Librarians

The federal and provincial governments install lots of plaques; plaques about inventors, plaques about canoe routes, even historical plaques about historians. You’ve surely seen a plaque or a hundred in your day, but what you may not know is you can look up and locate many of Ontario’s plaques at ontarioplaques.com.

The website is one-man project by Alan Brown, a retired librarian from Toronto who says he’s had an interest in plaques since he was a kid. Brown started his website in 2004 with the goal of photographing and making a page for each of our province’s Ontario Heritage Trust plaques. In 2009, he started on the Federal government’s Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada plaques.

http://www.thereview.ca/retired-school-librarian-catalogues-ontario-s-historical-plaques?id=770

Article about librarian Will Johnson.

Will Johnson worked at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore for 17 years before coming to Cecil County eight months ago. He’s now manager of the Elkton Central Library. Johnson said he loves the area, especially how the pace of Cecil County compares to Baltimore.

How did you get your start? In 1996, I was working for Foot Locker in high school and went to Atlanta to work the Olympics. That experience changed my life. I met people with different nationalities and it opened my eyes. I came back and took a job as a security officer for the library. At that time, I realized the smartest people worked at the library. One day that week, I was watching Jeopardy, and the contestant was a librarian. I took that as a sign. I went to college and got my undergrad and decided I wanted to become a librarian. I worked three years doing clerical work while going to school.

http://www.cecildaily.com/news/local_news/article_68031536-675f-502d-b743-97b928e5ddf3.html

A hip-hop pioneer was stunned to learn that his 1984 song “Roxanne, Roxanne” was at the center of an explosive legal war between a pair of Long Island library staffers.

“Before, we had to worry about mediating hip-hop beefs in the streets,” Kangol Kid told The Post. “Now, we have to worry about them in libraries. That’s crazy.”

Riverhead Free Library director Joy Rankin allegedly told underlings to only hire black and Latino job applicants to right historical wrongs committed against them, according to a lawsuit.

http://nypost.com/2014/11/08/rapper-shocked-his-song-dragged-into-legal-battle-on-li/

From The Annoyed Librarian in LJ:

A librarian named Joe Murphy is suing two female librarians for $1.25 million for claiming he sexually harasses women at library conferences. As sex scandals go, that’s pretty mild, but the standards for scandal are lower in libraryland.

You can go give them a donation or sign a petition asking Murphy to drop the lawsuit if those are your kinds of thing.

I haven’t seen a corresponding Support Joe Murphy’s Lawsuit website or petition, but if there is one someone can post it in the comments.

He’s also suing them in Canadian court, even though as far as I can tell both he and one of the defendants are Americans. Canadian libel laws are more friendly to plaintiffs, it seems, whereas American libel laws tend to favor something librarians are supposed to favor, free speech. So he’s a cunning little fella, you have to give him that.

I’m seeing the story pop up in more and more places, so it looks like Murphy has a growing reputation among librarians.