Here is an excerpt from Jesse Shera’s 1936 article in The Bulletin of the American Library Association, “The College Library and its Future.” (Vol. 30, pp. 495-501.) A PROFESSIONAL CREDO Having seen that technologically librarianship has made significant progress, and that investigatory activities have already achieved impressive beginnings, we now turn our attention to a … Read more Jesse Shera on academic librarians’ professional values
Stephen Talbott’s NETFUTURE: Technology and Human Responsibility, the electronic newsletter he has edited since 1995, is back in publication after a fifteen month hiatus. I wondered if it would ever resume publication, and I am very glad that it has. In Talbott’s words, NetFuture is an electronic newsletter with postings every two-to-four weeks or so. … Read more NETFUTURE is back
After his last address on Iraq, President Bush broke with precedent and refused to be photographed at the podium by journalists, instead distributing an official, government produced photo which he expected the media to publish. Some media outlets did publish the official photo, and some published still video captures from the address. Put it on … Read more Bush refuses to be photographed
Library Juice Concentrate Edited by Rory Litwin Preface by Kathleen de la Peña McCook Price: $25.00 ISBN-10: 0-9778617-3-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-9778617-3-6 6″ by 9″ Published: December 2006 Library Juice Concentrate is a compilation of the best of Library Juice, an e-zine published by Rory Litwin between 1998 and 2005 that dealt with foundational questions of librarianship … Read more New from LJP: Library Juice Concentrate
Lawrence Lessig has an editorial in last month’s Wired Magazine about how money distorts the political process, with a specific tie-in to the recent legislation concerning network neutrality: A Costly Addiction.
This post is a compilation of web resources having to do with alternative literature and libraries. It replaces an out-of-date page on my personal site. By “alternative literature” I mean books, magazines, and other written media coming from any of a myriad Left perspectives (socialist, anarchist, green, feminist, queer, or specific-issue-based) and published independently of … Read more Alternative Lit and Libraries
The founder of Craigslist went to an internet media conference where most of the discussion was about “monetizing pageviews,” and made people scratch their heads because his super-successful website has never been about making money and he has no plans to move it in that direction. These wall street types had trouble grasping the concept … Read more Craigslist meets the capitalists
PALIAct is the Progressive African Library & Information Activists Group. It has ties to CILIP (the UK library association) and the UK’s Information for Social Change, and publishes an online journal, Information Equality, Africa, the second issue of which is just out and available from the group’s website.
As you may have noticed throughout the EPA library closure situation, the government’s big justification for closing the libraries has been that it is a digital age, meaning that physical libraries have lost their relevance. We know that that is hardly true, but aside from that, shouldn’t this argument mean that we will see EPA … Read more Reports disappearing from EPA library website
Today is Human Rights Day. Two sites I will recommend: OHCHR Human Rights Day page Human Rights Education Association Human Rights Day page Also note Toni Samek’s upcoming book: Librarianship and Human Rights, coming out very soon on from Chandos Publishing. Also… Kathleen de la Peña McCook and Kathryn Phenix are working on a book … Read more Human Rights Day
ALA Council’s Bernadine Abbott Hoduski, who has been Council’s leader on the EPA library closure issue, has sent us this article from Yubanet, which begins: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is frantically dispersing its library collections to preempt Congressional intervention, according to internal emails released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Contrary to … Read more EPA libraries dumping collections to preempt congressional action
This is from LISNews. It turns out that LibrariansForFairness, the ostensible library group that opposed SRRT’s criticism of Israel a few years ago, is actually a project of the PR firm Rothstein and Memsic, which is connected with Standwithus, a pro-Israel lobby group. The rundown is LISNews, though brief, is very interesting and presents the … Read more LibrariansForFairness a project of PR firm Rothstein and Memsic
The Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) has an Information Ethics Special Interest Group (IE-SIG) that has recently completed a Position Statement on Information Ethics in LIS Education. I have been waiting to blog this for news about whether it is going to be officially adopted by ALISE or what authority it has … Read more ALISE Information Ethics Special Interests Group
I think I neglected to emphasize this… Nancy Kranich’s preface to the 6th edition of Alternative Publishers of Books in North America is online. It’s good reading about the importance of alternative literature in libraries, from someone who has been studying the issue for years. Nancy Kranich is a past president of ALA and has … Read more On the importance of alternative literature in libraries
Thoughtul article in the new Marginal Librarian, McGill’s library school student e-zine: Public libraries: who or what is “public”? This article has to do with Montréal’s new anti-homeless policies (that’s anti-homeless, not anti-homelessness), and ties the question of society’s attitudes toward poor people to library service and the way “the public” is operationally defined in … Read more Circumscribing the “public” in public libraries
The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh District Services has sent an email to branch heads offering to distribute to interested branches 50 copies of the 2006 Voter Guide from the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which the email calls “a non-profit, non-partisan research and education organization that analyzes public policies and cultural trends for their impact on the … Read more Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh distributing right wing voter guides
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which provides data on Federal “enforcement, staffing, and spending,” reported in March of this year that IRS data obtained through FOIA requests showed that audit rates for low income Americans were higher than the rates of tax audits for wealthy Americans, representing a significant change: Restricting the comparison to … Read more The IRS keeping audit statistics secret; covering up higher audit rates of the poor than the rich
This has been available online for a while, but I just recently found it: Language: A Key Mechanism of Control: Newt Gingrich’s 1996 GOPAC memo. In retrospect it is clear how the GOP’s rhetorical strategy and their discipline in using it was a major part of their surge of power and control through the last … Read more Newt Gingrich’s 1996 GOPAC memo
In literature and film, we are drawn into a story and care about it because we believe, at some level, in the truth of the narrative. This requires what’s called a “suspension of disbelief.” Of course, we also know about what is actually going on in the world through media that present us with narratives. … Read more Torture
There’s a brief article in Counterpunch about the National Book Festival, which features our very non-warlike First Lady. It is intended as a happier source of news than the complete disaster we have created in the Middle East, from which news consumers and election-hopeful Republicans would understandably like some relief. The main things that Russell … Read more Are you proud of our “National Book Festival?”