I Love Libraries

Features

The New Digital Divide

FOR the second year in a row, the Monday after Thanksgiving — so-called Cyber Monday, when online retailers offer discounts to lure holiday shoppers — was the biggest online sales day of the year, totaling some $1.25 billion and overwhelming the sales figures racked up by brick-and-mortar stores three days before, on Black Friday, the former perennial record-holder. Such numbers may seem proof that America is, indeed, online. But they mask an emerging division, one that has worrisome implications for our economy and society. Increasingly, we are a country in which only the urban and suburban well-off have truly high-speed Internet access, while the rest — the poor and the working class — either cannot afford access or use restricted wireless access as their only connection to the Internet. As our jobs, entertainment, politics and even health care move online, millions are at risk of being left behind. Read more...

Librarian Blogger's Love for Ryan Gosling and Libraries

Gwendolyn Nixon-Carter, a public librarian from the DC area, shares her story behind her blog http://librarianheygirl.tumblr.com, which is dedicated to her love for Ryan Gosling and Libraries. "I started this on a whim, fueled by jealousy over the public historian Ryan Gosling's blog, and thought surely there must be one for librarians.  There wasn’t that I could find, so I started one just to make myself laugh, mostly. Then I shared it with a few friends, who in turn shared with their friends. The page received 120,000+ visitors within the first two days." 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.

Take Action

School Libraries and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) why YOU should care and what YOU can do!

Every single person in the country who cares about libraries should contact their U.S. Senators in Washington at 202-224-3121 or at their local offices in your state about the importance of including school libraries in the reauthorization of ESEA. ESEA reauthorization, currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), will determine federal education policy for the coming decade.  The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee marked-up (voted out of committee) ESEA on October 20, 2011 without including school libraries! While no date has yet been set for a Senate vote, the ALA believes that it may come up after January 23, 2012.

Ensuring that school libraries are included in ESEA reauthorization means that federal funding for schools would also include school libraries.  But, more importantly, having school libraries included in ESEA is a strong statement that school library programs are considered an important part of the learning environment.  This will make it harder for local decision makers to de-professionalize or cut school library services.

As library supporters, it probably goes without saying that you value libraries at all levels.  But if you are not directly associated with a school library, it may well be that you really haven’t thought much about them and their contribution to every school, community, and even your own library!  Because of the pending vote on ESEA – which does not now include school libraries – it’s time for you to focus your library love on school libraries. Read more...

Showcase

The Librarians

Interview with Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope, Co-creators - The Librarians

The Librarians is a comedy about dysfunctional human behavior, which takes place - not surprisingly - in a library. The show revolves around Frances O’Brien, the passive aggressive and intolerant Head Librarian of the (fictional) Middleton Interactive Learning Centre, a large, modern library in the outer suburbs. Although Frances loves being in charge, she would prefer to be in charge of a library that was in a more salubrious and less multi-cultural suburb. Read more...

News

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

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