LISNews: Librarian News

In a suit filed by Attorney General John Ashcroft on behalf of the Department of Justice, a defender of those who seem to need her the most, attorney Lynne Stewart is once again in the news. She's on trial for allegedly "aiding terrorism by relaying Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's messages of war to his followers", according to the DOJ.

Today's New York Times has an article on Ms. Stewart, age 65, describing her (stereotypically!) as looking "much like the public school librarian she once was, wearing her gray hair in a proper bowl cut and dressed in a conservative black and brown dress and orthopedic lace-up shoes." She worked as a public school librarian in Harlem (NYC) in the 1960's.

Ms. Stewart insisted that she had always kept her distance from the sheik's politics. "I'm my own person, I have my own beliefs," she said. She said she had grown skeptical of religious fanaticism when she attended an evangelical Christian college. She insisted that she had never abetted or even endorsed the Islamic holy war preached by Mr. Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian cleric convicted of conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks.

"I'm not in the habit of fundamentalism," Ms. Stewart said.

Susan North is retiring after thirty years (wow) behind the desk of the Ames (IA) Public Library, to be, as she puts it a "nanny granny."

In this interview in the Ames Tribune , North tells how she began working in a library while still a student at Iowa State, when she thought she might pursue a career as "the first female president of the United States", a desire that faded quickly. Even in junior high and high school, North worked in her local (Waterloo) library. Speaking of her years at the library she said, "It has been great being a librarian. It's always like we've been dispensing sweetness and light. Now just recently it's been a little harder, what with some of the (controversial) film series and the advent of the Internet."

The Cadillac (MI) News is interviewing one resident a week, and this week it's reference librarian Lisa Marie Popp of the Cadillac-Wexford Public Library. She talks with the interviewer about the pros, the cons, the technology, and the stresses of her job.

She's mostly pretty darn happy, but is concerned for the future of librarianship.

Although former volunteer Dr. Jane Carver Holmes, who died of cancer last year at the age of 76, will be missed by the Lakeland (FL) Public Library, she will never be forgotten.

She bequeathed to the library (among other arts and health care organizations) a sum of $875,000, this after having served as a loyal volunteer--and donor--for over twenty years.

Portrait of a remarkable lady at The Ledger Note: slow to load, but be patient, it will.