LISNews: Librarian News

Meet the fifteenth poet laureate of the United States, Charles Simic of New Hampshire. Here's a profile from the International Herald Tribune of the Yugoslav immigrant who started writing poetry to impress girls.

The post of poet laureate is chosen by the Librarian of Congress, James Billington.

Introducing the new director of the Brooklyn Public Library, Profile of Dionne Mack-Harvin, a long-time employee of the system.

She grew up in Harlem in a single-parent household best described as book-deprived, but was raised to know college was mandatory. She attended the SUNY College at Brockport and was the first in her family to graduate from college. After receiving a MLS degree from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy in Albany, she took a bottom-rung librarian's job at the Brooklyn library in 1996. She figured she would last a year. Instead, she stayed on through a decade of rapid promotions because, she says, when you work in a library, "at the end of the day you can go home knowing you've done something good." From the New York Times.

Chief librarian at the Cornwall (ON)Public Library , Kiddell's other passion is long distance running. She loves it, and is very good at it...the recipient of medals from marathons in New York, Ottawa, Big Sur, Hartford, Philadelphia and more.

Here's a profile and Q&A session with Kiddell, in which she is asked about librarian stereotypes (of course), but also about her favorite wine & cheese. Kiddell started running in an effort to lose weight after her second baby was born...now she's hooked.

Cheryl Barker Is A Librarian and a St Johns volunteer down in New Zeland. During one period Cheryl remembers volunteering 39 hours, working 40 at the library, studying for her library studies through the Open Polytechnic and studying for her certificated for St Johns.

"It was just crazy and quite stressful."

There were things about the service she would never get used to ? like seeing hurt children.

"It doesn't get any easier, you just learn how to better deal with it."