February 2018

More than 300 people have signed a petition to either ban or label and group materials related to homosexual and transgender content in the Orange City Public Library.

Rev. Sacha Walicord of Grace Reformed Presbyterian Church rose before an overflow crowd of more than 100 at the Orange City Public Library Board of Trustees meeting Tuesday and said that LBGTQ books and other library content are “pushing an agenda” that is counter to those in the faith community.

“We won’t roll over,” he said. “We will stand up and we will fight.”

Others defended the selections, saying that a library is a place of diverse ideas and that library patrons are free to choose what to view or ignore.

Full article (Des Moines Register)

The good folks beavering away at their long tables in the magisterial north Rose Main Reading Room on the third floor of the New York Public Library’s main building might be excused for feeling spied upon. “What is that thing?” they’ve been asking the guards over the past several months, pointing up at the eerie, tripod-mounted, radarlike dish mounted on the narrow balcony at the far end of the airy, vaultlike space.

Much of the time, the object is unmanned. But every once in a while, a lanky, long-haired young man will amble along the mezzanine balcony and squeeze himself into the narrow cockpit behind the dish, wedging his skull into a white helmet, and start taking measurements, or inventories, or calculations, or something. All very still, his arm jammed into the concave shell, scratching away infinitesimally, for hours on end (and indeed long after the place has otherwise closed down for the night). “What the hell is that guy doing?”

Full article here.

But starting late last year, processing requests to borrow material from other libraries has been significantly more time-consuming, and as of last week, about 150 requests were unfulfilled, Fabian said. That’s because a component of the state’s interlibrary loan system – a vast information highway that allows the state’s 234 public libraries, as well as several university and public school libraries, to loan resources to one another – has been down.

From Interlibrary loan system failure tying up librarians’ time

Let’s count all the ways the MLS degree has suppressed talent in libraries — and what we can do about it

Full article(Medium.com)

WHAT SECRETS HIDE AMONG THE pages of old books? There might be a lock of George Washington’s hair, the story of an forgotten luminary of American literature, or a centuries-old manuscript full of mystery. We asked Atlas Obscura readers to send us their stories about the most amazing items they found in books, and you sent us hundreds of responses—from the gross and macabre to the utterly charming and deeply surprising.

From The Best Things Found Between the Pages of Old Books – Atlas Obscura

A local social justice advocacy group wants to expand access to books written by authors of color for people who use an east Austin library.

The Austin Justice Coalition is asking community members to donate copies from a specific list of fiction and nonfiction titles to the Carver Branch of the library system. The city came up with the list of 126 works at the group’s request, and the donations will expand Carver’s collection.

Full story

After having nobody sign up to read to him, one friendly greyhound is now busier than ever thanks to a Facebook Post that went viral.

Full story