Tag: libraries

Library Journal’s Star Libraries – show me the data

Posted on by jessamyn

Library Journal has been making an effort to open up more, make more types of content available. I’ve been enjoying following Josh Hadro on Twitter. This was particularly useful when their Star Libraries report came out. Vermont has five libraries on the list [yay!] and I was trying to figure out how this compared to other states, by population and/or by sheer numbers. Josh went back and forth with me a few times pointing to other ways the data was displayed to see if any were helpful. What I was looking for was a list — similar to the Movers and Shakers list we were always agitating for — but I got close. The data is available, among other ways

It’s hard to tell how all these pages are related to each other — this page is the best start page I found — and each page lets you comment which is also a little on the confusing side. I asked about where to find everything on one page and I guess you can’t do it. Library Journal staffers are hampered by a CMS that doesn’t really allow them to make decent links between things and whether it’s software or “wetware” the link they offered in a comment wasn’t even one I could click. So, yay hooray for the winning libraries and a “let’s do better next time” nudge for decent information design for this report next year.

Topeka Library Board Restricts Access to Four Books

Posted on by jessamyn

Library Journal put up a quick article about the Topeka Library Board’s decision from yesterday to restrict access to four books with sexual themes. I was following most of the meeting, in realtime with photos by keeping an eye on David Lee King’s twitter feed (starting about here) as I was in my all day meeting. Here’s the brief story from the AP Wire. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this story.

One lawyer at the meeting told the newspaper he had already been approached by potential plaintiffs. “Because it would take these books off the shelves and place them out of reach of patrons browsing the shelves, the proposed policy is unconstitutional,” warned the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri in a letter to the board.

“well at least they’re reading” the role of the judgemental librarian in media portrayal of library use

Posted on by jessamyn

So hey, we’re in a recession! And one thing that the media seem to agree about is that people are flocking to their libraries more than ever. In fact, just like “man returns library book 75 years late!” the news stories about libraries getting busy when people are out of work aren’t even that blogworthy lately. But people still send them to me and I still read them. Often they have good factoids like “During the Great Depression, not a single library closed” which I found interesting. That line comes from this article in the Journal-Sentinal Online with the fairly typical headline Libraries’ many benefits rediscovered in hard economic times. Good, right?

I was enjoying reading about it until I hit these lines…

Library directors report circulation spikes for last month of about 10% when compared with December 2007. “Escapism,” was Waukesha library director Jane Ameel’s concise speculation on the re-emergence of libraries’ attraction. “I wish we were giving them David Copperfield, but so much of our business is in CDs and entertainment,” she said.

Do you see where I’m going with this? This library director seems disappointed that people are going to the library to feel better and interact with materials that they enjoy. I’m disappointed because when I read that sentence I feel that the library director values Copperfield-reading patrons more than she values music-listening patrons. I’m sure she talked to the reporter for 45 minutes and that’s just what he decided to pull out of the discussion. And yet, I think we should be careful with how we talk about what we do.

I’m not sure I’d go totally over to the other extreme and say that a patron plugging his laptop into an external power outlet at the library after hours was “rediscovering the value of their library,” but it definitely sends a more positive message about how we view our patrons than the earlier quotation.

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio’s Nobel lecture

Posted on by jessamyn

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was recently awarded the Nobel prize for literature. His lecture (video) which is rich reading for bibliophiles generally, has a special mention of libraries. [thanks Kári]

Culture, as I have said, belongs to us all, to all humankind. But in order for this to be true, everyone must be given equal access to culture. The book, however old-fashioned it may be, is the ideal tool. It is practical, easy to handle, economical. It does not require any particular technological prowess, and keeps well in any climate. Its only flaw—and this is where I would like to address publishers in particular—is that in a great number of countries it is still very difficult to gain access to books. In Mauritius the price of a novel or a collection of poetry is equivalent to a sizeable portion of the family budget. In Africa, Southeast Asia, Mexico, or the South Sea Islands, books remain an inaccessible luxury. And yet remedies to this situation do exist. Joint publication with the developing countries, the establishment of funds for lending libraries and bookmobiles, and, overall, greater attention to requests from and works in so-called minority languages—which are often clearly in the majority—would enable literature to continue to be this wonderful tool for self-knowledge, for the discovery of others, and for listening to the concert of humankind, in all the rich variety of its themes and modulations.

ALA’s Emily Sheketoff talks about library issues for the new administration

Posted on by jessamyn

Emily Sheketoff is one of my favorite ALA employees to listen to. She always comes across as intelligent, sane and someone who has a deep and broad grasp of library issues in this new millenium including library technology issues. Here is a thirty minute interview with her on C-Span that aired a few weeks ago in which she talks abotu what some of the upcoming challenges will be for both libraries and the incoming administration in the coming years. I suggest you watch the entire thing.