LISNews: Librarian News

Abdirashid Dahir, a George Mason University senior, says he was arrested by campus police on an abduction charge after a bizarre exchange with a fellow student over a study room at a campus library. It started last Tuesday, when Dahir settled on a study room at GMU’s Fenwick library after a long search; apparently such spaces are in high demand. Dahir realized he’d forgotten his laptop charger and went off to collect it. He returned seven minutes later to find another student in his carrel. Here is what happened next. Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/george_mason_student_arrested_over_stud...

The Valentine's Day webcast featured three ARL libraries—Johns Hopkins, McMaster, and the University of Washington—that have engaged the Balanced Scorecard framework, created by Harvard business professors Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, in their strategy development through an ARL collaborative community based project. Ascendant Strategy Management, a consulting firm specializing in the application of the Balanced Scorecard framework in mission-driven non-profit organizations, will present the Balanced Scorecard theory with in-depth insights from organizations they have worked with in the not-for-profit sector. Ascendant is the consulting firm working with ARL to bring the effective implementation of strategy development with the Balanced Scorecard to libraries.

Workshop presenters include:

* Martha Kyrillidou, Association of Research Libraries
* Ted Jackson, Ascendant Strategy Management
* Winston Tabb and Liz Mengel, Johns Hopkins University
* Betsy Wilson and Steve Hiller, University of Washington
* Jeffrey Trzeciak and Vivian Lewis, McMaster University

The webcast is useful both for those interested in learning more about the Balanced Scorecard and for those who are interested in engaging with ARL and Ascendant in 2011 to develop their strategy using a well-established and proven perspective.

Watch it here.

Though she’s seen thousands of bumper stickers, Whitney Baker isn’t all that interested in what they have to say. She’s more interested in keeping them around for a long, long time.

She’s a conservator for the KU Libraries and took a five-month sabbatical to go around the country to look at bumper stickers, and she’s learned a lot about how to preserve them for others.

During her research, she found that the history of bumper stickers points back to Kansas. Many credit Forest Gill, a screen printer from Kansas City, Kan., with developing the idea. He founded Gill Studios Inc., which today operates out of Lenexa. Gill’s son-in-law, Mark Gilman, today is chairman of the board for the company.

He said Gill developed an adhesive paper sticker to replace cardboard signs tied to bumpers that were beginning to gain popularity at the end of the 1930s and early 1940s.

Though many have said the concept can be traced back to Gill, that’s not something the company has definitively established, Gilman said.

Check out the thumbnail gallery and Baker's video about the collection now housed at the Spenser Research Library at Kansas University.

"Stealth librarianship is a way of being...the principles of stealth librarianship apply to all branches of the profession, each in particular ways...the core is the same: to thrive and survive in a challenging environment, we must subtly and not-so-subtly insinuate ourselves into the lives of our patrons. We must concentrate on becoming part of their world, part of their landscape..." *

A timely and very thought-provoking list from John Dupuis via Confessions of a Science Librarian.

*Included with permission from the author.