The AL often depends on the kindness of strangers, whether it’s obsessive stalkers who drive up blog traffic or kind readers who send great stories.
From one kind reader comes this delightful story from Chicago: Chicago Public Library's 'Library Lounge' Nights Aim To Make Libraries Cool Again. Chicago, as you might know, is a toddlin’ town, the kind that Billy Sunday couldn’t shut down, and the Chicago Public Library wants to take advantage of that.
As part of a “Not What You Think” campaign (and by god you had better not think of books!), the CPL is heading to local bars to hand out library cards and tell “young, professional urbanites” all about the library. I think it would be better to host parties in the library itself, but maybe there’s a rule against that.
Having been a young, professional urbanite myself once upon a time - at least if you count librarianship as a profession - I can only applaud and approve. It’s a great idea to associate ...
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Reading is Hip
Books, No Books
[News flash: some people were VERY offended this week about how insensitive the AL is. I should put a banner on the blog that says, Sensitive Souls Stay Away.]
Libraries are getting some good press these days. Unfortunately, it’s contradictory.
Take a look at this opinion column about libraries, Free entertainment, for life, by Bob Greene When I saw the headline, I groaned, thinking it was going to be another bad way to defend libraries.
Though librarians sometimes act as if Americans have a Constitutional right to free entertainment for life, it’s never a good way to promote libraries to the people who fund them. The municipal government slashing public library budgets could not care less if people are entertained.
Instead, it’s a stirring tribute to something librarians should be promoting all the time - reading, especially reading more widely than the current bestseller list.
The cult and culture of newness in our society has made us too willing to ...
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The Last Perk of Librarianship
It looks like the ACRL got something right in its Environmental Scan last year. It probably got all sorts of things right, but I haven’t read the whole thing, only a bit prompted by a kind reader concerned about librarian tenure and attracting good candidates.
Here’s the bit:
At institutions where librarians have faculty status, the use of contingent (adjunct, part-time and non-tenure track) library faculty may increase in response to budget constraints and the need for flexibility. Other libraries may see an increase in the employment of part-time professionals, the use of temporary or special appointments, and other personnel practices that maximize administrative and budgetary flexibility.
Some of these developments would increase the number of official Library Jobs that Suck, which would include any job that is temporary and part-time but requires an MLS and experience. Libraries that post jobs like that should be ashamed of themselves, and the rest of the ...
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Libraries and Class
Though news on the Library Journal yacht has been spotty, a copy of the current Atlantic Monthly washed into my hands, and underneath my enormous sunhat with martini in hand I read through the cover story: Can the Middle Class Be Saved?
Once again, Betteridge’s Law of Headlines tells us that no, the middle class can’t be saved. And more’s the pity, because I was always rather fond of the middle class, even though the article isn't really talking about them.
The article suffers from a number of flaws, especially in its definition of “middle class,” which seems to shift depending on the point the author wants to make. Thus, we get a “professional middle class” and a “nonprofessional middle class,” to distinguish what has traditionally been thought of as the middle class and as nonprofessionals who earn middle class wages, so not really middle class at all.
It turns out that the “professional middle class” is surviving. It’s the ...
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Libraries and Riots
A few weeks ago, an AL post commented on controversy in California regarding whether or not librarians were teachers. There were questions from the powers that be about whether “teacher-librarians” were really teachers at all, since they don’t really do the same thing teachers do.
The angriest comments were from someone who insisted that the librarians really were teachers because their jobs were defined as being teachers, or something like that, because everyone knows you can just name something and the naming magically makes it so, like “censorship” and “privatization.”
It seems school librarians in Atlanta are less disingenuous, or at least some of them are. In reaction to the test-cheating scandal down there in Hotlanta, some teachers are being removed, and they’re being replaced by school librarians, who, as in California, are “certified” to teach.
Of course we all know that being certified to do something doesn’t mean you can actually ...
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Outsourcing and the ALA
A recent ALA document called Keep Public Libraries Public tries to lay out the issues regarding library “privatization,” or what most of us would call the outsourcing of library operations.
Of course, the ALA document wants to make a distinction between the two, so they can claim that outsourcing is privatization, presumably since privatization sounds so much worse to librarians.
This is similar to the way the ALA turns a book challenge in a school library into “censorship.” They prefer to win arguments by redefining words everyone knows the meaning to instead of having good reasons. In the rest of the world, we know that privatized government agencies are no longer funded by the public. Hence the “private” part. You’d think librarians would look words up in dictionaries instead of just making up definitions that suit them.
Privatization usually means that service previously owned and operated by the government is sold or leased to a private ...
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