Category: ala

ALA is sponsoring a READ poster contest to highlight their new $99 make your own READ poster CD. I did this myself a while back. Here is me and the Alternative Press Index, my reading material of choice. Man my hair grew fast.

So in case you didn’t look at the links in the intro paragraph, let me spell it out for you: The ALA National Library Week posters look like iPod ads. A lot. Someone mentioned to me that maybe this is ALA’s way of “pushing the envelope on fair use” by inviting lawsuits. More copy on the ALA site reads “Bright colors and all-inclusive silhouettes invite everyone in your community to celebrate at your library…. This timeless design is not dated making it perfect for long-term use.” I think “all-inclusive” in this case means that with everyone silhouetted, you don’t need to worry about racial or perhaps even gender equity. Plus you don’t need to pay models. Smart! Now I don’t know about you, but I see a videocasette in that banner as well as headphones that are already out of style even where I live. Timeless, indeed.

I was sort of excited when I went to ALA and saw that ALA Presidential candidate Barb Stripling had a blog. I was a bit less excited to see it not really go anyplace. I appreciate the effort, but I’m not sure if a failed attempt beats a lovely ALA presidential candidate website with no blog. I’ll be endorsing Michael Gorman for ALA President though I do appreciate the work of both candidates.

Speaking of American Libraries, wouldn’t it be nice if American Libraries Online had a URL that wasn’t ghastly? I guess that wasn’t one of the URLs that got fixed. There is a shorter URL, but it’s not shown anywhere on the site, or in the “cite this page” entry for the AL Online site, which is where I would expect to find it.

ALA’s OITP is doing an email tutorial on accessibility basics for librarians. Free to ALA members. Does the page the announcement is on validate? Um, no. Is it accessible? Um, no. Is accessibility unattainable? No. Incidentally, librarian.net needs help as well, I’m not saying I’m occupying the moral high ground here. [technobib]