For several years I hosted Joel Kahn’s “Frankentoons,” a fun fair-use protest site, on Libr.org, and took it down due to a change in my hosting situation. I just received the following from Joel: Yes, the Frankentoon project is back online! http://www.geocities.com/frankentoons Some things should be noted about this current incarnation: I played no part … Read more Frankentoons back online
Kathleen de la Peña McCook has just received the Florida Library Association Lifetime Achievement Award. This award is presented to a librarian whose distinguished record of professional achievements and accomplishments has spanned decades and advanced the stature of libraries within the State of Florida via such activities as risk taking, innovation and significant change. The … Read more Kathleen de la Peña McCook wins Florida Library Association Lifetime Achievement Award
Anti-intellectualism must be at its peak. Nerdy glasses are in fashion; I hope they promise a recovery of intellectual values in the post-Bush years. Regarding the thinking of anti-intellectuals… They think: If they can’t understand it, it’s ivory tower stuff that excludes the everyday person; it’s elitist, exclusive, and probably BS. Intellectuals are irrelevant. If … Read more Brief observation about anti-intellectualism
I urge everybody to read Kathleen de la Peña McCook’s post on her main blog, Fighting the Bush Doctrine of Disinformation is a Librarian’s Mandate. She hits the nail on the head: the key to the our urgent political problems right now are in the Bush Administration’s governance by manipulation of information. She puts a … Read more Fighting the Bush Doctrine of Disinformation is a Librarian’s Mandate
Text from the ALA campaign for this legislation: Next week, to celebrate National Library Week, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) plans to introduce the Librarian Act of 2007. The Librarian Act of 2007 amends the Higher Education Act of 1965 to provide for Perkins student loan forgiveness to encourage individuals to become and remain librarians in … Read more The Librarian Act of 2007
Kurt Vonnegut died last night, at the age of 84. At one point he wrote, “Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.”
Forthcoming from Library Juice Press Information and liberation: Writings on the politics of information and librarianship By Shiraz Durrani Information and liberation is a retrospective collection of Shiraz Durrani’s articles and conference papers on the politics of information. The book documents the struggle for progressive and relevant information policies and practices over a period of … Read more Forthcoming from Library Juice Press: Shiraz Durrani
Erik Estep, SRRT Newsletter editor, has asked me to post this call for contributions…. Fellow SRRTers: I hope everyone is having a nice spring. The deadline for submissions for the newsletter is April 30th. Here are the new submission guidelines: (1) Please submit your information with “SRRT NEWSLETTER MATERIAL” in the subject line. Also, it … Read more SRRT Newsletter – call for contributions
Tom Englehardt (Tomdispatch.com) has posted an article by Chip Ward about the homeless problem and libraries. Chip Ward is the retired director of the Salt Lake City Public Library. (Is it this article that I have already seen somewhere, or something similar from Mr. Ward? John G., please comment if you know the answer.) Chip … Read more Chip Ward on homeless people and libraries
Byron Anderson, compiler of Alternative Publishers of Books in North America, does an annual update to his “Bibliographic and Web Tools for Alternative Publications,” a helpful resource also published in print in the alternative review journal Counterpoise. This five-page document has listings of review sources from many areas of alternative publishing, including zines and small … Read more Bibliographic tools for alternative publications
Regarding the Facebook group, No, I don’t look like a librarian!…. Yes, you do look like a librarian! I am not joining the group – because I think really I do not look unlike a librarian, and I think most of the people who joined that group look like the librarians that they are. And … Read more Yes, you do look like a librarian!
The Globe-Wernicke Vertical File
This is so f-ing typical of the Bush Administration… White House staffers are using private internet domains for much of their work by email in order to avoid the accountability of a paper trail. White House correspondence is supposed to be part of the public record, eventually. Here’s a snippet: “…[I]t is better not to … Read more White House using private email to avoid the accountability of a public paper trail
I think we will be hearing this idea increasingly over the coming years, that the library listserv should go, and we should switch to web-based forums with RSS-type updates instead. That link is to a thread on the Livejournal community, “Libraries.” Personally, I agree, but I have no problem being patient.
Michael Dowling of the ALA Chapter Relations Office has forwarded to the IFLA list a link to an audio version of a PBS interview with Saad Eskander, the new head of the Iraqi National Library and Archives. The interview is about 18 minutes long and extremely interesting. We in the U.S. talk about running libraries … Read more Saad Eskander
The justice department has been abusing a provision in the PATRIOT Act allowing them to issue “national security letters” to obtain information on citizens (140,000 so far) without a court order and with the famous gag order imposed. The Washington Post has published a revealing article by one of these recipients of a National Security … Read more 140,000 National Security Letters
I am going to take another stab at outlining my views on “library and non-library issues.” Last time I did it I was sloppy in the way that I stated my views, and I surprised and disappointed some people who I think would not have been so surprised and disappointed if I had been clearer … Read more Library and non-library issues
The Communist Party of the United States is presently in the news for donating its archive to the Tamiment Library at NYU. As many are aware, this archive was part of the Reference Center for Marxist Studies, the library located in the CPUSA building in New York, which was run by ALA Councilor Mark Rosenzweig … Read more The hidden story behind CPUSA’s donation of its archives to NYU
From PLG’s Braverman Prize committee: Hello – We’re pleased to announce the fourth 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. If anyone would like an announcement flyer, please contact me directly. Feel free to pass this … Read more Braverman Prize call for student papers
I appreciate John Pateman’s efforts in writing a review of my book, “Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library,” and I think that ultimately our underlying motives are similar. But there are real disagreements, too, as well as misunderstandings that I would like to address. The most important real difference of opinion is found … Read more Ed D’Angelo responds to John Pateman’s review of Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library