LISNews: Librarian News

Twelve videos about librarianship that spoof movies & TV from Singaporean librarian Aaron Tay.

This week's program starts off with a brief essay talking about the disintegration of having a coherent "popular culture" in the United States then turns to the strange case of the Harlem Shake in Oxford. After that the episode wraps up with a news miscellany.

Related links:

• Jim Geraghty: How Do We Win Arguments in a Fragmenting Culture?
• LISNews: Sad Harlem Shake Story
• The Huffington Post: Claypso Nash, Librarian, Fired For Harlem Shake Video Filmed At Oxford University
• The Independent: Oxford university students call for sacked librarian to be reinstated after Harlem Shake at St Hilda's College -- Students fined after recording of viral dance track appeared on YouTube
• The Daily Mail: Oxford University librarian is SACKED after students do the Harlem Shake in her prestigious library
• The Telegraph: Oxford University librarian sacked after students perform Harlem Shake dance and post recording on YouTube -- An Oxford University librarian has been sacked after a group of students recorded a version of the viral dance hit the Harlem Shake in her library and then posted it on YouTube.
• Public Libraries News (which discusses public library closures in the UK)
• Voices for the Library (library advocacy group in the UK)
• Bruce Schneier: The Internet is a surveillance state
• Michael Geist: Federal Librarians Muzzled Under New Code of Conduct
• The Annoyed Librarian: Creeping Canadian Totalitarianism
• The National Post: Digital divide persists in Canada, both in access and Internet fluency
• John C. Dvorak: Put Google Reader Into the Public Domain
• The Travelin' Librarian: 7 Ways Librarians Can Participate in Open Access/Source/Education Communities

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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/.

This is a unique reading list – these books were all written by librarians and most of them were recommended to us (AbeBooks.com) by librarians. If any profession is well qualified to write books then librarians truly fit the bill.

The best known works by librarians, excluding Chairman Mao's Little Red Book but including books by Strindberg, Borges, Ann Tyler etc.

Following the White House officially coming out and saying that mobile phone unlocking should be legal, the Librarian of Congress has issued what feels like a passive aggressive response, basically saying that their job is not to consider the public policy, but just to follow the specific rules under the DMCA.