The L.A. Times reports that… the organizers of the this year’s Turin Book Fair made it an occasion to honor Israeli authors on the 60th anniversary of the nation’s founding, which understandably has made a lot of people angry. So, lots of boycotts of the book fair and heightened security. Yeah, it’s unfortunate that this … Read more Israel-Palestine conflict comes to the Turin Book Fair
Stephen Mitchell of UC Riverside wrote me the other day to ask, Do you know of academic libraries who have done BI on the War? We’re starting to talk about it and it occurred to me that someone has probably done a nice powerpoint somewhere that we could build on. I asked him if I … Read more BI on the War, anyone?
On this May Day I want to link you to a book (online) that I’m putting out there as a symbol of Library Juice’s opposition within librarianship and the blogosphere: Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. This book, originally published in 1896, was an important early work in social psychology, … Read more Crowds
Carmen D’Avino created a lot of recognizeable animation in the 60s and 70s, some of it for The Electric Company, a PBS show for graduates of Sesame Street that I remember well. Here’s his animated bit about Libraries for The Electric Company:
Report on ALA Council to SRRT, Midwinter 2008, Philadelphia Although we did not get everything we advocated, SRRT‚Äôs initiatives and interventions in the work of ALA Council went quite well at Midwinter in Philadelphia. Our Resolution on the Confiscation of Iraqi Documents from the Iraq National Library and Archives was passed almost unanimously with very … Read more Al Kagan’s Council Report
Okay, though it tends to bring in the trolls, here is another post about something that’s hotly discussed on general political blogs… I’ve been reading Al Gore’s new book, The Assault on Reason, and I have to admit that I had underestimated him, simply because he has been successful in politics without widely communicating even … Read more Pardon me for not realizing before now that Al Gore is really smart
Remember the National Endowment for the Arts study on reading in 2004, the one that noted a sharp decline in literary reading? One of the implicit causes was that computer use has distracted people from reading, so a natural response in the blogosphere was that the study was flawed for only looking at literary reading … Read more NEA study: all types of reading in decline
My first experiment as a publisher was a Pig Latin translation of the Book of Psalms and the Book of Proverbs. I have not been very public about this project, but as the months have passed I’ve gradually grown more comfortable with the idea of letting people know about it. I will say that it’s … Read more Pig Latin Bible
Here is a diagnosis of a certain malady in our body politic: the “both sides have a point” reflex. It stems from a desire for fairness and from the recognition that real issues are more complex than their advocates often allow, but leads to a pathological bypass of healthy brain function. Sometimes it also appears … Read more “The truth is somewhere in between” as a way to avoid thinking
A creative MIT student made a thing out of a circuit board and some LEDs and wore it on her shirt. She’s young, 19, so it’s understandable that she didn’t quite understand how things are in airports these days, and when she walked into Logan Airport she was surrounded at gunpoint by security men who … Read more I’m shocked and appalled that you’re shocked and appalled
The Progressive Librarians Guild has endorsed the Iraq Moratorium, an organized method of protest for the third Friday of each month.
The Progressive Librarians Guild had representatives at the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta in March, in partnership with representatives from Radical Reference. Elaine Harger and Kathleen de la Peña McCook wrote a report on their activities and their experience at the Forum. I think it’s a good restatement of how librarianship and the Left are … Read more PLG Report from the U.S. Social Forum
For Immediate Release July 11, 2007 American Library Association urges Congress to reform laws governing the FBI’s use of National Security Letters CHICAGO – The American Library Association’s governing body has unanimously passed a resolution condemning the use of National Security Letters (NSLs) to obtain library records and urging Congress to pursue immediate reforms of … Read more ALA on National Security Letters
I was tickled to see today’s NY Times article in the Fashion section, “A Hipper Crowd of Shushers,” about how hip and cool younger librarians are now, in contrast to a generation ago. Throughout Kara Jesella’s article there are specific markers of hipness that distinguish the new breed of librarians as superior to their elders … Read more The judgment of taste and the “hipper crowd of shushers”
Resolution on Southeast Asia Conflict Whereas, the stated objective of the American Library Association is the promotion and improvement of library service and librarianship, and Whereas, continued and improved library service to the American public requires sustained support form public monies, and Whereas, the continuing U.S. involvement in the conflict in Southeast Asia has so … Read more ALA Council Resolution on Southeast Asia Conflict (1971)
In mid-April I posted an item about the campaign to get Reed Elsevier out of the arms trade business, which had a link to a well-organized petition drive. I found out about the issue from Mark Rosenzweig, who tried to bring the issue up for discussion on the ALA Council list, where it was ignored. … Read more Reed Elsevier to stop organizing arms fairs
Sherry Turkle, whose 1995 book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet was much talked about when I was in library school, has an article in the current Forbes Magazine that updates her insights about human alienation in our technological culture. She has a notable ability to take us deep below … Read more Sherry Turkle on alienation in our technological society
In the area of education research and accreditation standards for primary and secondary education, there is presently a big controversy that parallels SRRT’s fight for social responsibilities in libraries. NCATE, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, has long had the idea of social justice embedded into its standards – the words have appeared … Read more SRRT’s counterparts in education – current controversy
The following is a brief email correspondence that I found amusing. I’m withholding the name and email address of the person who contacted me at Library Juice Press…. I recently borrowed a copy of one of the books you published, Barbarians at the gates of the public library. Preparing the book for Interlibrary Loan distribution, … Read more Amusing correspondence
There is unavoidably a moral dimension to business decisions. To make decisions that work from a practical standpoint we constantly make compromises with humanistic and environmental ideals. It is difficult if not impossible for a person to live in the modern world, even as an anarchist on a commune, without making compromises with the system … Read more Reed Elsevier and arms trade