hi – 16jul

Posted on by jessamyn

Hi. Just a pointer, the DNC blog is over here, but I do have a library related anecdote to tell about the DNC that is really about librarians. The DNC is in the Fleet Center. They tell us that the Fleet Center will have wireless. While I am sure they have the best wireless intentions, all good librarians have back-up plans. My plan was to find the nearest BPL branch which has free wireless for people with BPL library cards, of which I am one. I go to BPL.org, note their spiffy MassAnswers logo and decide to communicate my favorite [and cheapest] way, online.

Please note the text, once you click through, says “Once you submit a question at the right side of this screen, it will be picked up by a Massachusetts Librarian from one of the MassAnswers participating libraries. If all are busy, or if it is off-hours for Massachusetts, a librarian from one of our nationwide cooperating libraries will pick up.” I figured any librarian in the BPL system could answer my question quickly. My question was “Which is the nearest BPL branch to the Fleet Center?” My librarian was in Maryland. I wonder how often you actually get a librarian from Boston, or even Massachusetts? I had to make two connection attempts to stay connected. On my second connection, I was typing but the nice woman at 24/7ref couldn’t, for some reason, read what I wrote. We swapped a lot of messages that went like this

her: Here is the page which lists BPLs branches. If you click the link closest to Fleet Center you will see their contact information. Your best be is to contact them directly to ask about wireless access. Does that resolve your question?
me: No. I don’t know where the Fleet Center is. Can you help me?
her: It appears that you may have disconnected.
me: I’m right here!

etc etc. This took up 20 minutes of my lunch break and at the end, I still had no idea what the answer was. I called the BPL main reference line and the woman who picked up the phone said “Oh, that’s the West End Branch, do you need their number?” Total time, less than a minute, plus no disconnects. I generally try not to take up a librarian’s time when I’m capable of looking up the answer in an equivalent amount of time myself. However, this latest exercise has taught me a thing or two about knowing things versus knowing how to find them.

Posted in hi

a public/private partnership I can get behind

Posted on by jessamyn

Divine marketing opportunity. Collect donations for people not to buy your book, but to put your book in a public library. The indie press No Media Kings crowd would like you to do just that in their NO MEDIA KINGS, YES LIBRARY BLING drive. Don’t miss their how to make a book section.

I’m interested in strengthening the ties between indie culture and public libraries, because it’s a political alliance: we both fight corporate power. Just by being there we provide an alternative to our increasingly commodified culture and preserve the diversity of the public sphere. I think there’s a lot of really interesting things that can be done between these two communities, once we become aware of each other’s intersecting mutual interests.

Michael McGrorty – writer/librarian/advice columnist

Posted on by jessamyn

Does anyone read Michael McGrorty’s blog over at Library Dust and say “Man, that guy is almost too erudite to be a librarian”? I know I sometimes do. One of his latest gems is about Nancy Pearl, and what makes her so special, and by a related tangent, what we are all looking for in a special librarian.

I certainly expect you to know, and to say, and then to show. What that means is that I consider it necessary that the librarian have done a considerable amount of reading—close, critical reading at that, and that she keep reading as if her livelihood depended upon it. Because it does. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t hire anybody to work a reference desk who couldn’t be awakened from a dead sleep to give a book talk to a reading club.

USAPA in the field

Posted on by jessamyn

The Justice Department has just released a report [pdf] that gives over 30 examples of how the USA PATRIOT Act has been used so far to fight terrorism. The ACLU responds.

The report also sidesteps any mention of the Patriot Act’s use against innocent Americans whose records have been turned over to the FBI, and fails to mention the frequency of intrusive investigations that did not result in prosecutions.