AnnaKh

This week\’s Library
Juice has a relatively long webliography on the Free
Software Movement, with brief annotations. It\’s less
about the software itself and more about the
social/economic implications of the movement. I think
there\’s a natural match between librarians (\”content\”) and
Free Software proponents (techne) for a way of doing
things in the information age that forms a viable
alternative to capitalist information practices.

I\’ve given Library
Juice something it should have had years ago: a manifesto.
Actually it\’s an adaptation of the statement I gave New Breed
Librarian when they interviewed me for their inaugural
issue. It expresses what I think are a large number of
librarians motivations for being librarians and expresses
what is known as the \”library spirit\” from a certain
angle. It is titled \”The Ideology of Librarianship: A
Libertarian Socialism of Information,\” and it is inside,
here:

I\’ve given Library
Juice something it should have had years ago: a manifesto.
Actually it\’s an adaptation of the statement I gave New Breed
Librarian when they interviewed me for their inaugural
issue. It expresses what I think are a large number of
librarians motivations for being librarians and expresses
what is known as the \”library spirit\” from a certain
angle. It is titled \”The Ideology of Librarianship: A
Libertarian Socialism of Information,\” and it is inside,
here:The Ideology of Librarianship: A Libertarian Socialism
of Information

Libraries are special because they are at once
communitarian, libertarian,
and models for sustainability.

They are communitarian in the economic sense because they
are built on
solidarity. A community pools its resources in order to
share them.

Libraries are libertarian in the social/intellectual sense
because of the
ethic of intellectual freedom, which says that all ideas
should be included
and nothing censored.

This combination of economic communitarianism and
social/intellectual
libertarianism creates the ideal support system for a
democratic society,
because the library provides everyone with access to ideas
and provides
access to every idea.

In addition, libraries are models for sustainable systems.
By following the
\”borrow, don\’t buy\” ethic, libraries provide an
alternative to consumerism,
an alternative to environmentally unsound overproduction
and spiritually
unsound overconsumption.

And libraries excite me further because they need to be
changed. They tend
to leave out alternative or street-level materials; there
is presently a
tendency toward privatization of services and functions
(with attendant
barriers to access); libraries and library organizations
need their
decision-making processes democratized; access to local
community
information in libraries needs to be improved; in general,
libraries tend
to depart routinely from their founding principles as they
struggle for a
handhold in the environment of an increasingly neoliberal
political economy
and an increasingly reactionary social climate. We need
to advance the
Library Paradigm of information organization, preservation
and access, to
freshly propagate the idea of the library in society in
terms of its
underlying principles.

Notwithstanding their imperfections, libraries serve as a
rare example of
beautiful ideals actually functioning successfully in the
world. This
means that libraries should serve as a model for other
institutions and
endeavors. We need to spread the Library Spirit across
society and teach
it, as a model for positive change beyond the walls of
libraries and
throughout all contexts of information, communication, and
learning. This
is the Ideology of Librarianship, and we can make it grow.

Progressive
Librarians Around the World, originally created by
Raimund Dehmlow of Germany and off the web for a few
months, is now on libr.org
and being updated and maintained by Rory Litwin.

What it is is a directory of progressive, library-related
organizations and publications in different countries (or
individuals in cases where we don\’t know about a group in
that country).

The site also contains a \”Preliminary Statement of
Unifying Principles\” which some of you may find
interesting.

\”Librarians Against War,\” at http://libr.org/peace/,
is a small new website collecting statements by librarians
opposed to war.
It is the new home of the Emergency Declaration written by
Mark Rosenzweig
and signed by 280 people, as well as similar letters
written over the past
few years, and the Peace Telegram, sent to President
Roosevelt by the
Progressive Librarians Council in 1940.

Mitch Freedman,
ALA President-Elect, was recently interviewed by the folks
at New Breed
Librarian about his plans
for fighting for better pay for librarians in his
upcoming year
as President. It\’s a good read. Think what you want
about ALA, it was ALA members who elected Mitch, in part
because of the three candidates he was the one who
introduced this issue and was by far the most aggressive
on it. While it is hard to accomplish major change in a
one-year term, I feel that it is a start toward something
important.

Mark Rosenzweig has written an emergency
declaration for librarians to sign expressing their
opposition to preparations for war on Afghanistan. So far
it has around 160 signatures (it is Wednesday night). The
above link leads to a web page where you can add your
signature. The declaration is copied here:

Mark Rosenzweig has written an emergency
declaration for librarians to sign expressing their
opposition to preparations for war on Afghanistan. So far
it has around 160 signatures (it is Wednesday night). The
above link leads to a web page where you can add your
signature. The declaration is copied here:EMERGENCY DECLARATION FOR A HALT TO PREPARATIONS FOR
BOMBING AFGHANISTAN:
LIBRARIANS SPEAK OUT!

We undersigned librarians from all over the world implore
the United States
government and its allies to halt the preparations for
all-out war against
the nation of Afghanistan in retaliation for the alleged
actions of the Bin
Laden ring against US targets. We must remind the world
that the United States
originally funded the Afghani Islamic fundamentalist
movement, including Bin
Laden, to oppose the Soviet occupation.

Out of a simple humanitarianism we ask that the technology
and forces of
mass destruction ready to be deployed against the Afghani
people be demobilized
and that the Afghani people be spared the horrors of yet
another war.

They have suffered inordinately over these last decades,
torn by civil war,
by invasion, by an extended conflict with a militarily
superior super-power
by the manipulations of its factions by Cold War political
tacticians and
operatives. It has been bombed repeatedly, intensively,
furiously. It has
been ripped apart by armed conflict and left to the misery
of rule by a
theocratic police state which has imposed an aberrant,
pathological form of
Islamic fundamentalism on its hapless people.

It is the people of Afghanistan who will pay for the
crimes of terrorists
over whom they have no control. It is the poorest, most
vulnerable — the
children, elderly women — who will suffer for having
endured the inhumanity
of the Taliban.

We librarians call for the lawful and most humane and
peaceful resolution of
conflicts. The war that is about to be unleashed will
likely have unmanageable
\”collateral damage\”, human and moral. It will be an
abomination that will
breed further abominations, for it is a war against a
people, against
civilians, in violation of international law, a war with
no end but
vengeance, and a vengeance which seems potentially
insatiable.

NO TO WAR AGAINST THE AFGHANI PEOPLE!
NO TO THE INDETERMINATE THREATS AGAINST SO-CALLED
\”HARBORERS\” OF
TERRORISTS!

CULTURAL WORKERS, TEACHERS, LIBRARIANS, ARTISTS, UNITE
AGAINST
VENGEANCE FOR VENGEANCE SAKE, UNITE AGAINST TERROR BOMBING
AS AN ANSWER TO
TERRORISM.

WE CALL FOR THE CAUSES OF TERRORISM AGAINST THE UNITED
STATES TO BE
ADDRESSED WITHIN A LAWFUL FRAMEWORK INSTEAD OF THE
PERPETUATION OF
BARBARISM!

Juanita and Colleen scored big with the new issue of NewBreed Librarian, as they have published some cool research by Deirdre Dupre, which finds that librarians are overconcerned with their image and status given the actual perceptions of the public.

A message from Juanita about the other content in this issue is inside:

Juanita and Colleen scored big with the new issue of NewBreed Librarian, as they have published some cool research by Deirdre Dupre, which finds that librarians are overconcerned with their image and status given the actual perceptions of the public.

A message from Juanita about the other content in this issue is inside:Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 10:39:06 -0700

From: Juanita Benedicto

To: [web nuts who publish on librarianship]

Hi Everyone,

Colleen and I have just posted the August edition of NewBreed Librarian.
This month you\’ll find < http://www.newbreedlibrarian.org/current/ >:

FEATURE

The Perception of Image and Status in the Library Profession by
Deirdre Dupri

During a conversation between Juanita and the author at our poster
session at ALA, Deirdre brought up her research, which centers on the
self-defeating ways librarians perpetuate professional anxiety over less
than satisfactory status and preoccupy themselves with the image much more
than the outside perception of librarians warrants. We invited Deirdre to
share her research with you.

INTERVIEW

Joanna Kroll, Career Services Coordinator at the University of
Michigan\’s School of Information, tells us about what she does, provides
some real life examples, talks about who is hiring recent grads, and
advises on how to seek new challenges and directions for those of us
already in the field. If you don\’t know all that your career center can do
for you: read this interview. It may help you find and secure that first
job, or perhaps look for another one.

PEOPLE

Richard Heinzkill is a friend, colleague, and mentor to both of us. He
shares advice for new librarians gleaned from 30 years as a librarian.

ASK SUSU
Susu, our sometimes irreverent advice columnist, answers your questions
about work, school, the job hunt, and librarianship in general. In this
issue, Susu advises on … well, let\’s just say she advises.

TECH TALK
Moaning, lost profiles, and deviant formats: mama never told me it was
gonna rain like this.

———————

Tech Talk was especially a fun write-up, we love Richard, someone set
herself up in Ask Susu, Deirdre writes a somewhat controversial feature
article, and Joanna Kroll provides great advice as a Career Services
Coordinator.

Enjoy,

Juanita

In a landmark deal, the Alternative Press Center, publishers of the Alternative Press Index has joined OCLC and negotiated for the Index to be served up by Firstsearch and for many journals indexed there to enter OCLC\’s Electronic Collections Online in full-text. This is a great development for supporters of the alternative press and believers in the necessity of turning to the Alternative Press to supplement near-monopoly publishing in order to fulfill the Library Bill of Rights.

Press release from OCLC inside:

In a landmark deal, the Alternative Press Center, publishers of the Alternative Press Index has joined OCLC and negotiated for the Index to be served up by Firstsearch and for many journals indexed there to enter OCLC\’s Electronic Collections Online in full-text. This is a great development for supporters of the alternative press and believers in the necessity of turning to the Alternative Press to supplement near-monopoly publishing in order to fulfill the Library Bill of Rights.

Press release from OCLC inside:Alternative Press Center becomes OCLC member

DUBLIN, Ohio, June 15, 2001-The Alternative Press Center (APC) will be
joining OCLC as a cataloging member and has agreed to offer its database,
the Alternative Press Index (API), on the OCLC FirstSearch service. The
database will be available both via subscription and per-search and will
link to the holdings in OCLC library collections.

Through a collaborative agreement between OCLC and the Alternative Press
Center, OCLC will add information on the APC library holdings of
periodicals and monographs into WorldCat. The holdings symbol is ALTPR. The
APC library maintains the last five years of items indexed in the
Alternative Press Index.

\”We are pleased and excited at the opportunity to work with OCLC,\” said
Chuck D\’Adamo, co-editor of the Alternative Press Index. \”The collaboration
with OCLC will significantly enhance the fulfillment of the Alternative
Press Center\’s general mission to increase public awareness of the
alternative, independent, critical press.\”

\”With these materials linked in WorldCat to holdings in libraries
worldwide, FirstSearch will make them visible and more available,\” said
Lori Saviers, director of Product Marketing and Licensing, OCLC Reference
and Resource Sharing. \”This project represents OCLC\’s new product strategy
at work and will greatly expand options for libraries. OCLC is actively
seeking to expand the ranks of \’non-traditional\’ members, and the library
of the Alternative Press Center is a reflection of this expansion by
reaching out beyond the traditional membership base.\”

The back files of source materials indexed in the API are currently being
archived at the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery Special Collections (OCLC
symbol: MUB, a PALINET library), of the University of Maryland, Baltimore
County (UMBC). This archive represents one of the most complete collections
of alternative and left-wing periodicals available in the United States.

\”We are very excited to be collaborating with the Alternative Press Center
and OCLC on this project,\” said Larry Wilt, library director, University of
Maryland, Baltimore County. \”We recognize the great value of this project
to the library community. It will result in greater visibility and use of
the Alternative Press Center\’s collections by libraries and researchers
everywhere.\”

The Alternative Press Index covers nearly 300 periodicals that report and
analyze the practices and theories of cultural, economic, political and
social change. OCLC plans to add the database to FirstSearch in the fourth
quarter of 2001. The full text of 39 publications in API are currently
available through OCLC FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online.

The Alternative Press Center (APC) is a non-profit collective dedicated to
providing access to and increasing public awareness of the alternative
press. It has indexed 880 newspaper and periodical titles since its launch
in 1969 to provide access to the practices and theories of radical social
change. The Alternative Press Index (API) has been recognized as a leading
guide to the alternative press in the United States and around the world.
The API is international and interdisciplinary, spans the social sciences
and humanities, and includes popular and scholarly magazines and journals.

The Special Collections Department of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery
of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), makes available for
appreciation and study a number of the great artistic and documentary
treasures of western culture. Rare books, photographs, artifacts, and
manuscripts are accessible here in the original, with trained professionals
ready to assist in the use and interpretation of these research materials.

The Alternatives In Publication Task Force of ALA/SRRT has announced this year\’s winners of the Eubanks Award. The winners are Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont, and Carlos Cortez of Kerr Publishing, the nation\’s older surviving radical publisher.

See inside for a report on the award and the acceptance speech, which together make a nice little read.

The Alternatives In Publication Task Force of ALA/SRRT has announced this year\’s winners of the Eubanks Award. The winners are Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont, and Carlos Cortez of Kerr Publishing, the nation\’s older surviving radical publisher.

See inside for a report on the award and the acceptance speech, which together make a nice little read.The Jackie Eubanks Award is conferred annually by the
Alternatives-in-Publication (AIP) Task Force of the Social Responsibilities
Round Table (SRRT) of the American Library Association (ALA) (this latter
being a national membership organization of over 60.000 individuals who
work in or with libraries of all kinds). The Eubanks Award, given at the
ALA\’s Annual Conference, is an official prize of the Association. It is
given each year to people who have made especially significant
contributions to promoting/developing the \”alternative press\” .

The award is named for the late Ms. Jackie Eubanks of Brooklyn College, NY,
reference librarian extraordinaire, a remarkable activist library worker,
political/cultural grass roots agitator and a great proponent of getting
the \”alternative press\” out of the ghetto of institutional marginalization
and into the mainstream of the resources and services of librarianship.
The award is generously endowed each year by Sanford Berman of Minnestota,
a close friend of Jackie\’s and himself perhaps the most widely known and
respected spokesperson for democratic, activist and transformative
librarianship.

The Eubanks Award Committee, chaired by Byron Anderson, voted in favor of
committee member Mark Rosenzweig\’s joint nomination of Franklin Rosemont,
Penelope Rosemont and Carlos Cortez for their work in rescuing and
re-charging the ur-alternative publisher of American letters, the Charles
H. Kerr Publishing Company, not only keeping in print many of the most
important titles of the Kerr company\’s catalog of incendiary literature,
but publishing significant new material under the Kerr imprint, material
which continues the radical spirit which always animated Kerr.

All three winners, who are splitting the award this year, are not only
responsible for Kerr Publishing Company, but are themselves writers and
artists of system-challenging work, and so it was entirely a propos that
they suggested that their friend, San Fransisco-based poet Diane di Prima,
a radical author whose life has been among those which have, against the
grain of the canonical, etched, passionately and insistently, the course of
development of the anti-establishment poetry of the post-war period into
the history of American literature and carved out a special place in the
barren cultural landscape of the USA for the Beat, the off-beat, the
downbeat and the beatific, a space where one often finds poetic beauty and
social critique merging in free and fearless expression.

Di Prima, accepting the award on behalf of the Rosemonts and Cortez, read
one of her own poems \”Rant\” —  suggested to her by the Rosemonts as one of
their favorites — to the delight of the large number of people at the Free
Speech Buffet (6PM-10PM Monday 6/18/01) where, this year once again
librarians and non-mainstrean publishers mingled under the auspices of the
AIP. The Free Speech Buffet attendees were called to order for the award
ceremony by the buffet\’s organizer Rory Litwin at 8PM.

Introduced by the Eubank Committee\’s Mark Rosenzweig, who also offered a
description of the Kerr press and the significance of the award winners
contributions to keeping alternative publishing alive and lively, di Prima
also read a statement, sent to her by Cortez and the Rosemonts for the
occasion, which expressed gratitude that this award will help them make the
Kerr catalog\’s offerings better known among librarians and — equally
importantly — promote the subversive work of the literary underground in
attacking the roots of what they described as our \’miserabilist\’ society.

The Eubanks Award Committe thanks Ms. di Prima for her appearance at the
affair and offers its heartfelt congratulations to three remarkable people,
the indomitable Carlos Cortez, IWW poet and graphic artist; Franklin
Rosemont, among so many other strange and wonderful things, the editor and
English translator of THE major collection (Pathfinder Press) of the
writings of the magus of surrealism, Andre Breton; and Penelope Rosemont,
the editor of the recently-published, magnificent and revelatory anthology
entitled \”Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (Univ. of Texas
Press).

Reported by: Mark Rosenzweig, editor \”Progressive Librarian\”, co-founder of
the Progressive Librarians Guild, SRRT Council member, ALA Councilor at
large, member of the Jackie Eubanks Award Committee and of the
Alternatives-in-Publications Task Force.

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

STATEMENT OF CARLOS CORTEZ, PENELOPE ROSEMONT, & FRANKLIN ROSEMONT, for the
CHARLES H. KERR PUBLISHING COMPANY

In today\’s miserabilist social set-up, \”peace\” prizes are frequently given
to war criminals, and \”humanitarian\” awards are presented to
Earth-destroying corporate executive thugs.

The Jackie Eubanks Memorial Award, dreamed up by a bold group of dissident
librarians, has nothing in common with such bourgeois hypocrisy. Unlike the
big celebrity awards, the Jackie Eubanks award recognizes the contributions
of those who, in many and diverse ways, have been doing what they can – in
Joe Hill\’s words – \”to advance Freedom\’s banner a little closer to its
goal.\”

The Charles H. Kerr Company, established in Chicago in 1886, is a
worker-owned, not-for-profit co-operative publishing house devoted to the
Cause of abolishing wage-slavery and creating a new society based on
Freedom, Equality, Poetry, and Solidarity. In its 115 years, the Kerr
Company has published a large number of books that are widely recognized as
classics, but this is the first time the Company has ever received an award.

We are especially honored to receive the Jackie Eubanks Memorial Award, for
Jackie Eubanks was herself a brave crusader for all good causes. She was an
enthusiastic supporter of our publishing program – \”Subversive Literature
for the Whole Family!\” – and retains a fond place in our memory.

We would like to alert our librarian friends to the fact that Charles H.
Kerr books continue to be well-reviewed in Anarchist, Socialist, Feminist,
Pacifist, IWW, Trade Union, Civil Libertarian, Green, Homeless, Punk and
other alternative publications. Almost never, however, are our books
noticed in the major librarians\’ periodicals: LIBRARY JOURNAL, CHOICE, or
BOOKLIST. This means many librarians are NOT being informed of our books.
We hope you will help us spread the word about this insidious form of
censorship. An Injury to One Is an Injury to All!

The Charles H. Kerr Company is the oldest anti-Establishment publishing
house in the world, but it is still as young as tomorrow. This is because
radical ideas are always new. They are the like the seed beneath the
snow – just waiting for the proper time to sprout.

There is an open letter from librarians, written by Mark Rosenzweig, protesting the police violence at the anti-globalization demonstrations in Genoa, Italy, on the web and ready for your signature. I signed it, not because I am opposed to globalization per se, but I am opposed to the way it is happening and definitely opposed to the police response in Genoa, which has been incredibly brutal. The signable letter is at http://libr.org/PLG/Genoa.html, on the PLG site. It is also copied inside if you follow the internal LISNews link. You may also be interested in the Library Juice feature issue on what has happened in Genoa and it\’s coverage in the media. Apologies to those who object to anything non-library related, but as professionals we exist in the larger world.

There is an open letter from librarians, written by Mark Rosenzweig, protesting the police violence at the anti-globalization demonstrations in Genoa, Italy, on the web and ready for your signature. I signed it, not because I am opposed to globalization per se, but I am opposed to the way it is happening and definitely opposed to the police response in Genoa, which has been incredibly brutal. The signable letter is at http://libr.org/PLG/Genoa.html, on the PLG site. It is also copied inside if you follow the internal LISNews link. You may also be interested in the Library Juice feature issue on what has happened in Genoa and it\’s coverage in the media. Apologies to those who object to anything non-library related, but as professionals we exist in the larger world.Open letter from librarians against the murder of people excercising the right to protest against corporate
globalization at the Genoa Conference, July, 2001

The undersigned librarians, library employees, library professors &
teachers of library & information sciences, library students & interns,
information professionals, paraprofessionals and service providers,
wish to express their horror at the escalating anti-civilian military
mobilizations and the planned and entirely disproportionate violence
exercised against fundamentally peaceful, certainly unarmed, protests
of the meetings of the G7+, the WTO, the IMF/World Bank and all other
gatherings of the proponents and agencies of a transnational corporate
world order.

We reject (and hold responsible the entire chain of command behind it)
the orchestrated, planned violence of the armed-to-the-teeth defenders
of the global elite against the all-too-visible political
manifestations of popular, international rejection of the agendas of
the institutions perceived as imposing policies and practices which,
rather than alleviating the problems they claim to be confronting
(hunger -famine – on an unimaginable scale; dislocations of entire
populations; marginalizations of whole sectors (class strata, nations,
peoples, ethnic groups), poverty of a degree and scale which has been
–and continues to be (for most people) unthinkable; rampant epidemics
of fatal disease; massive environmental despoliation in the
overwhelming majority of the world, and increasing attacks even on the
social & economic gains of most people in the so-called developed world
with its welfare state protections and public sectors being scrapped
and shredded, including in the self-proclaimed economic
\’super-powers\’) are merely interested in creating a stabilized global
regime in which the attempted globalized monopolization of effective
wealth and power in the hands of actors not responsible to any
democratic control is imposed, while containing the disruptions created
by the inevitable resistance of the masses of people affected by
policies over which they have no control.

We protest, vehemently, the murder of an anti-corporate protestor in
Genoa, shot and ruthlessly run-over by a military vehicle, and also the
growing number of those protestors being beaten, gassed, shot at,
trampled, jailed and subjected to both personal brutality and high-tech
crowd control techniques for the purposes of discouraging their
protests — and all such protests — and preventing them from having
any impact on those world \”leaders\” who are presently meeting in a
fortified compound in the free city of Genoa.

We call on the global economic elite meeting in Genoa — and ready to
meet in further fortified locations over the next months as they have
since the WTO debacle in Seattle — to abandon the entire
anti-democratic framework of their deliberations, to drop the
anti-popular programs and policies which they are pursuing and to enter
into free, open dialogue, transparent and unimpeded, with
representatives of civil society and of organized mass-democratic
forces and movements.

Let this murder in Genoa not be in vain! The escalation of this
confrontation with popular interests and representatives of the needs
of the ordinary people of the world should come to a halt here and
now.

The cynicism of Bush who tells the world that the protests only hurt
the cause of \”the poor\” (as if \”the poor\” were some category of humans
apart from his own species) must be rejected with the contempt it
deserves.

We call on our fellow professionals and workers, educators, cultural
activists, all those engaged in the social and cultural service sector,
to reject privatization, the destruction of the public sector where
it exists and its discouragement where it has yet to be significantly
developed, the substitution of anti-democratic supra-national
decision-making of secret bodies representing elite interests for
existing democratic structures, however weak.

Progressive librarians and information workers say NO to corporate
globalization; NO to murderous violence against legitimate militant,
mass anti-globalization protest; NO to the erosion of democratic
institutions; NO to the crushing of the claims of national sovereignty
and the equal rights of minorities; NO to the creation of a new
economic order based on the burdening of the poor nations with
increasing debt!