For many years Byron Anderson has been producing a bibliography of tools for helping librarians attend to the alternative press. The new edition of his guide is out: Bibliographic and Web Tools for Alternative Media. Updates of this bibliography are regularly published in Counterpoise and posted to the web on the Alternative Media Task Force … Read more Bibliographic and Web Tools for Alternative Media
Canadian Association for Information Science: Call for Papers The Canadian Association for Information Science invites abstract submissions for its 37th Annual Conference, to be held May 28-30, 2009 at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, as part of the 2009 Congress of the Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Deadline for proposals is January … Read more Call for Papers: Mapping the 21st Century Information Landscape: Borders, Bridges and Byways
CALL FOR PAPERS The Society for Textual Scholarship Fourteenth Biennial International Interdisciplinary Conference March 18-21, 2009, New York University Program Co-Chairs: Andrew Stauffer, Boston University [astauff@bu.edu]; John Young, Marshall University [youngj@marshall.edu] Deadline for Proposals: October 31, 2008 The Program Chairs invite the submission of full panels or individual papers devoted to interdisciplinary discussion of current … Read more Call for Papers: The Society for Textual Scholarship
Call for Papers Digital Labour: Workers, Authors, Citizens. A conference hosted by the Digital Labour Group (DLG), Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, October 16-18, 2009, London, Ontario, Canada. ‘Digital Labour: Workers, Authors, Citizens’ addresses the implications of digital labour as they are emerging in practice, politics, policy, and theoretical enquiry. … Read more Call for Papers: Digital Labour: Workers, Authors, Citizens
Simson Garfinkel has an article in the new issue of MIT’s Technology Review about Wikipedia, arguing that it is creating troubling implications for the way we view reality: Wikipedia and the Meaning of Truth: Why the online encyclopedia’s epistemology should worry those who care about traditional notions of accuracy. In a sense this article is … Read more Wikipedia and what we mean by truth
MediaLens is a UK organization dedicated to raising awareness of the way the media system distorts reality as a result of the forces of free-market capitalism. Their analysis of things is along the lines of Chomsky and Herman’s propaganda model of media filtering. This month they have published a three-part analysis of current goings on … Read more MediaLens on journalism’s filtering system in action
Canadian and UK readers who’ve wanted to buy Library Juice Press books domestically now can, through Chapters, Amazon.ca, and Amazon.co.uk. Our website now links to pages on those sites for each of our books.
Two press releases in two days, this one from George Eberhart of ALA… Hello, Rory– I wanted to let you know about some important news about American Libraries. 1. Our weekly e-newsletter, American Libraries Direct, is now available to anyone who wants to sign up for it, not just ALA members. The sign-up form, as … Read more American Libraries (magazine) more accessible
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 15, 2008 Librarian documentary to begin DVD sales on website MADISON, WI – The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians Through Film today launched sales of the DVD version at its website, www.hollywoodlibrarian.com. The feature length documentary, which premiered in Washington D.C. in June 2007 and has been screened in 13 … Read more Hollywood Librarian press release – DVD on sale
Marie Benoit is the widow of Gaëtan Benoît, author of the posthumously-published Eugène Morel: Pioneer of Public Libraries in France. She wrote the following paragraphs describing her husband and the process of writing the book, which was originally his thesis for Fellowship in the Library Association (UK), in the 1970’s. —————————– I must confess that … Read more Marie Benoit on Gaetan Benoit and Eugene Morel…
Marjorie Heins of the Free Expression Policy Project has some commentary published on the FEPP site about an interesting copyright case. It’s a Fair Use case that even copyright moderates ought to get riled up about. It concerns a play called Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire, which uses the character of … Read more Blanche survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire, only to face off with the copyright police
Kevin Arthur has posted a few paragraphs from recent article by Lewis Lapham on the education and intellectual life in the United States. Kevin picked out a few choice parts that concern the place of the humanities in the technological age (this being the focus of his blog), but Library Juice readers may be interested … Read more Lewis Lapham on education and intellectual life in the postmodern USA
Here’s a short video on the LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund, which aids librarians who need financial assistance for legal or other needs when facing the consequences of taking a stand for a principle in their workplaces. It’s from the ALA OIF blog.
New from Litwin Books: 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 development of public librarianship in France. Morel was genuinely interested in all facets … Read more Eugene Morel: Pioneer of Public Libraries in France
Over time, Radical Reference moved from being simply an experimental virtual reference service for political radicals to being an activist organization sharing the same space as PLG and SRRT, but offering a different flavor and a different set of political ideas. Its primary activity, however, remains what it was when the group was originally formed … Read more A question for Radical Reference
From the current issue of The Believer, an article by Rolf Potts on Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, publisher of those 5-cent “Little Blue Books” that educated the masses in the 1920s: “The Henry Ford of Literature.” Here’s how it starts: …Selling for as little as five cents and small enough to fit in a trouser pocket, these … Read more Emanuel Haldeman-Julius and his Little Blue Books
Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge has an hour-long program this week on libraries, books and reading. Interviewed are Maryanne Wolfe, author of “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain” (which has some pessimistic things to say about the internet); Geraldine Brooks, who talks about the rare … Read more Some good listening
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO A CELESTE WEST “FESTSCHRIFT” BOOK PROJECT Co-editors Toni Samek and KR Roberto are seeking articles, stories, poems, photographs, letters, thought pieces and other individual and collective memories of Celeste West, lesbian, feminist librarian, publisher, and activist, for a festschrift to be published by Library Juice Press in 2009. Celeste passed away … Read more Call for contributions: Celeste West Festschrift
Former ALA President Nancy Kranich has an editorial in the current issue of The Nation magazine, titled, “What’s Daddy’s Roommate Doing in Wasilla?” Kranich is writing about Sarah Palin’s attempt to censor books from the library in Wasilla when she was governor, and her subsequent attempt to have the library director, Mary Ellen Emmons, fired, … Read more Nancy Kranich on Sarah Palin, would-be censor
New York magazine has an article in this week’s issue about the pain that the publishing industry is feeling these days, titled, “The End.” “The end” is not the end of publishing, but it is the end publishing as the industry has known it, according to the article, which reports on slow sales, CEO firings, … Read more Publishing industry shrinking pains