LISNews: Librarian News

The new year is bringing a new librarian to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library according to the Yale Daily News.

Edwin C. Schroeder will serve a five-year term as Librarian of the Beinecke and Associate University Librarian, which began Jan. 1. Schroeder has filled a number of positions of increasing responsibility in Sterling Memorial Library and Beinecke library since arriving at Yale in 1989. He began as a catalogue librarian in Sterling, and most recently has been head of technical services for Beinecke library since 2004.

University President Richard Levin notified the Yale community of the appointment a Dec. 20 email, just five weeks after the death of University Librarian and former head of Beinecke library Frank Turner GRD '71.

“E.C. looks forward to building on Frank Turner’s accomplishments,” Levin said in the e-mail. “We look forward to sustaining the unique excellence of the Beinecke.”

Levin added that Schroeder, who was the chair of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, brings an “impressive breadth of rare book and managerial experience” to his new post.

Death by Irony: How Librarians Killed the Academic Library

The academic library has died. Despite early diagnosis, audacious denial in the face of its increasingly severe symptoms led to its deterioration and demise. The academic library died alone, largely neglected and forgotten by a world that once revered it as the heart of the university. On its deathbed, it could be heard mumbling curses against Google and something about a bygone library guru named Ranganathan.

Streaming radio from Public Radio in Sitka, Alaska:

In the three years since Sheldon Jackson College, founded originally as a Tribal College has closed, there’s been much attention directed on the efforts of the trustees to settle the school’s debts while leaving something behind for some future institution. That legacy will not include a library. Earlier this year SJ’s trustees announced that a transaction was underway to sell the Stratton Library to the state for just over $2-million. The building will join the Sheldon Jackson Museum next door and become part of the state museum system. But only the building is going to the state. The future of the collections inside is a longer story.

Local librarians have been working hard to redistribute the most valuable items in the Stratton collection. Earlier this month (December 2010) the public had the unusual opportunity to buy books right off the shelf.

“I don’t want to disrespect the collection, because it’s a phenomenal collection. But it’s a collection without a home.”

OU students throw huge party in the school's library, until the police show up

NORMAN - Students at the University of Oklahoma may not be studiously tending to their finals this week.

Police were called to a large student party inside the Bizzell library on the OU campus in Norman late Wednesday night.

Someone at the party sent 2NEWS cell phone video of the rave. The video showed thousands of students partying throughout the library.