rochelle

Here’s one from the Israeli website Haaretz.com about OCLC President Jay Jordan’s promise to save libraries from extinction.

The next stage in the OCLC plan is to establish an efficient mechanism for inter-library loans that will make it possible for one library to order books from another. In the long term, the unification of the stock and the catalogs of tens of thousands of libraries has far-reaching implications: It will create a global supra-library in which each of the participating libraries is just a terminal or a branch. The library is in effect losing its autonomy; it is becoming another tool in the information-consumer’s toolbox, a kind of analog hard disk from which it is possible to extract data as needed.

Steve Fesenmaier writes “Sanford Berman 2007 revised

Sandy Berman was forced to retired in March 1999. He resigned from the ALA Council the next June after just getting elected to it by a large number of votes. Lots of people kept the great injustice of his forced retirement in the library press for a year or two afterwards, but few know that Sandy has been as active retired as he ever was working full-time at Hennepin County.

Just in the last month he gave presentations at the UCLA Dept. of Information Studies and the College of St. Catherine’s Progressive Librarian Guild student chapter in St. Paul, Minnesota. On a weekly basis he sends out at least 100 pieces of mail to friends, politicians, and interested groups, making him the most active librarian in the world.

Steve Fesenmaier writes “Sanford Berman 2007 revised

Sandy Berman was forced to retired in March 1999. He resigned from the ALA Council the next June after just getting elected to it by a large number of votes. Lots of people kept the great injustice of his forced retirement in the library press for a year or two afterwards, but few know that Sandy has been as active retired as he ever was working full-time at Hennepin County.

Just in the last month he gave presentations at the UCLA Dept. of Information Studies and the College of St. Catherine’s Progressive Librarian Guild student chapter in St. Paul, Minnesota. On a weekly basis he sends out at least 100 pieces of mail to friends, politicians, and interested groups, making him the most active librarian in the world.

He also writes a regular column for Mitch Freedman’s Unabashed Librarian, assists editors at Counterpoise magazine, and helps numerous other publications and writers around the country and world including myself.

 
Ever since 1999, Berman has regularly sent the Library of Congress information supporting the creation of new subject headings. I have worked with him on several related to West Virginia where I live: West Virginia Mine Wars, 1897-1921 ; Blair Mountain, Battle of, 1921, and most important, Mountaintop Removal Mining. Recently thanks to his efforts LC finally changed Vietnam Conflict to Vietnam War. Just a few of the other subjects headings he has helped create: Plutocracy, American Dream, Anti-racism, Conflict Diamonds, Moral Panics, Sex Toys, Wicca, and Zines.
Headings he is still trying to get established: GI Movement, Armenian Genocide, 1915-1923 (replacing Armenian Massacres,1915-1923), Anti-Arabism, Anarcho-Primitivism, Culture Wars, Erotophobia, Native American Holocaust, Lesbian Bikers.

 
Sandy has been able to get some exercise by picketing with striking bus drivers, nurses, hospital workers, aircraft mechanics, and hotel employees and against the war in Iraq. He is a member of the local Green Party and actively helps candidates with neighborhood campaigning, yard signs and letters to the editor.

 
He is also a board member of the Tretter Collection at The University of Minnesota Libraries, attending monthly meetings. Last summer the Tretter Collection hosted the first world-wide conference on GLBT archives and libraries. He is assisting them in seeking changes at LC in the area of subject headings, arguing for use of standard terms such as transgenderism, intersexuality, erotic graphic novels.

 
Berman is also very active still in many other areas of library reform including advising John Gehner, the current chairman of the ALA SRRT Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force, and promoting awareness of ALA’s failed promise to help libraries help the poor. He has also been active in fighting for the release of imprisoned Cuban librarians and for greater librarian attention to the Darfur genocide.

 
Like the best people in every field, Sandy is one of the friendliest, kindest, most giving individuals I have ever known, even providing free water daily to neighborhood animals. He has a real sense of kindness for all people and all living creatures. He responds to every phone call, every mailing, and always gives people his contact info whenever he can. (He doesn’t use e-mail because of eye and shoulder problems caused by his lifetime of cataloging and writing/editing.) Hopefully he will be like Bertrand Russell and live another 30 years–the world needs him.

 
Please contact him if you wish
 
Sanford Berman
 
4400 Morningside Road
 
Edina MN 55416-5043
 
(952) 925-5738

 
Sanford Berman websites

 
Official website
 
  http://www.sanfordberman.org/

Wikipedia biography
 
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_Berman

 
Sanford Berman library catalog posted to the web
 
  http://catalog.sanfordberman.org/

 
Comic strip partially based on Sandy Berman Gondwanaland
 
  http://www.roadkillbill.com/G-page.html

 
2006 Global Conference on GBLT Archives
 
  http://www.lib.umn.edu/events/glbtalms/topics.phtm l

 
ALA SRRT Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force
 
  http://www.hhptf.org/

 
Book on Sandy Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sandy Berman but Were Afraid to Ask. McFarland, 1995. Edited by Chris Dodge and Jan DeSirey.”

Joe Hodnicki writes “Good Things Happen to Good Law Schools: Marquette Law Receives $51 Million Gift for New Facility at
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blo g/2007/05/marquette_law_r.html
and UC Irvine Law School Receives $1 Million Gift to Support the Law Library at http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blo g/2007/05/uc_irvine_law_s.html“

The Boston Globe offers an interesting story that looks at the problems of collecting non-standard materials. Zine librarian Jenna Freedman is featured.

There is no preexisting librarians’ code pertaining to how one should handle a document that includes a free prophylactic; Freedman stows the entire zine, ephemera and all, along with a rigid, acid-free cardboard backing in a plastic sleeve designed for comic books.

Here’s a piece from the New York Post about the growing problem of unattended children in libraries.

“I do the best I can, but sometimes, there are just too many for me to watch,” an East Harlem librarian said. “One day, a kid disappeared for five hours, and the mother got in my face and threatened to sue me because I wasn’t watching her daughter.”

Just a short little librarian love letter from kid lit expert Kendal A. Rautzhan.

I’d like to extend a sincere note of thanks to every librarian out there. Without their careful tending of the contents of the library, we would all suffer. Librarians are an invaluable resource in our pursuit of pleasure, knowledge and understanding. Let them know you appreciate what they do.

Here are a couple aw-gee stories about students supporting their librarians in different ways.

Students in Springville, UT put on a play, and took donations which they gave to their librarian, Angela Pearce, to help pay for cancer treatments. Story here at Deseret News

In San Carlos, CA, elementary school students rallied in support of their librarian, whose job is in jeopardy after 21 years in the district. More from NBCNews San Diego.

I stopped cross-posting my stuff awhile back, but Blake asked me to post this in particular. (In fact, he told me to get off my lazy butt and lend a hand while he is on his Alaska Adventure.)

It’s a piece I posted at Tinfoil+Raccoon about why I think Twitter is more than self-indulgent fluff, comparing it to historical archaeology.

Who we are, who we really are, is found in garbage piles and literally mixed with our sh*t. My favorite archaeology book is In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life by James Deetz who demostrates that we only learn about the past by studying the mundane. Since the early 1970s, archaeologist William Rathje has been looking at garbage to learn about practices and behavior that tell more about a community than observing and interviewing community members.

iblee writes “We’re looking for a — 2.0 — Business librarian and thought we’d try something different. Take a look at our advertising approach.

It made it onto tametheweb.com.
http://tametheweb.com/2007/05/20_business_libraria n_florida.html“

madcow writes “Webtailer woot.com is having some fun with the MPAA and RIAA (on the heels of offering a DVD recorder no less) with a contest to imagine what a future anti “piracy” police force might look like.

Get out your GIMP and join in the fun.”