We live in an era (no blame to Baby Boomers intended) when people in positions of authority are often uncomfortable being authority figures. With a keen memory of disliking authority in our youth, we are uneasy on the other side, surely the object of jokes and plots of circumvention by kids who love their youthful … Read more Reference librarians are authority figures with no jurisdiction
We’re told: “The Millennial generation, with their ipods and facebook profiles, are resetting the agendas for libraries, and aging Boomers are struggling to adjust by creating environments that are attractive to the new kind of student.” Right? I’m not so sure. To me it would seem more accurate to say that Boomers are projecting their … Read more Boomers and their vision of the students of today
Melissa Adler has started a new blog on library history: Library Notes, named for Melvil Dewey’s original journal. It will include lots of postings of old articles and primary source material on libraries from the ages. Enjoy!
This is great: A Librarian’s Job, from the Los Angeles Times, circa 1920. Melissa Adler dug it up from the SLIS library at UW Madison and posted it on her blog. It’s just the kind of thing that I collected and compiled in Library Daylight: Tracings of Modern Librarianship, 1874-1922. One thing I love about … Read more LA Times on librarians (1920)
I neglected to link to this post when it was published a couple of weeks ago. The blog of the Committee of Concerned Librarians of British Columbia has an item on a somewhat disturbing training program put on by CILIP (the UK Library Association) that aims to “teach anyone how to do in-depth desk research … Read more Insta-librarian
We hear a lot about Radical Trust, with the emphasis being on trusting users (of systems, websites, etc.) to guide organizations. I have tried to sound a skeptical note at times, pointing out that something called “groupthink” is the danger when you decide to trust the wisdom of crowds. I’ve always most admired people whose … Read more Interface agents and human control
I am going to be try to be brief here and state my views on the issue of librarians’ salaries as simply as I can, with reference to things happening right now in ALA-APA and in the world as a whole. At the recent ALA conference in Anaheim, ALA’s sister organization, the American Library Association … Read more ALA-APA’s Living Wage Resolution in the context of a global economy, global famine, and U.S. economic decline
ALA has an important policy, Policy 61, on library services to poor people. This policy was brought about in the mid-90s through the dedicated work of SRRT’s Homelessness, Hunger, and Poverty Task Force (HHPTF), with the leadership of Sandy Berman. The HHPTF is still going strong as one of SRRT’s more active Task Forces, and … Read more Survey report on library services to the poor
My generation is called Generation X, but I’d like to start thinking of us as the Silent Generation 2.0, because the world we found is similar in some ways to what the Silent Generation found, and because we are pretty quiet. We don’t make a lot of noise about what our generation represents and what … Read more Please note: We are not the new generation
If you’d like to purchase Questioning Library Neutrality for your library but need to supply a review from a mainstream source in order to justify it, the answer is here. In the July issue of Library Journal there is a nice review of the book that should do the trick.
Just some scattered thoughts post-Anaheim, potential essays that will for the moment remain seeds…. It is surprising that ALA, being what it is, doesn’t have better control of its own documents. Reports disappear… Council makes decisions that result in internal policies that are available only by request from the offices. It’s 2008 and only now … Read more Scattered thoughts post-conference
John Miedema of Slow Reading has posted a brief review of Questioning Library Neutrality. Thanks, John!
John Ronald sent me a link to a review of a British pamphlet titled Rethinking Public Service Reform: The Public Value Alternative, from the Trade Union Congress (UK). The review is in the blog A Very Public Sociologist, which has the subtitle “Sociology with a Socialist Punch.” Sociology should have a socialist punch, shouldn’t it? … Read more Democratizing Public Services
Jeff Lilburn has reviewed Questioning Library Neutrality for the blog LibrarianActivist. His review is careful not to be overly excited by the book, but is much appreciated as the first review of the book to hit the screens, and by a person who understands what the book is trying to say. Thank you Jeff and … Read more Review of Questioning Library Neutrality
SRRT Newsletter issue 162/163, June 2008, is now up on the web in PDF form. This issue has a schedule of SRRT events at ALA in Anaheim, news from the Feminist Task Force, the International Responsibilities Task Force, and the Task Force on the Environment; a report from the Coordinator, resolutions on the crisis in … Read more New SRRT Newsletter
Thomas Mann’s Foreword to David Bade’s Responsible Librarianship: Library Policies for Unreliable Systems: There is a kind of “code word” situation that has developed in the library profession in recent decades; it is manifested in an appeal to a set of beliefs that, while largely unarticulated, is nonetheless socially endorsed without a perceived need for … Read more Thomas Mann’s Foreword to Responsible Librarianship
I don’t often blog conference programs, but this is one I want to highlight, in part because I’m hoping that it will generate some papers and activities that will be helpful to people outside the conference and I want to let people know about that possibility. This is a program that will be being convened … Read more Freedom of Speech in the Library Workplace
The UIUC PLG chapter event I linked to yesterday was a part of a series. This past Monday the group hosted David Bade in a discussion event titled Technology Waits For No One: Thinking About Technology, Progress and Responsibility in Academic Librarianship. David has given me permission to post the transcript of his presentation here. … Read more David Bade on technology and librarianship
American Libraries’ April issue was focused on the environment and global warming, and had an “On My Mind” piece by The Progressive Librarians Guild‘s Elaine Harger: Global Warming and Us: Assessing Our Environmnetal and Professional Liability. This brief article is thought provoking and worth a read.