The Bill of Rights Defense Committee is a group founded in November, 2001 that works to protect (and restore) civil rights and liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. They do a good job of tracking legislation that has civil rights implications, and also promote discussions and educational projects on a local level. The thing … Read more People’s Campaign for the Constitution
Message from Terry Epperson, chair of PLG’s Braverman Prize committee Hello ‚Äì We‚Äôre pleased to announce the fifth annual Miriam Braverman prize, sponsored by the Progressive Librarians Guild, for the best student paper on progressive library issues. Below are the guidelines for the prize. The announcement flyer can be found at: http://libr.org/plg/Braverman-08-flyer.pdf. Feel free to … Read more Miriam Braverman Prize – essay contest
David Bade is a cataloger at the University of Chicago who has written books and articles on issues in bibliographic control and other topics. Lately, he’s has gained some attention in cataloging circles for his intelligent criticism of the Library of Congress in their recent decisions concerning the future of bibliographic description. Library Juice Press … Read more Interview with David Bade
The current issue of LRC: Literary Review of Canada has a light essay by an acquaintance of Marshall McLuhan, discussing what the man was like and assessing his influence: In the Garden with the Guru. If you’re only vaguely familiar with Marshall McLuhan I definitely recommend it for a little taste of he was like … Read more Bob Rodgers remembers Marshall McLuhan
We’re presently awash in talk about a great paradigm shift that puts the user at the center of our planning for services. This is sometimes referred to simply as user-centered librarianship. It has been a hot idea for at least a decade, but has gained new power and momentum because of ideas about the interactivity … Read more Dueling Paradigm Shifts
Privacy in Peril: How We are Sacrificing a Fundamental Right in Exchange for Security and Convenience is an important new book by James B. Rule, who also wrote an influential book on privacy in the 1970s: Private Lives and Public Surveillance: Social Control in the Computer Age. Just noting it as a book of interest. … Read more Privacy in Peril: How We are Sacrificing a Fundamental Right in Exchange for Security and Convenience
The New York Times Book Review published a review last week of Lee Siegel’s Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. The reviewer, John Lanchester, distinguishes two types of critics of the internet, those who think it’s trivial and those who think it is transforming culture in a negative way. … Read more Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob
RAINBOW PROJECT ANNOUNCES FIRST ANNUAL GLBTQ BOOK LIST FOR YOUTH Philadelphia, PA, January 2008 Co-sponsored by the American Library Association‚Äôs Social Responsibility Round Table and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Round Table, the Rainbow Project proudly announces its first annual bibliography for young readers from birth through age 18. These 45 fictional and informational … Read more Rainbow Project – GLBTQ book list for youth
In its seventh year now, the Amelia Bloomer List is a recommended reading list of feminist books for girls, that is, books for girls (ranging from beginning readers to teens) that feature strong, independent female protagonists that girls can identify with. Very useful for school librarians, children’s librarians at YA librarians…
I have not seen this and make no endorsement: Arthur and Esther, A Dark Comedy about Libraries, Lakes, and Lost Love…
Diedre Conkling has created a wiki page for keeping a record of ALA Council actions. It presently has the actions taken at Midwinter, as well as the full text of some Council Documents, a history of Councilors’ terms on Council, and Jim Casey’s report on the Midwinter meeting. This is a very useful resource hosted … Read more ALA Council Actions at Midwinter
The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the Internet is the decentralised access to unedited stories. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus. That’s Jürgen Habermas, originator of the concept of the public sphere, on Web 2.0, in his acceptance speech on winning the Bruno … Read more Habermas on Web 2.0
Responsible Librarianship: Library Policies for Unreliable Systems Author: David Bade Price: $22.00 ISBN: 978-0-9778617-6-7 Printed on acid-free paper The three papers in this volume were written in the wake of a single policy decision at the Library of Congress: the decision to cease the practice of distinguishing and collating series through the use of distinctive … Read more David Bade’s Responsible Librarianship
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
This is rather unbelievable. Two shipping containers of records from the Baath Party of Iraq – about seven million pages – are being transferred to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, over the objections of Iraq’s archivist, the celebrated Saad Eskander. They have been in the possession of a non-profit run by Kanan Makiya, an … Read more Hoover Institution to Accession Looted Documents
Report on ALA Council to SRRT, Midwinter 2008, Philadelphia Although we did not get everything we advocated, SRRT‚Äôs initiatives and interventions in the work of ALA Council went quite well at Midwinter in Philadelphia. Our Resolution on the Confiscation of Iraqi Documents from the Iraq National Library and Archives was passed almost unanimously with very … Read more Al Kagan’s Council Report
Toni Samek and other library educators concerned with the declining place of information ethics, intellectual freedom, and matters having to do with the unique ethos of librarianship formed a Special Interest Group in ALISE (the Association of Library and Information Science Educators) to address Information Ethics in library education. Their SIG released a statement on … Read more ALISE Information Ethics Statement
INFORMATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE (ISC) ISSN 1364-694X CALL FOR PAPERS (please feel free to forward to other lists) — The Summer 2009 issue of the online journal Information for Social Change (ISC) will focus on the theme of SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY FOR UTOPIAS. This issue of ISC aims to document 21st century science and technology … Read more Call for Papers – Information for Social Change – Science and Technology for Utopias
Just a plug for a really fun blog: Not In Worldcat. The tagline is “rare, interesting, unusual books and book-like things.” Pictures of covers of said things, with descriptions, and information about buying copies (not from the same bookseller – it’s not a bookseller’s catalog). Great timewaster for when you’re tired of Freerice.