via]
Libraries’ Surprising Special Collections
Smithsonian magazine wrote a neat article about libraries’ special and interesting collections. Alas, they forgot to include links to any of the cited libraries’ websites. Someone from MetaFilter, actually a librarian pal of mine who works at Harvard, picked up the torch and started a thread with many more excellent examples.