You have probably already seen this article about a library in Illinois who had a challenge to the [admittedly weird] movie Happiness. The library ultimately decided to keep the movie in its collection but to ditch the ALA guildelines from their policy manual for being “too liberal.” I assume they were talking about the Library Bill of Rights though the ALA does have many guidelines about intellectual freedom for libraries. [libactivist]
Month: February 2005
save a tree, buy Harry Potter
Canadian version of Harry Potter saves 30,000 trees. How? By being printed on recycled paper. Learn more about Greenpeace’s campaign to encourage publishers to go the green route at their Save or Delete site. [ode]
basement discovery at Bethel Library
Hey it’s one of those great weird library basement discoveries, but it’s in the basement of my own local library! Not quite the Declaration of Independence, but a fascinating look into my town’s past.
The volumes are replete with priceless gems regarding Bethel in years past. There are not only comments and thoughts regarding Sylvester Parker’s sermons, but numerous mundane yet interesting vignettes containing such matters as Mary’s cooking, Sylvester’s need for a new coat, an incident when he was run over by a horse, his travels, a record of the daily weather, Mary’s purchase of poorly-fitting false teeth, and many daily events in the town.
hi – 13feb
Hi. I’ve seen two small libraries that were not in libraries lately. One was in Bryant Park Reading Room originally called the “Open Air Library”, outside of the main NYPL building. In bad weather it is enclosed in a plastic tent. It’s a book and newspaper collection that was intended originally during the Depression Era to be accessible to everyone. No money, no address, no problem. It existed in the 30’s and 40’s [and closed once the wartime job surge put a lot of people back to work] and is re-opening this year. The second was at my local video store. They have a few shelves of books that relate somehow to the movies that they carry like the entire Lemony Snicket series, or the Simpsons episode guide. All the books can be checked out with your movies, for free.
what’s with OPACs lately? an article by Andrew Pace
I have always enjoyed Andrew Pace’s writing and his Technically Speaking column in American Libraries. This month he talks a little bit about the awkward acronym that reflects the awkward systems that are OPACs.
I have not found a patron who is satisfied with any answer as to why a web search engine can return relevant results from four billion full-text websites faster than an OPAC can return a randomly sorted hitlist from one million surrogate records; nor should any patron be satisfied with even a bona fide answer to that question.