LISNews: Librarian News

Preparatory to 1 December 2009 when new scrutiny will be paid by the Federal Trade Commission to new media outlets, it is necessary and proper to discuss where the promotional ads and other such material airing presently on LISTen originate. This relates to anti-payola measures that the federal government is taking. As the program is produced within the territory of the United States of America, Federal Trade Commission jurisdiction is certain.

As a matter of habit the first promotional item aired each week is a segment from Profile America. Profile America is an audio segment produced by the United States Department of Commerce through its Census Bureau. Profile America highlights facts from American history and is distributed without cost or payment to radio stations across the United States. Not only does Erie Looking Productions receive no compensation for airing Profile America as part of LISTen, the LISNews Netcast Network and LISHost additionally receive no compensation. Pieces from Profile America are aired as they highlight matters of national pride and national history from the United States of America where the primary air staff holds citizenship.

From time to time, a promotional piece from the Linux Outlaws is also aired. As with Profile America, nobody within any of the applicable chains of command receives compensation for airing that piece. The promotional piece by Dan Lynch and Fabian Scherschel, citizens of European Union member states, is aired by choice of the air staff to highlight a new media production that they think does good work that the audience of LISTen might also be interested in.

Other promotional materials from agencies and instrumentalities of the United States Government are also aired from time to time without compensation or cost. Such pieces are chosen typically based upon either current events or to highlight bad examples of public relations that should not be emulated by librarians. Many of these are presented as continuing examples so that librarians can have models from which to build their own public service announcements.

Questions or comments in regards to this can be directed to the Head of Business & Finance at Erie Looking Productions at erielookingproductions@gmail.com.

Preparatory Compliance Statement -- 7 November 2009 by Stephen Michael Kellat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at erielookingproductions.info.

From The Patriot Ledger:

About 200 library staff and trustees from across Massachusetts gathered outside the Statehouse in BostonTuesday, and they weren’t using their inside voices. Holding signs and chanting, “Don’t close the books on our libraries,” the librarians hoped their demonstration will help stave off further budget cuts to the state library system next year.

Last week, Gov. Deval Patrick cut $277 million from government offices under his control. Nearly $800,000 of that reduction came from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. The cuts were part of an effort to close a $600 million revenue shortfall during the first three months of the state’s fiscal year.

14 October 2009

The Ashtabula Star Beacon carried a report from the Associated Press today noting the number of jobs saved or created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in Ohio. That number was only thirteen thousand. More than that has been lost since the Recovery Act's passage into law as the state's unemployment rate climbed from 9.5% in the month of passage to a preliminary number of 10.8% for August. September's data will be released later this month.

A ton of money has been spent. It is uncertain what there is to show for it. In lieu of just criticizing something, alternatives should be presented.

Rather than spending federal dollars on preserving jobs directly, infrastructure development might have helped better. The concept of the "bedroom community" is growing where people commute long distances from their home to their workplace. Ashtabula and Lake counties in northeast Ohio are prime examples of that in providing bedroom communities to the Cleveland metro area. Previously when our western engineer lived in Ashtabula County he routinely did round-trips to work on Cleveland's west side in excess of one hundred miles per day. He was not alone in doing this.

Along the way between Ohio's geographically largest county and its closest urban metro there is already one AMTRAK route that runs in the wee hours of the night. I myself have ridden those rails to and from conferences in Detroit as well as returning home for Thanksgiving from undergraduate studies. There is no station any more in Ashtabula County and the next closest stations are in Cleveland and then over the state line in Pennsylvania on Peach Street in Erie. A mass transit infrastructure is there and with some small modifications could be linked into the Greater Cleveland Rapid Transit Authority's network which itself already links to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

Something better that funds could have been directed to that would have helped promote fuel conservation, greenhouse gas reduction, and more would have been to instead build up commuter service on the rail. Auto insurance costs alone from the hazards of winter driving in northeast Ohio would go down if those commuting from bedroom communities to Cleveland instead were on a train. The amount of fuel expended in commuting is greater in the winter as more parts of the vehicle have to operate compared to the summer months. The rock salt mix used on icy roads also causes enough corrosion on vehicles that the average life of an automobile before requiring replacement runs about three to five years. Between the hazards of driving in snow and the chance of deer strike, the potential for calamity would go down if a mass transit option for commuting were in play. Such would also create positions through creating rail stations and perhaps park & ride facilities to serve commuters. Conditions elsewhere along the rails could potentially also allow for such to be tried in other communities.

Why does this matter in the library setting? By and large, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 does nothing to directly help libraries. Libraries exist through the ability of patrons to be able to pay taxes for the upkeep of the libraries. In bedroom communities, the labor expended for wages does not happen locally but those wages are brought back to the community. Making it possible to have an economic base for a community to exist remains a prerequisite for a library to even be possible.

While scattered reports indicated that most of the jobs saved by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 were in K-12 education, there is more to life than the classroom. A tax base made up of mostly teachers is not a stable economic setting for trying to keep a library open. Since teacher pay comes out of taxes too, the question then becomes who was shaken down to get that money. Simple infrastructure upgrades, whether in improving mass transit or otherwise reducing a community's cost of living, might have the greater potential to lift economic baselines that make keeping library doors open possible.

All Aboard! by Stephen Michael Kellat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

NPR story from a librarian, Cheri Campbell, who works at the library in Lorain, OH:

I work as a reference librarian at a public library in Lorain, Ohio, located about 30 minutes due west from Cleveland. Last Thursday, my library held a "recession resources fair" to help people find out how they could perhaps better "survive" in the current economy.

If someone approached my table, I greeted them and explained what the library could offer -- books on all aspects of the career search and job hunting process, computer access. I gave them handouts on resume help and offered my business card. If they seemed interested in that assistance, I then walked that person to the state employment agency table and introduced them to the counselor at that table, where they would then be told about what that agency could do for them -- job training, classes on interview skills and resume writing, referrals to GED and English language classes and more computers for job searching.

It was a concentrated version of what librarians do every day -- tell people about what we have and where else they might go for more help. But this time, the additional sources of help weren't a phone call away, but were maybe waiting for them inside a public library meeting room. I will likely never find out if anyone in that room received information or assistance that will make any kind of real difference in their lives. All any of us there could do was to try and help.