LISNews: Librarian News

“Everybody complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” - Mark Twain

The weather was an excellent metaphor for the librarian profession’s current status quo: the presence of smothering heat (budget cuts), the pros and cons of doing anything outside temperature controlled areas (movement and change versus consolidation and static), and everyone desperately wishing for a change in the climate (draw your own conclusions on that one). The only topic to be discussed more than the weather at the conference was that of change, at least at some of the sessions I attended and the circles I was socializing in. It was mentioned in the acceptance speech during the PLA awards in that “[the library profession] is a quickly changing field.” It was at this utterance that I stifled an eyeroll so strong that I was assured to be rendered blind if I allowed it to happen. But I digress.

[I had a blurb written about the topic of change, but upon review of some of the things I wrote, I decided to bump it to another post.] -- Read More

This past Friday, I had the privilege of attending the TEDxNJLibraries conference at the Princeton Public Library. The theme for the conference was “Culture and Community”, a pair of topics that was deftly addressed by the speakers chosen. As the afternoon progressed, I heard passionate speeches about people, places, and circumstances that moved the speakers. As the world shifts and the lines of connection grow thicker, in the days afterward, I found myself asking, “What does culture mean? What does community mean?” The amount of isolation that exists in the world is dimming as the means of communication grows faster, cheaper, and more prevalent. This is not to say that culture and community are disappearing, but the walls between different forms of them are becoming translucent and permeable. -- Read More

Well, they have alot in common, librarians and booksellers...and publishers, distributors, authors, publicists and other adjuncts in the book-selling industry are trying to attract more librarians to BEA. Makes sense to me.
Lauren Gilbert, information services manager, Cold Spring Harbor (NY) Library, writes in this week's Publishers Weekly, "If Rodney Dangerfield were a librarian at BEA, he might say: “we don't get any respect.” (Dangerfield, M.L.S., has excellent grammar.) Librarians are considered the dowdy, poor relations at the BEA publishing family reunions. We pay less to attend, and we don't spend much money there, and so our long-lost cousins in publishing are not always overjoyed to see us at the party. Last year at BEA, I was amused by the special “librarian-friendly” welcome mats in selected booths, which made me wonder what that implied about the others. But librarians are a big part of BEA—and we could be even bigger."

Here's how BEA is trying to entice librarians to attend the show..."BookExpo America (BEA) is Librarian Friendly and looking forward to having you join us this year. Here are just some of the things you will enjoy and benefit from this year at BEA." The show runs from May 25-27 at the Javits Center in NYC.

Live streaming from CIL, a conversation with the U.S. Archivist at around 9 am Tuesday.

Join the 10th Archivist of the United States for a conversation about libraries and the information ecology. Recently appointed by President Obama, our speaker has a depth of experience with academic libraries both at Duke University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he was most recently the Director of The New York Public Libraries. Hear his thoughts about information fluency, digitization and preservation, as well as the challenges and opportunities for libraries, archives and other information enterprises. Conversations with the Archivist of the United States, presented by: David Ferriero.

Don't forget to visit the exhibits folks. Info courtesy of David Lee King, thanks!