April 2015

A New Adventure for a Librarian

Laurie Chipps quit her library job and abandoned her apartment and her many friends to explore new avenues….on a bike.

But Chipps, 36, said she still wasn’t happy — a state that led to her decision to ride a bicycle 4,229 miles across the United States. Chipps’ trip — which will take her from Yorktown, Virginia, through 10 states before ending in Astoria, Oregon, — begins today.

“I’m kind of ready to trade all the concrete for more forests and streams,” Chipps said. “I’ll try to put it simply: I had everything in my life, but a couple of years ago, I felt unhappy and not content with what I had.”

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20150428/ukrainian-village/unhappy-librarian-quits-take-4229-mile-bike-ride-search-of-new-life

Baltimore Libraries Staying Open To Provide Community Support

Baltimore schools are closed in light of the riots over Freddie Gray’s death, but not all public buildings are following suit. The city’s public libraries, even those in the middle of the protests, will remain open to provide a place of “comfort and community” to Baltimore residents.

“It’s at times like this that the community needs us,” Roswell Encina , Director of Communications of Enoch Pratt Free Library, told MTV News. “That’s what the library has always been there for, from crises like this to a recession to the aftermath of severe weather. The library has been there. It happened in Ferguson; it’s happening here.”

The city is in a state of emergency since violent protests broke out Monday night, hours after Gray’s funeral. In the epicenter of the riots is the Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Avenue library — a branch that, according to MTV News reports, has already received praise for staying open.

Story from PBS Newshour http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/amidst-protests-baltimore-libraries-stay-open-provide-community-support/

When Google is Your Librarian & Starbucks Your Wifi, Do We Need Libraries?

Book Review of the title Biblio Tech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google (nice title!!) http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/04/23/when-google-is-your-librarian-and-starbucks-your-wifi-do-we-still-need-public-libraries/

In his new book, author John Palfrey, former head of Harvard Law School Libraries writes about the necessity of maintaining public libraries as one of the essentials of society.

Libraries are repositories of books, music and documents, but above all of nostalgia: the musty stacks, the unexpected finds, the safety and pleasure of a place that welcomes and shelters unconditionally.

John Palfrey shares these memories, but he is also wary of them. After all, fond recollections of pleasant reading rooms can cloud our judgment of what libraries offer us — and need from us — today. In an era when search engines, online retailers and social media are overtaking some of libraries’ essential tasks, “nostalgia can actually be dangerous,” Palfrey warns. “Thinking of libraries as they were ages ago and wanting them to remain the same is the last thing we should want for them.”

Bookmobile Memories

From The LA Times www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0419-straight-bookmobile-20150419-story.html:

Bookmobiles have been a fixture of rural American life since the 19th century, when horse-drawn book wagons stenciled with gold lettering read Free Library. There were low-slung black panel trucks in the 1930s, side doors open to shelves, with children sitting on the wide fenders turning pages.

In the Riverside (CA) Public Library recently, I read the catalog from the Gerstenslager Co. in Wooster, Ohio, which built bookmobiles for the nation. Children and adults stood in line to ascend a few stairs and be inside a real library, albeit one with shelves set on a slight incline, so books wouldn’t fall out when the coach was moving.

Vitamin-C Based Paper @Multnomah Cty Library

Multnomah County’s Library has made huge environmental strides in an often overlooked area.

The system has become the first major library operation in the country to sustainably source the paper it uses to print patron receipts and hold slips.

Whereas most receipts are printed on paper that contains bisphenol A or bisphenol S, Multnomah has switched to an alternative paper made by Wisconsin-based Appvion Inc. That paper uses a vitamin C formulation in place of phenols like BPA or BPS.

And, as library spokesman Shawn Cunningham points out, The paper’s yellow tone belies its origins in oranges. Indeed, a year’s worth of paper contains the equivalent of about 500,000 oranges. Story from bizjournals.

h/t @kalendaries

Encouraging Teenagers to Read, by Choosing Books From the Non-Y.A. Shelves

My sons have always been voracious readers. One started early, the other started late, but once they got going, both were hooked. Then, one day this winter, I looked around my teenager’s room and noticed something was missing. Where books once littered his room, I now find guitar picks, running spikes and dirty socks.

I’ve learned from experience that encouraging my children to engage in anything I want them to do requires a lot of finesse. When I’ve come right out and recommended books I think they will like, those titles are immediately blacklisted from their mental card catalog, because my very endorsement taints them with a mom-approved stink.

My solution is to “seed” my older son’s room with a wide range of books for him to find on his own time and on his own terms. I consulted with my local bookseller, Brenda Leahy, who curates a list of teenage recommendations selected from outside the Young Adult section of the bookstore. Once armed, I scattered the literary bait all over my son’s room.

Full piece:

New Book: Our Bodies Our Shelves by Roz Warren

Today, April 16th is National Librarian Day and what better way to celebrate than with the release of her book OUR BODIES,OUR SHELVES: A COLLECTION OF LIBRARY HUMOR (HOPress, 2015).

In addition to her library duties at the Bala Cynwyd Library right outside Philadelphia, Roz Warren writes forThe New York Times, The Funny Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Jewish Forward and The Huffington Post. And she‘s been featured on the Today Show. (Twice!) And she frequents publisher Humor Outcasts as well.

Our Bodies, Our Shelves is her thirteenth humor book. Years ago, Roz left the practice of law to take a job at her local public library “because I was tired of making so damn much money.” She has no regrets.

CLICK here to hear the interview!