October 2008

From the New York Times an article about a forthcoming exhibition at the NYPL on the artists’ retreat, Yaddo.

In 1899 Katrina Trask, desolate over the death of their four children, proposed to her husband, Spencer, that they turn Yaddo, their 400-acre estate outside Saratoga Springs, N.Y., into an artists’ retreat. He was a baron of the Gilded Age. She was a pre-Raphaelite figure who wore gauzy white dresses and wrote poetry about the days of King Arthur, and she imagined the place as a perpetual house party of writers, artists and musicians.

There was writing, there was painting and composing, but it sounds like there more than a bit of sleeping around too. Among other choice tidbits from the article…”John Cheever used to boast that he had enjoyed sex on every flat surface in the mansion, not to mention the garden and the fields. It was at Yaddo that Newton Arvin, a literary critic and professor at Smith College, met and began a long affair with the young Truman Capote, or “Precious Spooky,” as he calls him in a couple of charming letters, on display at the library. The novelist Henry Roth met his wife, the composer Muriel Parker, there, and the novelist Josephine Herbst started enduring relationships with the painter Marion Greenwood and the poet Jean Garrigue (who was also having an affair with another Yaddo resident, Alfred Kazin).

The Library Student Bill of Rights:
From the perspective of a recent student and new professional, Char Booth submits the following as her impractical, idealistic template for a more practical, realistic library education. In full recognition that it is far easier to tear down than to build up, she leaves it up to the faculty and administrators of the library school world to do something about it.
1. The right to educate.
2. The right to evaluate.
3. The right to challenge.
4. The right to innovate.
5. The right to experience.
6. The right to explore.
7. The right to collaborate.
8. The right to redefine.
9. The right to develop.
10. The right to advocate.

On a librarian listserv there was the following post today. Wanted to put it on LISNEWS so people could comment:
(Because the post is slightly longer than LISNEWS allows on the front page make sure you click the “read more” link at bottom of post. You will know if you have the whole thing if you see the last line that says: What do YOU think of my idea? )
____________________________________
This is only my opinion and has been posted to many lists for feedback. (Sorry about any duplicate posts you may receive)

I can envision a future without libraries. Yes, without libraries…but with more librarians.

Why?
1. More and more resources are online. Even ones formerly available only in print are now also online. And many are available only online.
2. Users increasingly want resources only if they are online. They don’t want to have to go tot the library to answer their questions.
3. Is it fiscally responsible to require users to spend their valuable time to come to the library?
4. Is it fiscally responsible to allow users to spend their valuable time looking for information online when they a) do not know where to search, b) do not know how to search (effectively), and c) probably do not know how to determine if the information they find is correct or reliable?

So, I can see a future without physical libraries but with librarians embedded within the units of the organization. These librarians would be professionally trained (degreed) not only in librarianship, with an emphasis on customer service, but also in the subject matter of the users.

On a librarian listserv there was the following post today. Wanted to put it on LISNEWS so people could comment:
(Because the post is slightly longer than LISNEWS allows on the front page make sure you click the “read more” link at bottom of post. You will know if you have the whole thing if you see the last line that says: What do YOU think of my idea? )
____________________________________
This is only my opinion and has been posted to many lists for feedback. (Sorry about any duplicate posts you may receive)

I can envision a future without libraries. Yes, without libraries…but with more librarians.

Why?
1. More and more resources are online. Even ones formerly available only in print are now also online. And many are available only online.
2. Users increasingly want resources only if they are online. They don’t want to have to go tot the library to answer their questions.
3. Is it fiscally responsible to require users to spend their valuable time to come to the library?
4. Is it fiscally responsible to allow users to spend their valuable time looking for information online when they a) do not know where to search, b) do not know how to search (effectively), and c) probably do not know how to determine if the information they find is correct or reliable?

So, I can see a future without physical libraries but with librarians embedded within the units of the organization. These librarians would be professionally trained (degreed) not only in librarianship, with an emphasis on customer service, but also in the subject matter of the users.

This would be a reasonable scenario for corporate, medical, law, and non-profit organizational libraries. It could also work in school libraries with classroom collections and a librarian that visits each classroom on a frequent schedule (or as requested) to teach and answer questions and help with research projects. This system could even work with academic institutions, with the distribution of the main library (which often serves as a sort of archives where 98 percent of the books never leave the shelves) to departmental collections and librarians in each department.

I know that this is a radical departure from current practice. However, I am at a point in my career (almost retired) where I am free to look back and forward at the same time, leading to this type of thinking.

What do YOU think of my idea?

This USA Today Story has a neat sortable table of Books challenged 2003 – 2008.

Anne Marie Wlodarczyk of Lackawanna, N.Y., said she was outraged earlier this year when a local school board member asked that six books dealing with the occult be pulled from shelves at the local middle school.

“It’s important for children to read, and I will not let my child be hindered,” said Wlodarczyk, whose son is a high school freshman. “How do you expect a child to grow? I’m sorry, you can’t hide the outside world from them.”

“Harry Potter gave publishers (the idea) that, in some cases, there’s a better market for a book that’s put into teen spaces than adult spaces,” says Trevor Dayton, vice-president of kids and entertainment for Chapters/Indigo. He notes that recent years have seen marked growth in “crossover” titles with special-edition book jackets designed for an older audience, greater maturity in graphic design, and marketing campaigns that speak to readers in wider demographics.

Hundreds of thousands of book stolen by the Nazis are still in German libraries. A few librarians are acting like detectives, searching for the books and hoping to return them to the former owners or their families. However, many libraries have shown little interest in the troubling legacy tucked away on their shelves.
A number of organizations took part in the hunt for books. They included the intelligence service of the SS, the Gestapo and the staff of Alfred Rosenberg, the “Führer’s Commissioner for the Supervision of the Entire Intellectual and Ideological Training and Education of the Nazi Party.”

The talk show host who has done wonders for books sales through her book club – not to mention certain presidential candidates — is expected to give e-books a major boost today by endorsing the Amazon Kindle on her show, reports the Financial Times.

The Australian Federal Government is attempting to silence critics of its controversial plan to censor the internet, which experts say will break the internet while doing little to stop people from accessing illegal material such as child pornography.

Internet providers and the government’s own tests have found that presently available filters are not capable of adequately distinguishing between legal and illegal content and can degrade internet speeds by up to 86 per cent.

Documents obtained by Fairfax Media show the office of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, tried to bully ISP staff into suppressing their criticisms of the plan.

SafeLibraries Points Out The Albuquerque Police Department has a “Safe Libraries” initiative that may include McGruff the Crime Dog. It is “aimed at keeping pedophiles from stalking children at the city’s public libraries,” according to this media report: “City Touts Safe Libraries,” by KRQE News 13, 23 July 2008.

Instead of dropping “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from its reading list, the Manchester school system has decided to hold seminars for teachers on how to deal with issues of race before bringing the book back to classrooms.

The goal of the seminars is to put the book into perspective and create a dialogue on race, white privilege, satire and stereotyping, which were also issues when Twain published it in 1885.