LISNews: Librarian News

Salt Lake City Library employees say the latest chapter on staff turmoil is rich with irony: a clampdown on free speech inside the very institution that celebrates the principle.

A just-launched crackdown on any opinionated email — and on criticism of management expressed via social media — has some veteran librarians fearing for their jobs and a chorus of others crying censorship.

Even Friends of the Library members are openly questioning the library’s direction and its “chronic problems.”

The uproar started last week after the human resources manager unveiled new guidelines for all-staff email. It is only appropriate, Shelly Chapman wrote, to send pertinent, work-related information such as available shifts and job announcements. “It was also determined,” Chapman wrote, “that employees would not use all-staff email to voice opinions or express concerns.”

“Appropriate” all-staff email must be reviewed by two staffers before sending, the edict reads. And “any other” all-staff email must be approved by the employee’s manager.

That prompted veteran librarian Ranae Pierce — via an all-staff email — to point out the irony of the rule, given the library’s free-speech mission. Story from the Salt Lake City Tribune.

The Book Bench/The New Yorker takes a peek at the upcoming 2012 calendar of male librarians, Men of the Stacks.

Their mission statement:

We know what people think: Dewey, glasses, shushing, books, hairbuns, Party Girl and card catalogs. Yes, we know what people think. We know that the American, library profession is approximately 80% White and 72% female; and we know that tens of thousands of librarians are expected to reach age 65 in the next 5 years. We also know that this is not us.

There is an entire population of professional librarians out there who disagree with the way the library profession is perceived in contemporary media outlets and in the historical consciousness of the American mind. Different people and different associations will use different means to try to change those perceptions. This is ours.

Congrats guys, looking good...

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/10/men-of-the-stacks-library-calendar.html#...

From The Chicago Tribune:

The Read-To-Dogs program is one of the many unusual ways that libraries throughout Chicagoland are engaging citizens of all ages. Kids can read to dogs, send their stuffed animals on sleepovers or visit a magical forest, and parents can attend a toga party, taste gourmet chocolate or even meet up at a martini bar, all thanks to their local libraries.

It was obvious that the read-to-dogs program has caught the interest of 7-year-old Ella, who casually petted cockapoodle Jake with her right hand and held the book "Nobody's Dog" with her left while confidently breezing through sentences studded with multisyllabic words.

From The Atlantic. Four librarians and a few teachers tell readers about their major employment gripes:

Librarian #1

I'm a librarian in a public library that's part of a larger system. The most annoying thing about my job is the lack of support in the most public aspect of my work from managers and administration. Patron behavior expectations have been reduced, primarily because it is seen as a hassle to enforce rules of behavior. Even the rules of behavior we have, like wearing shirt and shoes in the building, are seen by the administration as too much trouble to enforce if no patron complains. Which means that if I see a situation, even if it's in direct opposition to posted policy, I can't be sure I won't be reprimanded, perhaps in public, by my own boss for enforcing the policy. Yet I've also been told I was letting some patrons (that I couldn't hear at the central desk) get too loud, so it's a sort of being stuck on a morton's fork.*
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