Library News, Reviews, and Views
John N. Berry III (jberry@mediasourceinc.com) is Editor-at-Large, LJ. Berry joined the magazine in 1964 as Assistant Editor, becoming editor-in-Chief in 1969 and serving in that role until 2006.
Despite my frustrations with The American Library Association (ALA) Council, I voted in its election. The ALA Council’s email list (ALACOUN) has been endlessly repetitious for weeks. It was spurred by an array of fatuous messages from a chapter councilor fixated on cutting the number of at-large councilors in that august body.
To reconnect with them and catch up with their current thinking, we recently sent five questions to each of the first five winners of the LJ Teaching Award. Their thoughtful responses will be featured in this online series sponsored by ProQuest.
Our fifth and last interview: Toni Samek, winner of the first Teaching Award in 2007, is a Professor, School of Library & Information Studies at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton.
To reconnect with them and catch up with their current thinking, we recently sent five questions to each of the first five winners of the LJ Teaching Award. Their thoughtful responses will be featured in this online series sponsored by ProQuest.
Our fourth interview: Martin B. Wolske, Teaching Award Winner, 2011, is research scientist and adjunct lecturer at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Students get to spring and each new semester first with their youth, enthusiasm, commitment to our profession, their innovation and creativity. For me that means they have an edge over we older librarians. We are a bit burned out after our endless struggles to serve through the winters of librarianship, the chronic budget and other shortages that have always made librarianship more difficult and, alas, eroded our professional morale.
The students, meanwhile, believe anew in our core values and carry on our profession’s enthusiastic desire and willingness to serve. They enthusiastically observe and share our faith in the redemptive power of good libraries in a community.
To reconnect with them and catch up with their current thinking, we recently sent five questions to each of the first five winners of the LJ Teaching Award. Their thoughtful responses will be featured in this online series sponsored by ProQuest.
Our second interview: Rebecca Knuth, Teaching Award Winner 2009.
To reconnect with them and catch up with their current thinking, we recently sent five questions to each of the first five winners of the LJ Teaching Award. Their thoughtful responses will be featured in this online series sponsored by ProQuest.
Our second interview: Steven MacCall, Teaching Award Winner 2010.
To reconnect with them and catch up with their current thinking, we recently sent five questions to each of the first five winners of the LJ Teaching Award. Their thoughtful responses will be featured in this online series sponsored by ProQuest.
Our first interview: Rick Block, LJ Teaching Award Winner, 2008.
The joyful Laura Poe began her career at the Athens-Limestone Public Library (ALPL) in Athens, AL, working as the cleaning person. Since that first role, her willingness to take on any position and responsibility at ALPL, her contagious smile and the inspiring pleasure she takes in the library, and her work with people make her a model for everyone there. Her ability and willingness to work, study, and parent—all full-time jobs—are exemplary. The testimony to Laura Poe’s achievements by her colleagues at ALPL signify her as the obvious winner of the LJ Paralibrarian of the Year award for 2013, sponsored by Demco, Inc.
Ongoing efforts by trade and scholarly publishers to demand higher prices for their digitized content and the growing, if flawed, perception that new technologies have made the information function of libraries obsolete have put librarians on the defensive. New devices and methods to deliver the entertainment and information people want have rekindled ancient debates about the mission of the library.
The transformation of this smallest library in West Virginia convinced the judges that it is the Best Small Library in America 2013, cosponsored by Library Journal and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Though it has only a service population of 498, the activity, energy, growth, and community engagement of this library helps it rank with the state’s best and brightest. The library is directed by the dynamic Mary Beth Stenger, whose 20-hour workweek probably means she gives three times that much effort to SAPL, Lost Creek, and the surrounding area.
INFOdocket by Gary Price
