LISNews: Librarian News

A media specialist and several high school students are suing two school districts in Tennessee for unconstitutionally blocking access to online information about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) issues.

Librarian Karyn Stort-Brinks, students Keila Franks and Emily Logan, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee against the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and Knox County Schools. Franks and Logan attend Hume-Fogg High School in Nashville. Knox News reports.

SANTA CRUZ -- As library leaders consider shifting their young adult collection from a small Westside branch to downtown's flagship to help close a $1 million deficit, patrons are wondering if downtown is the safest place for kids and families to hang out.

"Last week I had to go downtown and my bike seat was stolen," said Laura Young-Hinck, 38, who spends Monday afternoons at the Westside's Garfield Park Library with her daughter Ruby, 3, and their Chihuahua, Amelia. At Garfield Park, "it feels a lot safer than the downtown library," Young-Hinck said.

On May 11, members of the city-county library system's Joint Powers Board will consider whether to move Garfield Park's extensive young adult collection to the Central Branch on Church Street as part of a larger effort to save $1 million in the system's $12 million budget. The genealogy collection, which is downtown and staffed by volunteers, would move to Garfield Park.

First-graders at Riverside (IA) Elementary are getting a little help in developing a love for reading.

The industrial manufacturing class at Highland High, along with sixth-graders at Highland Middle School, donated bookshelves and books they each made in class to the 37 first-graders. They presented the gifts at an assembly at the school Friday morning.

Each of the first-grade students received their own small bookshelf made by the high school students and a book written and published by the sixth-graders to take home. Great idea, story from the Iowa Press Citizen.

The Baltimore Sun reports that Enoch Pratt Free Library officials happily discovered the esteem one of their retirees held for the place.

At her death, Sara (Bunny) Siebert directed that more than $650,000 of her assets go to the library, a figure that exceeds the total of all the paychecks she took home in her 34 years as Pratt's director of young adult reading. She died at age 88 last year.

Siebert, an energetic and popular librarian who sought no attention as a donor during her life, left an estate of more than $2 million.

Having no survivors, she divided her assets among the Baltimore institutions she admired including the Pratt Library and her alma mater, Goucher College.