July 2003

I know this is the wrong economy to be thinking about the luxury of quitting a job that’s making you miserable, but here’s a link to the top ten reasons to think about moving on. I mean, we all bitch about it from time-to-time, but what are those camel back-breaking straws for library workers?

“A database created by three genealogy groups will help thousands of Canadians get in touch with their heritage.”

“The Canadian Genealogy Centre, a branch of the Library and Archives of Canada, recently placed the names of all Canadians naturalized as citizens between 1915 and 1932 on its Web site. There are about 200,000 names there for this first phase of the project. Phase 2 will involved the years 1933 to 1951.”

“I estimate close to 600,000 in the final version,” says Alan Greenberg, vice-president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal. “The exact number is difficult to estimate prior to the work beginning.”

“This Montreal group teamed up with the Jewish Genealogical Society of Ottawa and the Canadian Genealogical Centre to create this resource, the data of which is about half made up of Jews from Europe.” (from IT Business)

The thread on Librarian Domains pointed to Rory’s On the “Wild Librarian” websites article from last year. If you missed it the first time it ran in The Juice, be sure to check it out.

“…our work on the web should show that because we are rebels
in the best sense and librarians in the best sense what the public thought
was an incongruity really isn’t an incongruity after all. Many librarians
are doing this admirably while having fun at the same time. I think we
could all use a reminder now and again.“

America Yawns at Foreign Fiction, in the NYTimes, looks at the trend that writers, publishers and cultural critics have long lamented the difficulty of interesting American readers in translated literature, and now some say the market for these books is smaller than it has been in generations.

“It is not an exaggeration to refer to this as a national crisis,” said Cliff Becker, literature director at the National Endowment for the Arts. “I am a citizen of the most powerful country the world has known, a country that asks me to be part of its decision-making process on a whole range of things. If I’m not able to experience other cultures, not even from a place that is as easy to reach as the printed page, that is outright dangerous.”

Jen Young notes a NYTimes Article on Wired.
They say Wired, a magazine that served as both Boswell and bomb thrower for the geekerati in the 1990’s, seems to have aged more quickly than most. The seminal publication, Wolf writes, was created in the midst of a digital revolution that its high priest, Louis Rossetto, liked to refer to as a ”Bengali typhoon.” By the time Rossetto and Wired’s co-founder, Jane Metcalfe, were thrown clear, everything had changed, but not in the ways that they once thought it would.

Here’s One From The Seattle Times on those piles of wasted paper and unclaimed printouts we find at the public-access computers. The Seattle Public Library system is subsidizing printing and copying costs to the tune of $60,000 a year. So, come fall, they will start charging patrons for printouts.

Library staffers don’t yet know how much they will charge, but they’ve recommended a 10-cent-per-page cost. Printing from the library catalog still would be free, and photocopies would remain 15 cents per page.

The NYTimes Reports On Alia Muhammad Baker, and her house full of books. . As the British forces stormed Basra in early April, she spirited the volumes out of the city’s Central Library, over a seven-foot wall, to the back room of a restaurant and then later into trucks to carry them to her home. Even friends and library employees have been enlisted as caretakers for troves of the books.

A. Nonny Mouse writes “The Denver Post Says The Boulder Public Library deserves cheers for drawing a line in the sand when it comes to snitching on patrons by telling the government what they’re reading.

In Colorado, the state Supreme Court has ruled that it’s none of law enforcement’s business what a person reads. The Supreme Court overturned a lower judge’s order that the Tattered Cover Book Store turn over a customer’s records to the North Metro Drug Task Force. The man was accused of making methamphetamine. (Tattered Cover’s founder, Joyce Meskis, struck a blow for freedom by standing on her principles and refusing to cave in.)”

jen tells us:“This could go next to my Shakespeare bobblehead that I got at ALA.

Kerouac bobblehead doll giveaway “

In the latest city budget, funding for the Haverhill, Massachusetts Public Library was slashed, resulting in staff reductions and the real possibility that the library will close its doors indefinitely starting August 15. The library website has a Funding campaign, and there’s a separate group that has put together a petition for re-evaluation of the budget.