ScrewyDecimal

Faced with budget cuts and layoffs, school librarians in LA are being interrogated by lawyers about their relevancy in schools. The LA Times reports:

“I’ve seen a lot of strange things in two decades as a reporter, but nothing quite as disgraceful and weird as this inquisition the LAUSD is inflicting upon more than 80 school librarians….To get the librarians off the payroll, the district’s attorneys need to prove to an administrative law judge that the librarians don’t have that recent teaching experience.”

Click here to read the LA Times article.

A teacher/librarian in LA has outlined her observations and opinions in an unsettling blog post, which gives a first-hand look at these interrogations.

Click here to read the blog post.

Artist Wendy McNaughton has created illustrations that portray the patrons at the San Francisco Public Library. Not only are these pictures beautiful, but they underscore the importance of libraries in today’s society.

Click here to see the illustrations on The Rumpus.net.

On Friday, March 4th, actress Vivica A. Fox participated in a Read Across America program that was held at the Marcy Branch (Bed-Stuy) of Brooklyn Public Library. The event was intended to promote literacy to children, who also received free books to take home.

Read the full story here.

Eight libraries in Northamptonshire that were originally scheduled to close because of budget cuts will remain open. Thanks to public feedback and campaigning in support of the libraries, the council reversed its decision and drew up a new budget.

Read More Here

There are 43 libraries in Oxfordshire, England. Members of the Oxfordshire county council intend to stop funding half of these libraries and hand them over to volunteers to run. Earlier this month, Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials trilogy) gave a speech at an Oxfordshire library campaigners meeting and strongly critiqued this potentially disastrous move for libraries. Pullman said, “”Does he [Keith Mitchell, the leader of the county council] think the job of a librarian is so simple, so empty of content, that anyone can step up and do it for a thank-you and a cup of tea? Does he think that all a librarian does is to tidy the shelves?” The speech was met with great response by the public and was shared via social networking sites and read 20,000 times in two days, says the Guardian.

Read the Guardian article here.

Read Pullman’s full speech here.

Bird experts struggle to free a hawk from the dome of the main reading room. The hawk, nicknamed “Shirley” by staff members, has been trapped in the Library of Congress since Wednesday. (The bird has been recently fed and is in no immediate danger.)

Full story here.
Additional hawk updates from the LOC Blog.

Mortimer Zuckerman (owner of the New York Daily News and editor-in-chief of U.S. News and World Report) claims that public sector workers are “seizing a disproportionate share of society’s rewards and bringing on the failures of the U.S. economy.”

PBS’s John Bellamy Foster explores this “ridiculous” concept.

What better way to illustrate the potential impact of a closed library than to offer nothing but empty shelves to the public? A public library in Stony Stratford, England, asked its patrons to take out all of its books in a symbolic demonstration again “theoretical” threats of closure. (The resulting picture is stark and sad.)

Read more here

“With the national television news outlets providing wall-to-wall media coverage since Saturday of the tragedy in Tucson, it’s not surprising that two children’s book award winners would be overlooked during a week of breaking news. But, to some who tuned into the Today Show on Tuesday morning expecting to see the Newbery and Caldecott Medalists, insult seemed added to injury. The program did indeed take a break from its coverage of the shootings during the second hour to interview an author. But it was an author who’s not likely to win a prestigious literary award any time soon: Nicole Polizzi, better known to the world as Snooki, the Jersey Shore star more famous for her trash talk and wild partying rather than her literary chops.”

Read more from Publishers Weekly

“California Governor Jerry Brown released a proposed budget for FY11/12 on Monday that would eliminate all state funding for libraries.

Brown’s shock-and-awe, $84.6 billion budget, which still must work its way through the state legislature, would cut state spending by $12.5 billion and include a ‘vast and historic’ restructuring of government operations.”

Full article here