I Love Libraries

12 Ways to Save Your Library 

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece about how to find cheap books if you need to feed your reading habit but your library is dying or dead. In the comment trail for that piece, several readers expressed disappointment that the piece wasn’t about how to keep such a frugal resource alive in the first place. I heard you, and now I want to address that issue. A couple of years ago I had to join the fight to keep our library alive at all. It was slated for closing due to budget cuts. Since it was in a rural part of the county, it was deemed “disposable,” or at least more disposable than the branches in the more affluent part of the county. I’ve always been a huge supporter of our library, giving money, time, and materials (for those who thought I didn’t support the library you should know they’re even in my will), but it’s not enough when just a few people are giving. When the community got together to fight the closure, I learned a few additional ways to help fight cutbacks and closures, as well as ensure the subject never comes up in the first place. Here are some ideas. Note that the more of these you can do simultaneously, the better your chances of keeping your library alive and thriving. Read more...

Utah prison inmates create hundreds of books on tape for the blind  

When Jeff Smith listens to the soft, tenor voice of Tom Black reading the biography of LDS President Thomas S. Monson, it’s easy for him to lose himself in the inspirational words and pictures the story paints in his mind. It’s easy to forget he’s listening to the voice of one of the most dislikable men in the state. "He reads with feeling and with the emphasis in all the right places," Smith said. "With a good reader, you forget about the reader and listen instead to the message of the book. That’s what it’s like listening to Tom Black." But Black isn’t your typical reader of books on tape. He’s an inmate at the Utah State Prison. Read more...

American Library Association announces 2012 youth media award winners

The American Library Association (ALA) announced the top books, video and audiobooks for children and young adults – including the Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, Newbery and Printz awards – at its Midwinter Meeting in Dallas. Read the list of all the 2012 award winners which includes “Dead End in Norvelt,” written by Jack Gantos, as the 2012 Newbery Medal winner. The book is published by Farrar Straus Giroux.

Fifty Years of Cherrydale Library

You might think that the residents of a suburb of information-rich Washington, D.C., would have no great use for a small, neighborhood library.  You would be wrong.  The citizens of the northern tip of Arlington, Virginia, have enjoyed their local branch library since its founding in 1922 and especially since it moved to its present spot in 1961.  On Saturday, July 9, 2011, they came together and celebrated Cherrydale Library’s 50th anniversary at its present location. The standing-room-only crowd that day enjoyed a pre-ceremony concert by a local jazz singer, birthday cake donated by a nearby bakery, an exhibit of photographs showing the library in 1961 and its predecessor buildings in earlier years, an art display by neighborhood elementary school kids commemorating the library’s anniversary, face-painting for children, a display of the best-selling books of fifty years ago, a giant birthday card for everyone to sign, and a post-ceremony airing of the greatest rock-and-roll hits of 1961.  The celebration was organized and paid for by the Citizens for Cherrydale Library, a volunteer group, with the cooperation of the county Libraries Department. Read more...

The White House and SOPA
The White House has finally given a detailed explanation of its stance on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). In a blog post responding to a petition posted on the White House’s website, the Obama Administration clearly laid out what it would and would not support. Any new legislation designed to combat online piracy “must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small.” Meanwhile, Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing, the Internet Archive, and other online media (as many as 7,000) are participating in a 24-hour online blackout January 18 to protest SOPA. More information on the piracy acts is here; see how it might affect you here. Late-breaking news: PIPA cosponsors Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) have withdrawn their support of the bill because of the outcry....
Mashable, Jan. 16; We the People, Jan. 16; PC Magazine, Jan. 18; Huffington Post, Jan. 16; Swiss Army Librarian, Jan. 12; CNET News, Jan. 18  

Rep. Holt promotes WILL and SKILLS acts
Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) stopped at the East Brunswick (N.J.) Public Library January 12 to talk about his effort to try to pass the Workforce Investment through Local Libraries (WILL) Act, which he said would help local libraries assist in the nation’s economic recovery by integrating them in job training efforts. Earlier, Holt stopped at the Oak Tree Elementary School library in Monroe to announce the Strengthening Kids’ Interest in Learning and Libraries (SKILLs) Act, which would bolster support for school libraries with additional resources and funding....
Bridgewater (N.J.) Courier News, Jan. 12

Homeless persons turn to social media at the library
Marcus Leshock writes: “She found herself alone, on the streets of Arlington Heights, Illinois, with nowhere to turn. Today, AnnMarie Walsh has a Twitter following 6,000 strong. Her online diary, @PadsChicago, has spread all over the country, offering an intimate portrait into a world many know little about. How does a homeless person tweet? At the public library. AnnMarie was a frequent visitor to the Arlington Heights Memorial Library, using its computer stations to update all of her internet endeavors.”...
WGN-TV, Chicago, Jan. 11; Mashable, Jan. 5

Schoolbook censorship emerges in Arizona
At the beginning of the school year, as the Dysart Unified School District was preparing to buy more than 1,000 novels for its libraries and classrooms, Arizona Rep. Jack Harper (R-Surprise) posted to an online message board a list of books he thought the district was considering buying that he found objectionable. He said they may contain gay, anti-Christian, transsexual, and pro-Islam references. Arizona schools are also now prohibited from teaching ethnic studies. If a book never makes it into a school library because of public pressure, does it constitute censorship? ALA thinks so....
Phoenix Arizona Republic, Jan. 14; Salon, Jan. 13

60 Minutes / Vanity Fair poll on library visits
Slide #4: “In general, how often do you visit your local public library? As for visits to one’s local public library, they fairly drip long-gone-era . . . and two-thirds of us partake no more than once or twice a year.”...
Vanity Fair, Jan.

Budget cuts force US biodiversity program to close
Budget cuts have forced a key biodiversity database to close, leaving scientists and researchers without a unified tool to access biological data from across state and federal agencies. The US Geological Survey’s National Biological Information Infrastructure program and its popular website shut down on January 15 due to the elimination of the program’s 2012 federal budget. The program’s closure follows a series of drastic cuts that reduced its budget to zero in 2012 from $7 million in 2010....
Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 12

Library Head Resigns As Battle Over Layoffs, Hours Continues

Posted on January 25, 2012 | 9:53 am

Susan H. Hildreth: What Is The Future Of Libraries?

Posted on January 13, 2012 | 4:25 am

City Library's Regional Branches Now Closed On Mondays

Posted on January 5, 2012 | 9:16 am

Erinn Batykefer: Libraries Offer More Than Books

Posted on December 29, 2011 | 4:46 am

Can A Protest Save A Library?

Posted on December 22, 2011 | 3:30 pm