Issue: Library Consolidation in Indiana

Posted on by jessamyn

One of the constant threats that small libraries have to contest with is threat of closure. In Vermont where I live many small libraries just barely stay open because people in the town advocate for them and the decision ultimately rests with the town. If they want to pay for it, they get to keep it. In Indiana there is a movement afoot to consolidate the state’s libraries to, I believe, one per county. It’s at the initial stages, a plan by the governor, at this point. Small libraries are discussion the issue wiht their boards, and other libraries. The plan would cut the total number of libraries from 238 to 92 via consolidation. This would, apparently save property tax money and “streamline” government somewhat. We’re talking about a state that has advertisements on its government site search. The Indiana State Library website doens’t have any immediately available information on this topic that I could find through basic searching.

It’s pretty clear that this would mostly shift library costs to the patron (travel, re-learning systems, fees?) and staff (lost jobs, retraining, commuting) and away from the funding bodies. So, sure there is money to be saved but would a reorganization scheme actually work? I find the concept chilling but I haven’t really started reading about it yet. For people who are interested in this issue, I suggest the Save Our Small Public Libraries blog and the INpublb archives (view by thread to find consoludation discussions) [ttw]

the most unusual books of the world

Posted on by jessamyn

In wiki format: http://mywiki.ws/The_Most_Unusual_Books_of_the_World. update: there was a gross image on the top of that page for a while which is the way of wikis sometimes. Someone alerted me to it (and here via comments) and said I should remove my link. Instead, I went in and cleaned up the wiki which has better long-term and wide-reaching results. Sorry folks, especially if this was your first goatse (safe link, I swear it!).[slowreading]

metacommentary – librarians are awesome, and clever

Posted on by jessamyn

My web friend Mat Honan does a lot of neat stuff. He does triathalons, he writes for Wired, he goes traveling to interesting places. I follow him virtually via Vox and Flickr and other random places, not in a stalker-y way but just in a “hey this person is interesting” way. I think we have friends in common, but I don’t know him in person. So, when he started doing pay-per-post posts to his blog, I wasn’t sure if he was making a big joke or earnestly trying to make some money. His posts were definitely interesting and amusing, not taking themselves too seriously it seemed. However, I was and still am a little skeptical about this whole pay-for-placement thing. I keep an eagle eye out for it in libraryland, and I think many of us do. While I don’t think we’re perfect at this game by any stretch I like to think that you go to the library, and your librarian, to get objective information not filtered through shopping incentives, advertising and viral marketing.

I thought this was a worthwhile point to make, so I decided to pay Mat Honan to make it for me. Ten dollars well spent, I think. Don’t you?

a few remaindered links on a variety of topics

Posted on by jessamyn

I keep things unread in my newsreader when I want to refer to them later. Unfortuntely the “Mark as Unread” option in the menu of NetNewsWire is right next to “Mark All as Read” so I’d like to share these with you, before disaster strikes.

  • Andrea Mercado’s post Hacking Firefox: customizations for my library tells you all you need to know about why Firefox is such an excellent choice for a library browser. She discusses how to make the browser on their public access machines versatile yet secure. Very nice.
  • Laura Crossett taks about how to keep it real in small town American libraries. “We don’t beat Google by trying to best Google. We beat Google by being the thing–the things, really–that Google can never be.”
  • Fiona Bradley and Karen Schenider and Meredith Farkas all talk about ALAs obtuseness regarding “virtual participation” It’s a bit of a misnomer since people can, in some ways, participate virtually. However, they just can’t vote, attend Council meetings or do a lot of the other things that woud hve an impact. So they can participate virtually, sort of, just not significantly. I wish I didn’t have this icky feeling that this resistance to virtual participation was not just plain old technophobia on ALAs part but the actual desire to get more money into ALAs coffers via the Midwinter meeting. When that money is coming from librarians like Meredith and Laura and Karen and maybe even myself who would love to participate more, just at a somewhat lower cost, it rankles. I have really enjoyed my ALA vacation.
  • I explain the word “default” to my sudents often. To people new with computers, the ideas of the comptuers default settings is a little perplexing. Fred Stutzman highlights part of David Weinberger’s post about Facebook where he discusses how Facebook’s default privacy settings are all wrong. Completely and totally wrong. Don’t miss one of Fred’s earlier posts where he discusses how to turn the Facebook Beacon off to stop it from telling marketers more about you than you may be aware of.

talk: what do do when your change agent is broken

Posted on by jessamyn

I gave a talk yesterday at the NEASIS&T event in Providence Rhode Island. I was psyched to present with John Blyberg and Jill Stover (also at Designing Better Libraries) who have very different backgrounds but both gave great talks. I pulled the “after lunch” slot which is sort of what happens when I ask to not speak before 11 am but I thought it went really well. ASIS&T get togethers are generally a really good time because they are often filled with accomplished and interesting people. I’m not sure why this is, but it’s definitely something I’ve noticed. The topic for the day was From Guerilla Innovation to Institutional Transformation: Information Professionals as Change Agents which to me sounded a little silly, — I have change agent reflux disease — but everyone made really nifty stuff out of it and we had a good time despite being in a really weird room with iffy wireless.

Buoyed my my recent presentation in Michigan, I decided to write the talk I really wanted to give and talk a bit about how my activist background has informed my current work. Sometimes you have to say that something sucks [my suggestion is to go for “suboptimal”] and write a manifesto to get noticed, but that these are okay tacks to take if you’re really solving the problems and can do it without being a jerk yourself.

Anyhow, I did another Keynote presentation — I’m still in favor of a no-PowerPoint approach generally but I’m learning other methods for other occasions — and you can see my slides and links online here: Sleeper 2.0 – Agitprop problem solving. Thanks to Jill and John for giving such excellent talks and thanks also to ASIST&T for inviting me.