Bibliofuture

If there were a futures market in literacy, it would be dropping. It is a sad fact that the value of written words, in relation to spoken words and still and moving pictures, is sinking like a stone. Changes like this happen for structural reasons.

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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?”

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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)

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.

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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.

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As local-news outlets disappear in America, some libraries are gaining new relevance.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/libraries-local-news/551594/

Oct 21, 1929 – Jan 22, 2018

Ursula K. Le Guin accepts the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 65th National Book Awards on November 19, 2014.

Birdie posted this story first. I cannot make the link work so I am posting a link here. My apologies if the link problem was only with my computer.
Full story here.