October 2008

LA Daily News reports:

When they needed a little pep talk, the kids and teachers at Lassen Elementary School in North Hills would come and see the librarian – the voice of experience trying to make everyone feel OK.

Not this time. This time Wanda Dueker was on the receiving end. The 15-year elementary-school librarian was welcomed back to school Monday with hugs and plenty of support after her Lake View Terrace mobile home was burned to the ground two weeks ago along with 38 other mobile homes in her park.

A Rexburg (ID) woman who spends her days helping doctors, nurses, and patients is also using her skills to help one of the most important people in her life…her son.

Teresa Murdock has been working at Madison Memorial Hospital’s medical librarian for the past fifteen years. Just three months ago, Murdock’s 19-year-old son Chance was diagnosed with an extremely rare type of terminal cancer. Story and video from Idaho CBS affiliate.

It was the third time in four years that the library has suffered during fall rains. “It seems like every year around this time,” said Kyle Hamada, conservation librarian at the University of Hawaii’s Hamilton Library.

About a year ago, Hamilton Library suffered about $500,000 worth of damage when thousands of books and rare documents were wrecked by heavy rain.

This time, says a report from the Honolulu Advertiser, the flooding was apparently caused by repair work debris that clogged drain pipes. The library continues to recover from damage caused in 2004 during flooding on Halloween.

Librarians have thrown their weight behind the campaign to keep age ranges off children’s books, saying they will ignore the classifications and describing them as potentially harmful to children’s enjoyment of reading.

“Anything that puts a barrier between a child and a book is a problem,” said Tricia Adams, chair of the youth libraries group at CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals). “The issue for me is that when a child takes [an age banded book] out of a library they are then badged by their peers, who’ll be saying ‘that’s for seven-year-olds, and you’re ten’.”

With news that British architect Norman Foster will “transform” the beloved Fifth Avenue Beaux Arts building of the New York Public Library, one can only be curious about the seven floors of stacks and basement–equivalent of 1.25 million cubic feet–that will be renovated. There are no renderings yet, but there are some clues about the stacks and basement from archival drawings and photographs, courtesy the NYPL.

As part of London Public Library Week, which ends Saturday, library users were invited to write about 250 words on the subject of how libraries helped them “discover their world.”

The contest — called My Life. My Library. My Story — was judged by London Public Library playwright-in-residence Dave Carley, marketing manager Christina Nurse, and Free Press managing editor Joe Ruscitti.

Here are the winning entries

Let’s set aside the economic sound and fury and focus on the writing rather than the noise. Since the late 1990s, when computers began to enable publishers to track book sales to the copy, the industry has been numbers-dominated, less about the aesthetics of the language than of the spreadsheet. This is problematic, say, if you’re a first novelist who gets a good-sized advance and a decent publicity push but only goes on to sell 1,000 copies of your book.

Playwright Alan Bennett has taken a sideswipe at the government and Oxford university over tuition fees as he bequeaths his literary archive to the Bodleian library in Oxford.

The sort of free state education that he had enjoyed was something today’s students could only dream of, he told the Guardian, criticising his old university for demanding higher fees, and telling it off for accepting money from Rupert Murdoch.

Facing Tough Times, Archive Prepares To Close: After 36 years as a standalone organization, the Philadelphia Jewish Archive Center will be shutting down sometime in early 2009 in response to a budget crunch. Its collections, which span nearly 200 years of Philadelphia Jewish history, will be absorbed into the archives of nearby Temple University.

Costume Advice: How to Dress Like a Librarian:
Wear a lanyard, and attach as much crap to it as possible: t pass, work badge, several keys…
Wear glasses similar to those that Angela used to rock on “Who’s the Boss?”
Wear book-themed jewelry
Wear sensible shoes