A new study of public libraries by the Washington Eye School finds that 32% of the United States population uses the Internet at public libraries, and that 44% of people from households below the poverty line do. Unsurprisingly for a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it recommends more computers in public libraries. But the study also notes that 69% of the U.S. population uses libraries, though it does nothing with that fact. However, we can conclude that while most Americans use libraries, most of them do not use library computers. Most library users don't use library computers, either. The study calls for more state and local funding for computers and bandwidth in libraries, but what about all the library users who don't use the computers at all? What are they doing, and why not call for more funding for that? Why not instead note that most people aren't using the computers that are there now. I'm not necessarily against more funding for library computers ...
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Lately I've been very disappointed with the twopointopians, the boardslammers, and all the other earnest librarians claiming to reach out to the public and giving them help wherever they might be, from malls to toilet stalls. Normally they go all giddy over every new gadget and service because they like to "connect" to people. And yet, I haven't heard anything from the usual suspects about Chatroulette. Untold dozens of librarians broadcast their latest inane thoughts via Twitter or their blogs, but none of them as far as I know have taken their earnest librarian case to Chatroulette. The boardslammers like to slam the boards at online answering services, but I haven't heard of branching out to the latest fad. Even the fad followers who normally drool over this sort of thing haven't been mentioning it. Being the helpful and curious librarian you all know me to be, I decided to fill the gap left by my more timid colleagues and slam Chatroulette. I figuratively dusted off ...
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A lot of aspiring library speakers come up to me in the street and say, "AL, what's the secret of a great library presentation? I want to be famous like you and some of the other insufferable librarians out there. How do you do it?" It's easy, of course. There are just a few things you need to remember to be a big hit as a library speaker. 1) Show a lot of pretty pictures. The pictures don't need to have any relationship with the subject under discussion. In fact, the less relation they have to whatever you're babbling about, the better. That way, anyone in the audience who isn't mentally numbed by your vapid presentation will be busy trying to work out the relationship for themselves. Given that your presentation will almost assuredly require no thought to follow, this will give the intelligent people in the crowd something to occupy themselves. The rest of the crowd will be busily tweeting your presentation for the lucky many who don't have to sit through it in person. ...
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Today I was going to write a long gushing celebration of the recent LJ Movers and Shakers, but when I looked at the list it turned out I hadn't heard of any of them before. So, it's on to other topics. I don't mean to keep harping on the businessy librarians, but with all the financial doom and gloom these days they're the ones annoying me the most. If you ever need an exemplary lesson about the difference between businesses and libraries, look no further than the recent move by Amazon to bully publishers by threatening not to sell their books if they don't grab their ankles and let Amazon have its way with them. On second thought, the ankle-grabbing metaphor s is a bit crude for a family blog. Let's just say that Amazon wants the publishers to lie back and think of England, especially those cheeky bastards at Macmillan. This article from the Times sums up the story. Amazon wants to control the price of ebooks and keep them low. Book publishers (who are still trying to sell books ...
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I'm sure many of you have come across the businessy librarians who get excited by anything that comes from the world of commerce, whether it be marketing strategies or job titles or bulleted lists of inspiration. One I saw recently got terribly excited that libraries are doing almost as much with social media as top corporations are. One could shout, "Yay!!" Or one could just say, "who cares?" That kind of wide-eyed longing for acceptance by people who go out into the world and make money is fine, as long as librarians don't do it in the periodicals room and annoy people. The comparisons that I find most ludicrous are those urging librarians to act more like business people and get all excited by "marketing," "branding," "hierarchy-of-effects theory," and the "five forces model." The assumption seems to be that reading a few blog posts and attending a workshop at a conference will make us all businessy. That's not the only ...
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Last week I had an interesting exchange with a library school student who wrote to ask me what I thought about book challenges, "censorship," and other topics the ALA prattles on about. I answered the questions as politely as I could, and as I worked my way through them I noticed yet another flaw in the reasoning of the ALA. One major flaw all along is that challenging a book, removing or restricting access to it, and censorship are all equated. That's ridiculous, of course. It equates some powerless parent complaining that a book is on a school reading list with real censorship, the kind practiced by governments. If that's the case, then we should take censorship by governments about as seriously as we take those parents. After all, who really cares if China censors their Internet? China is about the same as some rube in Arkansas upset about Heather has Two Excited Daddies being on the school reading list. We can all relax. It's always been clear to me that the ALA OIF ...
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