LISNews: Librarian News

Hear ye, hear ye! The Los Altos Town Crier tells us that their town is looking for a new Library Director.

A change of leadership is in progress at the Los Altos libraries following Community Librarian Cheryl Houts’ departure for the Campbell library system Oct. 3. Children’s Program Librarian Jill Lakstigala is filling in until Houts’ successor is selected. Deputy County Librarian Melinda Cervantes said that recruitment is under way and she expects an appointment by the end of the month.

Dr. William Brace 79, professor of library and information science at Rosary College--now Dominican University in River Forest--died on Wednesday, Oct. 1, an apparent heart attack. He had taught Library and Information sciences for nearly four decades.

The first time Dr. William Brace met his future wife, she darn near killed him. As the story goes, the two were graduate students at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s, when one day they found themselves sitting next to each other in class.

"That was back in the day when you'd light up a cigarette right at your desk," recalled his wife of 51 years, Pam. "I was smoking Pall Malls, which he was deathly allergic to, and he began sneezing and coughing uncontrollably. Later he told people, 'She nearly asphyxiated me, but it at least got me to notice her.' "

That same sense of humor, former colleagues say, helped Dr. Brace connect with students over his long career. Obituary from the Chicago Tribune.

Here's the scoop from Library Thing...they have three potential jobs to fill.

* Hacker. We're looking for PHP hacker. JavaScript genius and library-data experience. We hope we get two of those.
* Graphic designer/user-experience guru. Experience designing for data-rich sites like LibraryThing a must.
* Brainy, overworked assistant. Smart, flexible, organized, relentless—willing to do both high-level (strategic analysis) and low-level (send-out-these-CueCats) work. The job is non-technical, but you need to be super-comfortable around computers.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to Abebooks, Amazon, Booksense or the independent bookseller of your choice. (Longfellow Books? Books Etc.?) You can split it between them. You don't need to buy books with it (but why do that?).

To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up with a resume and etc.—or they mention your name in their email ("So-and-so told me about LibraryThing"). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it on someone's blog, we hope you'll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary (birdie will take a small percentage, and thanks you in advance).

Contact Tim Spalding (tim@librarything.com) for more information, or to send a resume.

New York Times: A former Army Special Forces commander passed over for a job as a terrorism analyst at the Library of Congress because he was changing genders won a discrimination lawsuit. Judge James Robinson of Federal District Court ruled that the Library of Congress had engaged in sex discrimination against Diane Schroer of Alexandria, Va., formerly known as David Schroer. The library was initially enthusiastic about the hire, Judge Robinson said in his decision, adding, “The library revoked the offer when it learned that a man named David intended to become, legally, culturally and physically, a woman named Diane.”

Schroer's case was first reported here on LISNews in 2005.