ALA Council passed a resolution on the crisis in Kenya, focusing on the issue of press freedoms. The resolution is below. One thing that helped sway Council to pass the resolution was news of a request for international support from the Kenyan library community. It is worth reading the views of Esther Obachi, National Secretary … Read more Kenya
Celeste West was a pioneering radical librarian whose works still inspire alternative minded librarians, especially anarchist librarians, today. She was one of the founders of the Bay Area Reference Center, Booklegger Press, Booklegger Magazine, Synergy Magazine, and one of the editors of Revolting Librarians. She died on January 3rd in San Francisco. The San Francisco … Read more Celeste West passes on
Madeline Kripke is someone I’ve known since I was a child, because she is my mother’s best friend from college. Only since becoming a librarian have I learned how important she is in the circles of lexicography and book collecting. Madeline has what is possibly the premiere collection of dictionaries in English, and it focuses … Read more Madeline Kripke
Library Juice readers, I’ve had the opportunity to interview Christopher Klim, an author and editor and an advocate for independent publishing, about an award he has founded for the independent press, the Hoffer Award. Mr. Klim, would you tell Library Juice readers a bit about yourself, your company, and the Hoffer Award? Christopher Klim This … Read more Interview with Christopher Klim on the Eric Hoffer Award
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
This was just covered in the Chronicle of Higher Education daily email, with a link to a post in Ars Technica, a blog about technology. Doris Lessing delivered her Nobel Prize acceptance speech last week (not able to attend personally). It is about the contrast between the affluent North and the poor South, particularly Zimbabwe, … Read more Doris Lessing critical of the influences of technology, in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech
CUPE 391, the union representing Vancouver, BC’s striking library workers, has posted a video of former ALA President Mitch Freedman’s supportive speech before them on October 24th. Mitch took a detour from a visit to Seattle and drove up to Vancouver to personally support these workers. The video is lengthy and interesting. The first part … Read more Mitch Freedman – video of speech before striking Vancouver librarians
This is good news. Toni Samek, the subject of the last post here, has been picked for the first annual Library Journal Teaching Award. Read the article byLJ’s John N. Berry III….
The BCLA IFC blog has an interview with Toni Samek, who is a very progressive LIS professor at the University Alberta. Toni writes and teaches on topics in critical librarianship, and had a book published earlier this year from Chandos Press: Librarianship and Human Rights: A Twenty-First Century Guide. The interview at the BCLA IFC … Read more Interview with Toni Samek
Peter Suber is a major leader in the Open Access movement. (His Open Access News is an indispensible source – extremely detailed and up to date.) Today Richard Poynder of the Open and Shut? blog gives us a nice biographical post on Suber followed by an interview (part of his Basement Interviews series). Thanks to … Read more All about Peter Suber
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
Kathleen de la Peña McCook just pointed me to a very interesting Master’s Thesis by Carla Valetich: The Response of Socially Aware Librarians to National Crisis: A Case Study of Selected Electronic Mail from the Social Responsibilities Round Table, September 2001 – July 2002. The abstract says: At the time of the attacks on September … Read more The Response of Socially Aware Librarians to National Crisis…
Readers who speak French, you probably already know you are favored here. So for your special benefit, here is a link to a very enjoyable podcast from the radio show “Le meilleur des mondes,” from Swiss station Espace 2. It is an interview with the literary historian Jean Marie Goulemot, about his love for libraries. … Read more French podcast on libraries
What is ALA-APA? It is the ALA Allied Professional Association. It was created a few years ago because the restrictions of ALA’s 501(c)(3) tax status. ALA-APA has a different tax status, which allows it to promote the welfare of a professional group, and not just the public interest. (That is the basic distinction in the … Read more ALA-APA
Elaine Harger, outgoing coordinator of the ALA Social Responsibilities Round Table, compiled a list of resolutions by ALA Council on the War on Terror, for distribution to congressional offices on Tuesday, which was a day of lobbying during the ALA Conference in Washington, DC. The list is online in PDF form, and also here: American … Read more American Library Association statements re: the “War on Terror”
From the introduction of the forthcoming Eugène Morel: pioneer of public libraries in France, by Gaëtan Benoît: This study is a critical account of the works of Eugène Morel (1869-1934), a French Librarian who, along the lines of such eminent public library pioneers as Edward Edwards and Melvil Dewey, made a remarkable contribution towards the … Read more Eugène Morel: pioneer of public libraries in France (forthcoming)
Hameeda Al-Bassam is an Iraqi librarian, a woman who is physically disabled as a result of the violence in Iraq. She operates a small, private library in service to intellectuals and academics. The Alive in Baghdad video blog has an interesting video interview with her, where she talks about working as a librarian under the … Read more Hameeda Al-Bassam
Continuing in a self-congratulatory mode, I am proud to announce that I have joined the editorial board of Information for Social Change, the UK-based collective and semi-annual journal. ISC is an organization of the Left, but is extremely diverse politically and intellectually, and handles this diversity in an interesting way. I have followed their work … Read more Rory Litwin joins ISC editorial board
For several years I hosted Joel Kahn’s “Frankentoons,” a fun fair-use protest site, on Libr.org, and took it down due to a change in my hosting situation. I just received the following from Joel: Yes, the Frankentoon project is back online! http://www.geocities.com/frankentoons Some things should be noted about this current incarnation: I played no part … Read more Frankentoons back online
Kathleen de la Peña McCook has just received the Florida Library Association Lifetime Achievement Award. This award is presented to a librarian whose distinguished record of professional achievements and accomplishments has spanned decades and advanced the stature of libraries within the State of Florida via such activities as risk taking, innovation and significant change. The … Read more Kathleen de la Peña McCook wins Florida Library Association Lifetime Achievement Award