I’m thinking of planning some kind of party for Library Juice Press at ALA in Washington, DC, if there’s enough interest. I am thinking Saturday night (June 23rd). Comment or email me if you’re interested. I’m thinking it would be in the Dupont Circle area or just north of it. Aside from that though, if … Read more At ALA….
Tracy Nectoux, a library student at UIUC, is taking a class whose students were assigned to visit a bookstore and compare the atmosphere to a library’s atmosphere. This is what she wrote: The library’s purpose is different from that of bookstores And it always has been. Public libraries are set up so that anyone who … Read more Tracy Nectoux on Libraries versus Bookstores
This isn’t an analysis of a military action after the fact, as with last July’s reports of the destruction of a public documents archive in Nablus. What is happening now is that Israeli authorities have issued a warrant to the owner of the building housing an important Palestinian library in Jerusalem, ordering him to evacuate … Read more Israeli authorities planning to destroy a Palestinian library in Jerusalem
There’s a brief story in the current issue of The Progressive titled, “Vet Prosecuted for Opposing Recruitment in the Library. It doesn’t go into great detail and is essentially an interview with one person, Tim Coil, the guy who got busted for interfering with a military recruitment effort going on at the Stow-Munroe Falls Public … Read more Military recruitment in the library, and how you can get busted for interfering with it
Arch Conservative Bush advisor Grover Norquist has been pushing the “Starve the Beast” strategy for a long time. This is the strategy that says run up a huge budget debt and then a future Congress will be unable to support government spending. The “War on Terror” is obviously the great implementation of the starve the … Read more Savanna River Ecology Laboratory closing, thanks to Bush Administration small-esse
Bernadine Abbott Hoduski shared this information with ALA Council today… The ALA Washington Office and ALA Council’s Committee on Legislation have started a wiki on federal libraries. The wiki says: The purpose of this wiki is to share and track information on federal library threats, re-organizations, and closings. Based on discussions with members, the main … Read more Federal Libraries Wiki
Sherry Turkle, whose 1995 book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet was much talked about when I was in library school, has an article in the current Forbes Magazine that updates her insights about human alienation in our technological culture. She has a notable ability to take us deep below … Read more Sherry Turkle on alienation in our technological society
Just an observation of interest to librarians, about Web 2.0 types of websites. Two examples of rich Web 2.0 sites are Last.fm and LibraryThing. We often think of Web 2.0 sites in terms of the idea of “tagging instead of cataloging.” In fact, rich 2.0 sites, the ones that do a lot of data processing … Read more Why Web 2.0 is leading back to full cataloging
Steven Bell has an article in the current Inside Higher Ed, entitled, “Good at Reviewing Books But Not Each Other,” about the major disfunctionality in LIS discourse: our excessive “niceness” toward each other and discomfort with open disagreement. In this article, Bell elucidates an uncomfortable contrast between us nice, non-confrontational librarians and academics in other … Read more Steven Bell tough on LIS discourse in Inside Higher Ed
Marin County’s free weekly paper, The Pacific Sun, published a feature article in its last issue about the Marin County Free Library and the broader Marin County consortium of libraries, MARINet. The article is an overview of Marin’s public library system and the new planning process taking place there, which involves public input. I find … Read more Now that’s Library PR
In the area of education research and accreditation standards for primary and secondary education, there is presently a big controversy that parallels SRRT’s fight for social responsibilities in libraries. NCATE, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, has long had the idea of social justice embedded into its standards – the words have appeared … Read more SRRT’s counterparts in education – current controversy
Hameeda Al-Bassam is an Iraqi librarian, a woman who is physically disabled as a result of the violence in Iraq. She operates a small, private library in service to intellectuals and academics. The Alive in Baghdad video blog has an interesting video interview with her, where she talks about working as a librarian under the … Read more Hameeda Al-Bassam
The following is a brief email correspondence that I found amusing. I’m withholding the name and email address of the person who contacted me at Library Juice Press…. I recently borrowed a copy of one of the books you published, Barbarians at the gates of the public library. Preparing the book for Interlibrary Loan distribution, … Read more Amusing correspondence
Paul Catherall of Information for Social Change has created a Google-based web search that searches websites from the international library left. Try the Radical and Progressive Library and Information Site Search and leave feedback here if you like.
Continuing in a self-congratulatory mode, I am proud to announce that I have joined the editorial board of Information for Social Change, the UK-based collective and semi-annual journal. ISC is an organization of the Left, but is extremely diverse politically and intellectually, and handles this diversity in an interesting way. I have followed their work … Read more Rory Litwin joins ISC editorial board
Another example of the Bush Administration’s information evil. Marjorie Heins has some commentary on the Free Expression Policy Project’s website about Guantanamo prisoners’ recantations of abuse charges in exchange for release from custody. The government knows they got the wrong guy, but won’t release him unless he signs off on a promise to back off … Read more Guantanamo secrecy through plea-bargains
I am very proud to report that all four books presently in print from Library Juice Press are on sale at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, and through the Powells.com website. You will pay a little more there, but if you buy from Powell’s, you will be supporting the only all-union bookstore in the country. … Read more LJP books at Powell’s
There is unavoidably a moral dimension to business decisions. To make decisions that work from a practical standpoint we constantly make compromises with humanistic and environmental ideals. It is difficult if not impossible for a person to live in the modern world, even as an anarchist on a commune, without making compromises with the system … Read more Reed Elsevier and arms trade
Media critic and theorist Robert McChesney is spearheading the campaign against the postal rate hike, which has Time Warner and other major magazine publishers’ money behind it. This is from the campaign website: Postal regulators have accepted a proposal from media giant Time Warner that would stifle small and independent publishers in America. The plan … Read more Postal Rate Hike would hurt independent publishers
From Al Kagan: One of my colleagues here has encouraged me to distribute this letter more widely, so here it is. It appears in the latest issue of the IFLA Journal 33, 1 (2007): 5-6. Letter to the Editor Freedom of the Press, Social Responsibility and the Danish Cartoons I would like to comment on … Read more Al Kagan, letter to IFLA Journal on Freedom of the Press, Social Responsibility and the Danish Cartoons