LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Gig Harbor, WA: When Marie Bassett received a phone call from the Pierce County Library System telling her she had won a free laptop computer, she first thought it was a hoax.

Bassett filled out a little piece of paper when she renewed her library card a while back, but she had forgotten about it.

The countywide library system held a raffle for two laptops during its annual card drive, and Gig Harbor’s Bassett won one of them.

“It was a funny story,” she said. “I went to have my library card renewed, and they had me fill out this little slip of paper. I said, ‘What do you want me to do with this?’ ”

Bassett said she regularly checks out items at the library with her husband, and she decided to get her own card updated. “I thought, ‘That’s dumb. I might want to go without him some time,’ ” she said. “It’s ironic, because I’m really a raffle nut, but I had totally forgotten I had filled out this slip.”

Winning the laptop turned out to be perfect timing for Bassett, who recently lost her job.

“It was a heartbreaker,” she said. “It was truly a dream job. I thought I was going to be there forever.”

Nonetheless, Bassett hopes to turn bad luck around. “Now I think I want to start my own bookkeeping business,” she said. “This laptop is so timely.”

On January 26th Law Librarian Blog launched a little poll on the financial situation law libraries are finding themselves in because of the dismal state of the US economy. I would like to thank the 220-plus participants from all types of law libraries. The results look grim for the current and next fiscal years.

A mad Dad reports his unhappiness with the Hoboken NJ Public Library due to his four-year old son being denied a library card. Here's the story from Hoboken 411.

Letter-writer Dave Dessel goes on to say: "My wife called several libraries in the area, including Millburn, Maplewood, Summit and Ridgewood, to find out what their policies are. Every librarian she spoke with was appalled by HPL’s policy. One went so far as to say that the story was heartbreaking, and the policy archaic, the kind of thing that was done away with forty years ago.

I wonder if the library administration has changed much since On the Waterfront?"

Richard Ostrander served as the Director of the Yakima Valley Regional Library for 24 years. He now returns to the library as a Yakima County appointed member of the library's board of trustees.

It's an interesting move, especially since YVRL went through an administrative shakedown earlier this year culminating with the firing of the director. It seeme there were questions about how she handled her authority and how the board of trustees approved anything she requested without any discussion. It was a sordid affair that played out on the pages of the local paper and in the court of public opinion.

Ostrander, who has an operating library in the YVRL system named after him, replaces a board member who served ten years, the maximum term length for a YVRL board member.

Possibly later today, one of three finalists, profiled and pictured in this Seattle PI article will be named Director of the Seattle Public Library.

A selection committee will recommend one of three finalists to the post as early as today. They are Susan Hildreth, the California state librarian; Jane Light, who heads the San Jose Public Library; and Rivkah Sass, director of the Omaha Public Library. The previous Seattle city librarian, Deborah Jacobs, left in July to take a job at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

If you hear/see the announcement, please let us know the results...THANKS Heidi, it's Susan Hildreth.

I take a look at the issue in the context of law library administration where cracking the glass ceiling was especially difficult because historically law school grads were usually male and library schools students were predominately female.

Ithaka has recently released the full findings from our 2006 surveys of the behavior and attitudes of faculty members and academic librarians. These complementary studies, co-sponsored by JSTOR and by Ithaka’s incubated entities Portico, Aluka, and NITLE, have been of interest to academic librarians and scholarly publishers alike in presentations over the past year, but now we are making the datasets and a detailed white paper available as well.

Listen, when your job is in trouble because you, as a library director, are accused of overbilling, financial kickbacks, and misuse of the library's credit card, chances are good you don't want to spend another $11,000 on a PR crisis management expert. Nevertheless, that's exactly what the embattled director of the Sacramento Public Library did.

She issued a no-bid contract, saying she didn't need library board approval to contract for work under $100,000. The contract file cited the "urgent nature of the communications issues."

The library already employs a full time public relations and marketing person.

More from the Bee.

Open to all librarians, please take our poll at The Law Library Blog. AmLaw's recent survey of firm law librarians included a question we thought would make an interesting survey open to all librarians. By "management decisions", we are referring to decisions that impact library operations and budgets made by executives and administrators who are not librarians.

Hoping to end the most discordant period in its history, the Yakima Valley Regional Library board announced they have fired Executive Director Monica Weyhe at her own request. The board approved the termination with a 4-1 vote.

While enjoying support from a majority of the board, recent questions about her authority and how she wielded the power of the office of Executive Director turned a normally passive board of trustees upside down.

Under policies, she is entitled to six month's of severance pay amounting to roughly US$57,800.