LISNews: Librarian News

Halifax County and Bedford, Nova Scotia basically cut out librarians all together from the junior high libraries. They wiped out about 200 positions total, including five circuit teacher-librarian positions and 35 library assistants. James B. Casey had some good thoughts and questions on this issue. He wrote:

School Librarians everywhere should take heed. And so should Public,
Academic and Special Librarians. If the Public Education Establishment
can marginalize, minimize and neutralize their own commitment to provide

Library Service in support of K-8 Education, who will pick up the tab?
Who will be unscathed? -- Read More

There is a new web site where people can order fonts based on the handwritings of serial killers. The person who runs the site says he got the fonts from libraries. See the article from conoe.ca
\"Mahaffy said the site, www.killerfonts.com, is glorifying murderers such as Charles Manson, cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, Gainesville Ripper Danny Rolling and Sirhan Sirhan.

\"This is morbid and an insult to victims worldwide,\" she said.

The site, based in Los Angeles, claims to have gleaned the signatures from libraries, court materials and public documents.\" -- Read More

AZ Central has an Almost comical Story on a huge donation of worthless books.

\"What would happen if someone donated 15,000 books to Gilbert\'s library and nearly all of them had the same title?

Librarians are finding out the hard way this week as they sort through a loading dock full of books that arrived as part of a Cracker Barrel restaurants promotion. \" -- Read More

Now Magazine in Toronto has a Story on how libraries are dying due to increased pressure from book stores and coffee shops.

\"As circulation figures slide at Toronto\'s 98 library branches, critics complain that they\'re stuffy, outmoded and insensitive to T.O.\'s multicultural makeup. And now, far-seeing supporters of publicly supported reading are calling for big changes. \" -- Read More