Events for your calendar this upcoming ALA Annual in Chicago: Litwin Books and Library Juice Press will be sharing a booth with the Alternative Press Center in the Exhibits Hall. The Exhibits Hall is open from Saturday, July 11 at 9am until Tuesday, July 14 at 2pm. We’ll be at booth 1637. I hope you’ll … Read more Library Juice Press and Litwin Books @ALA
Alternative Media Reception at Annual Conference On Monday, July 13, from 7-10 pm, the Alternative Media Reception (ALA Annual, Chicago) will join forces with the SRRT 40th Anniversary Celebration in a not-to-be-missed event featuring great food, drink, and music as well as books, zines, and other materials from progressive publishers in Chicago and all over … Read more Alternative Media Reception at Annual Conference
The new issue of the SRRT Newsletter is out – Issue #167, June 2009. It has the usual updates from task forces, messages from the coordinator and editor, and book reviews. This issue also has a separate PDF supplement, a flier about SRRT’s activities at the ALA Conference in Chicago coming up.
Library Juice Press and Litwin Books will be sharing a booth with the Alternative Press Center in the exhibits hall at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, July 9-14. We will be at booth number 1637. I hope you’ll drop by and say Hi. On Saturday night, July 11th, from 7pm to 9pm, there will … Read more Library Juice Press at ALA
Judith Krug, head of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom since 1967, has died of stomach cancer at age 69. Library Journal has published an obituary rapidly; I am sure we will see something more extensive soon. From what I have been told by people who have been a part of librarianship and active in ALA … Read more Judith Krug has passed on
The new issue of the SRRT Newsletter has a review of Shiraz Durrani’s book, Information and Liberation: Writings on the Politics of Information and Librarianship. Jenny Bossaller, an Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at University of Southern Mississippi, wrote the review. It’s a thoughtful piece, which I always like to see. Thanks to … Read more Review of Shiraz Durrani’s Information and Liberation
Issue 166, March 2009, of the SRRT Newsletter is just published. This issue contains the minutes from Midwinter’s meetings in Denver, where Action Council decided to publish the newsletter on the web only, and to move to a quarterly publication schedule. For some time, the newsletter was SRRT’s largest single expense, even at a twice-yearly … Read more SRRT Newsletter 166
The new issue of the SRRT Newsletter is out. It’s issue 164/165, January 2009. A new editor takes the reins with this issue, Myka Kennedy Stephens. It’s got a new look but the content is so far consistent with previous issues – conference calendar, task force reports, minutes, resolutions, message from the coordinator, book reviews, … Read more New SRRT Newsletter
ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy had its annual retreat this month. Barbara Fister, frequent poster to the ACRL blog and a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, presented a talk there called “Open Access and Books in a Digital World – What Role Should Libraries Play?” Her talk is an interesting exploration of … Read more Barbara Fister on Google and OA
Make a note to yourself to mark your 2009 calendar when you buy one: Library Juice Press and Litwin Books will be having a reception during the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago in 2009, at Quimby’s Bookstore, on Saturday, July 11th, 7pm. Quimby’s is a little off the beaten path, but it’s a very cool … Read more LJP at ALA in Chicago next July
For many years Byron Anderson has been producing a bibliography of tools for helping librarians attend to the alternative press. The new edition of his guide is out: Bibliographic and Web Tools for Alternative Media. Updates of this bibliography are regularly published in Counterpoise and posted to the web on the Alternative Media Task Force … Read more Bibliographic and Web Tools for Alternative Media
Two press releases in two days, this one from George Eberhart of ALA… Hello, Rory– I wanted to let you know about some important news about American Libraries. 1. Our weekly e-newsletter, American Libraries Direct, is now available to anyone who wants to sign up for it, not just ALA members. The sign-up form, as … Read more American Libraries (magazine) more accessible
Here’s a short video on the LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund, which aids librarians who need financial assistance for legal or other needs when facing the consequences of taking a stand for a principle in their workplaces. It’s from the ALA OIF blog.
Public Knowledge, the DC public interest group, has a very informative discussion of ACTA – the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA is an international trade agreement now being worked out behind closed doors, outside of the relatively open framework of the the World Intellectual Property Organization. It is a so-called “executive agreement,” rather than a treaty, … Read more ACTA – Policy laundering IP
I am going to be try to be brief here and state my views on the issue of librarians’ salaries as simply as I can, with reference to things happening right now in ALA-APA and in the world as a whole. At the recent ALA conference in Anaheim, ALA’s sister organization, the American Library Association … Read more ALA-APA’s Living Wage Resolution in the context of a global economy, global famine, and U.S. economic decline
ALA has an important policy, Policy 61, on library services to poor people. This policy was brought about in the mid-90s through the dedicated work of SRRT’s Homelessness, Hunger, and Poverty Task Force (HHPTF), with the leadership of Sandy Berman. The HHPTF is still going strong as one of SRRT’s more active Task Forces, and … Read more Survey report on library services to the poor
Want to know if something is in the public domain or under copyright? Use the ALA OIT’s new digital copyright slider to find out. They’ve had an actual slide-rule like physical one in publication for a few years, and many people have asked for a digital version. I’m pleased to see it.
A favorite debate of pessimistic sophomores, or perhaps sophomoric pessimists, is as to whether our society and its future is more like George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s such a common juxtaposition and so simple to talk about it that I bring it up at the risk of terribly oversimplifying things. … Read more Intellectual Freedom advocacy in a Huxleyan world
ALA Council Report to SRRT, Anaheim, June 2008 ALA met at Disneyland, whoops, I mean Anaheim, June 27th to July 2nd. The ALA and APA Councils passed several resolutions that are particularly important to SRRT concerns. As Council goes, it was a remarkably tranquil meeting and Council III finished its business in record time, adjourning … Read more SRRT Councilor’s Report on ALA Council
In my view, one of the most important documents and position statements that ALA has produced in the last few years was its June 2007 report, “Fostering Media Diversity in Libraries: Strategies and Actions.” This was produced by a subcommittee of the Intellectual Freedom Committee, now dissolved, called the Subcommittee on the Impact of Media … Read more ALA IFC’s Fostering Media Diversity in Libraries, and ALA’s grey literature in general