Emily Ford does a great job with this overview of library philosophy in In the Library With a Lead Pipe: What We Do and Why We Do It, published this morning. Much of it is a review of the literature in this important thread of LIS scholarship, covering a span that runs from 1934 up … Read more Emily Ford on Library Philosophy
Class and Librarianship: Essays at the Intersection of Information, Labor and Capital. Edited by Erik Sean Estep (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) and Nathaniel F Enright (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology). To be published by Library Juice Press in 2013. The current crisis of capitalism has led to the renewed interest in Marxism and its core … Read more Call for Chapters: Class and Librarianship
Take note of this outrageous situation at the Canadian Library Association conference yesterday. Librarians opposing cuts to the Canadian National Library and Archives were ejected from the conference by force for passing out leaflets. The Executive Director of CLA claimed that the library conference was “not the right venue” for such activism. Read all about … Read more Censorship at Canadian Library Association Conference – Librarians Expelled by Security Guards for Leafletting
Call for Papers TITLE: Informed Agitation: Library and Information Skills in Social Justice Movements and Beyond (An Edited Collection) EDITOR: Melissa Morrone is a librarian at Brooklyn Public Library and has been involved in Radical Reference as well as other social justice groups. BOOK ABSTRACT: In librarianship today, we encourage voices from our field to … Read more Call for Papers: Informed Agitation: Library and Information Skills in Social Justice Movements and Beyond
I also had a strong reaction to Rory’s recent post on “Deprofessionalization and the Library Blogosphere.” Others have made good points about his criticism of library blog-discourse, and I won’t repeat those. The main issue I have his emphasis on “expertise.” I think this is problematic because what is just as important is breaking down … Read more Expertise and Psychology (And a Mention of the Blogosphere)
I want to provide a link to some admirable and important work being done by the Center for Media and Democracy: ALEC Exposed. (ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that serves as a clearing house for model state government legislation written to further the interests of corporations.) The work of the Center … Read more ALEC Exposed, and some food for thought
CFP: Queers Online: LGBT Digital Practices in Libraries, Archives, and Museums (An Edited Collection to be published as part of the Series on Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies) Litwin Books and Library Juice Press Rachel Wexelbaum, Editor Emily Drabinski, Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies Series Editor Contact Information: Editor: Rachel Wexelbaum, Collection Management … Read more CFP: Queers Online: LGBT Digital Practices in Libraries, Archives, and Museums
I was honored when Rory Litwin asked me to write for Library Juice. I have followed the blog for some time now and have always found it a source of interest. As this is my first post, I thought I’d write on an issue that I find to be central to librarianship, namely, the tension between our … Read more Beyond Access
Not to start grandiosely or anything, but I’ve been thinking about philosophies of librarianship as well the current state of the profession. Some time ago I read a little online commentary about the people who get into librarianship as a calling that happens also to be a career, versus those who just treat it as … Read more Introduction and Some Reflections
The Long Island University Faculty Federation is on strike. Librarians are included. Information is available at the LIU Faculty Federation home page.
University of Western Ontario Librarians are on strike. (Link goes to recent news from the Faculty Association.) From the press release announcing the strike: “It is with great regret that we make this decision,” said Bryce Traister, UWOFA President. “We simply haven’t seen enough movement on the key issues important to our members. We find … Read more University of Western Ontario Librarians On Strike
2012 Joint Conference of Librarians of Color Call for Proposals The 2012 Joint Conference of Librarians of Color, JCLC 2012: Gathering at the Waters: Celebrating Stories and Embracing Communities will take place from September 19-23, 2012 in Kansas City, Missouri. The mission of JCLC is to advance the issues affecting librarians of color within the … Read more CFP: 2012 Joint Conference of Librarians of Color
As a friend pointed out to me that The Daily Show has noted, the debate about the debt ceiling is ongoing because of a bullshit problem. I realized this while listening to President Obama’s speech about the debt ceiling last night. People are so accustomed to bullshit, especially in politics, that the default response to … Read more The bullshit problem #debtceiling
At my university, there is a group of student tour guides who give tours of the campus to prospective students and their families. The library is included in their tour, and it is often amusing to listen to the misinformation about the library that they sometimes include. We periodically provide updated information, and the tour … Read more Overheard
McMaster University Librarian Jeff Trzeciak’s recently revealed in a talk at Penn State that he plans not to hire librarians in the future at his library, setting off a firestorm in Canada. (He said that he plans not to hire MLS holding librarians for professional positions but people with PhD’s in other fields instead.) The … Read more University of Alberta PLG on McMaster University Librarian Jeff Trzeciak’s rather open comments
Librarians have responded to the internet and other technologies that have reduced people’s demand for our services in a couple of complementary ways over the past 20 years or so (or more). On the one hand, we have pointed out all of the reasons that libraries are still needed and still heavily used, and on … Read more Turning the Reference Desk into a Reference Bureau
Out Behind the Desk: Workplace Issues for LGBTQ Librarians Editor: Tracy Nectoux Price: $30.00 Published: May 2011 ISBN: 978-1-936117-03-1 Out Behind the Desk: Workplace Issues for LGBTQ Librarians is an anthology of personal accounts by librarians and library workers relating experiences of being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or queer at work. A broad spectrum of … Read more New book: Out Behind the Desk
An interesting library-related paper from MiT7, by a media studies scholar: Knowledge Experiments: Technology and the Library, Paulina Mickiewicz Abstract: In April of 2005, the Grande Bibliothèque du Québec opened in Montreal, a library project of unprecedented scale in the city. This paper seeks to focus on the programming and technologies of the Grande Bibliothèque. … Read more Paulina Mickiewicz on library architecture
I find this quite a good statement of the reason librarianship should require a master’s degree. I also found the video interesting in the way that it mixes media together.
The use of certain library statistics, mainly related to circulation and its electronic semi-equivalents, has taken on a high degree of importance in library management since 1979, when Charlie Robinson introduced the “give ’em what they want” philosophy of collection development at Baltimore County Public Library. Circulation statistics provide an easy way present an argument … Read more Some objections to our use of library statistics