putting the rarin back in librarian since 1999
Continue reading “Vermont Chapter Councilor Report – ALA LibLearnX 2023”
Here was the twitter thread of what I read last year. I’ll be posting on Mastodon this year instead.Find me there at https://glammr.us/@jessamyn. I read a lot of books this year but in many ways it wasn’t a great year for me (it’s improving) so I have mixed feelings about the sheer length of this list and am hoping to read LESS this year. I started to read 144 books and finished 142 but kept up with a few I maybe shouldn’t have. Here are stats for the books that I finished. Of note is that I’m lumping female and non-binary authors together only because I’m trying to read fewer books by men. I’m also retiring my “people of color/non-Western” category only because it relies too much on surface impressions/names. Continue reading “2022 reading list and commentary”
Not a big year for libraries though I did get to one new one in Fairlee.
Previous years: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and some reviews from 2003.
From our local librarian mailing list: Is it possible for library patrons to have free access to newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and those other big, famous ones? Or even little, non-famous ones?
I took this as a bit of a question about paywalls, though our State Library did chime in to say that there is some access available through Gale OneFile, specifically “the New York Times is available, while the Washington Post is not. USA Today looks to have a 3-day delay, and the Guardian has a 1-day delay.”
Paywall stuff is complicated! There are two basic answers to your question: an ethical one and a technical one. The answer to “Can I do this technical thing?” is quite often “Yes but you have to know how, and it might not be ethical.”
Continue reading “Ask A Librarian: Getting News to Our Patrons”
After submitting written testimony to the Working Group On the Status of Vermont Libraries, I was asked to come to the meeting to give oral testimony. I decided that instead of summarizing my written testimony, since there was only ten minutes, I’d do a bullet point style summary. This is that. I should note that while I do refer to the State Library, technically is is the Department of Libraries under the Agency of Administration. Below are my four points. Continue reading “Oral testimony for the Working Group On the Status of Vermont Libraries”