John Chrastka is the former membership director at the American Library Association, and has left that position recently to start a political action committee for library advocacy purposes, called Every Library. This organization is about three months old at this point. I had heard of it and realized that I didn’t know anything about it, … Read more Interview with John Chrastka, Executive Director of the Every Library PAC
Dale Askey, a librarian at McMaster University in Canada, is the one who has been sued by Mellen Press for giving them a bad review. Here are two statements supporting him, one from the Association of Research Libraries and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, and the other from the British Columbia Library Association… ARL-CARL … Read more Two Statements in Support of Dale Askey and McMaster University
Radical Reference has posted its live video recordings of its Critical Librarianship Symposium in Boston, which was held by the local Radical Reference Collective there on November 17th. Participants in the symposium were Susie Husted, Maria Carpenter, Akunna Eneh, Laura Foner, Alana Kumbier, Ryan Livergood, and Bill Mongelli. I hope they organize many more events … Read more Critical Librarianship Symposium Boston – Live Recording
There’s a passage that stood out to me in an article I read a few months ago, “Why Must We Be Small? Reflections on Political Development and Cultural Work in Brazil’s Landless Movement” by Tamara Lynne. (The piece is the Fall 2011 issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory; it’s not online, but you can see … Read more Information and Power
An article by Josh Wallert went up on Nov. 8 at the Design Observer Group’s Places: Forum of Design for the Public Realm, titled, “State of the Commons: Wikipedia, Flickr, and the Public Domain. It’s a good, though brief, read on the state of the public commons for visual documentation. Excerpt: For better and worse, … Read more State of the Commons: Wikipedia, Flickr, and the Public Domain
If you can make it to the Boston area on Saturday, November 17, head to the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. The wonderful Boston collective of Radical Reference is putting on a symposium called “Practical Choices for Powerful Impacts: Realizing the Activist Potential of Librarians.” It features a panel of “librarians who use … Read more Critical Librarianship Symposium on the Activist Potential of Librarians
George Eberhart of American Libraries magazine has written an article about the role of libraries during Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath: “Libraries Weather the Superstorm.” He summarizes the damage done to libraries by the storm (to the extent that we know about it at this point), describes some budding efforts to repair damage and rebuild … Read more Libraries and Hurricane Sandy
Library Juice Press to “Unglue” a Book for Prospective Librarians with Unglue.it October 15, 2012 LOS ANGELES Library Juice Press is announcing one of the latest campaigns to “unglue” an e-book so that it can be shared under a creative commons license, in partnership with Unglue.it. Unglue.it is an organization devoted to opening up access … Read more Library Juice Press to “Unglue” a Book for Prospective Librarians
The fourth session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) took place in New York City two weekends ago. According to an info sheet in the program folder, it was an “International People’s Tribunal” that “has no legal status, [but] like other Russell Tribunals on Vietnam, Chile and Iraq, its legitimacy comes from its universality … Read more Documentation and Narratives
What’s this Unglue.it logo doing here, you rightly ask? We here at Library Juice Press will tell you on October 15th, or thereabouts. I hope you’re good and curious now. What on earth could it be?
ALA is now offering library vendors their “first round assignments for ALA 2013,” that is, their booth assignments in the exhibit hall. I want to juxtapose ALA’s two summaries of the Annual Conference, one for librarians and the other for vendors: Librarians get: The Annual Conference is the best place to expand your network, build … Read more ALA Annual from 2 points of view
This is a couple of months old now but has just reached my attention. It is a statement from IFLA, cosigned by some of its member associations, including ALA and ARL, raising alarm about a new multi-lateral trade agreement that establishes new intellectual property rules that bypass essential balancing user rights such as Fair Use. … Read more New international trade agreements undermining copyright balance
A couple of weeks ago, I went to a presentation of research projects at METRO, New York City’s major library consortium. The researchers were almost all practicing librarians, mostly at academic institutions, who worked in groups on topics of their choice. The approach of three out of the four groups was primarily to kind of … Read more Research in Real Life
The following is an email that was sent to current MLIS students at St. Catherine’s University in St. Paul, MN, announcing a reorganization of the department so that it will now be a part of the business school. I don’t know if there is any precedent for something like that. In other places where the … Read more St. Kate’s MLIS program is going under the business school
Make Your Own History: Documenting Feminist and Queer Activism in the 21st Century Editors: Lyz Bly and Kelly Wooten Price: $30.00 Published: June 2012 ISBN: 978-1-936117-13-0 Printed on acid-free paper Number 2 in the Litwin Books Series on Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies, Emily Drabinski, series editor. Make Your Own History: Documenting Feminist and … Read more Make Your Own History: Documenting Feminist and Queer Activism in the 21st Century
Shannon Mattern, a faculty member of the New School’s School of Media Studies, has a new and wonderfully wide-ranging article about “little libraries” that gets into a number of issues about public space, community involvement, and the essence of librarianship. (Disclosure: I’m quoted in the piece, but that’s not why I like it.) “Little Libraries … Read more Librarianship and “Tactical Urbanism”
As we’ve been reminded again recently, in case we somehow forgot, the “facts” of news reporting are not actually neutral. Just plain data is part of a political context, too. For example, New York City counts homeless people, in an annual pavement-pounding overnight effort. But the city – despite its technocratic, data-driven mayor – has … Read more Who Does Your Data?
Susan Cain offers a most welcome statement in yesterday’s New York Times: “The Rise of the New Groupthink.”
Arthur Brisbane is New York Times Public Editor, a position outside the regular editorial team that is supposed to act as the reader’s representative. Followers of this blog have probably already heard about his recent post, “Should the Times be a Truth Vigilante?, which many readers found maddeningly stupid. Brisbane was asking whether NYT reporters … Read more The New York Times, Compromise, and the Past
Prophets of the Fourth Estate: Broadsides by Press Critics of the Progressive Era Authors: Amy Reynolds and Gary Hicks Price: $28.00 Published: January 2012 ISBN: 978-0-9802004-6-1 Printed on acid-free paper Prophets of the Fourth Estate: Broadsides by Press Critics of the Progressive Era highlights press criticisms during the Progressive Era (1890-1920) that aimed to enhance … Read more New Book: Prophets of the Fourth Estate