There’s a new list making the library social media rounds about libraries and social media. You can always count on a list like that getting a lot of links from librarians. I’m not going to link to it because the website seems to exist only to get people to link to it, and I hate stuff like that. If you have the pulse of the library world as I and my kind readers do, you'll have seen it. If not, I'm sure you can find it. You're a librarian. Not that it's worth finding. The website claims its mission is: “List. Inform. Educate.” Because apparently there’s something informational and educational about arbitrary lists of library related things. The site, which I won’t name, claims on the about page that it “is a new, ultra hip Library Science Social Community for Librarians of all walks of life. Our site is run by data and editorial geeks with a handful of librarian’s as associates. Our aim is to showcase creative editorial around the field of Librarianship. Where did we ...
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There’s one story about librarians that you don’t see very often: the complaint that they’re being paid too much. Fortunately, we have Hawaii to thank for finally bringing us one of those stories. University of Hawaii administrators are asking the Board of Regents to approve a salary of $195,000 for the UH Manoa's next head librarian, a pay level that's being criticized as "out of line" and "appalling" by some librarians, their union and a state lawmaker who's been critical of UH spending choices. Naturally, the union is upset. Several librarians have told the associate director of the union that, "We're being denied access to our financial well being and basic resources but they offer this kind of salary to our administrator?" Apparently, “librarians are angered at the proposed high pay for the new librarian, since UH administrators have told rank-and-file librarians there's no money for librarians' merit raises or to buy new materials and supplies.” I think the ...
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A kind reader sent in this somewhat ironic article about that’s supposedly about “mission creep” in public libraries and all the undesirables the author is forced to be around while working in them. There are homeless people, rowdy people, and thieves. Not all these occur at the same library, since there seems to be some compression of anecdotes and reportage about various libraries, but the impression left is that if you wander into the average public library it “could be mistaken for a halfway house, homeless shelter, or federal penetentiary [sic].” I guess I don’t go to the right public libraries. The author concludes: Mission creep invites creeps. Library, which traces its etymology to the Latin word for book, has come to mean free DVDs, CDs, video games, and Internet. To the ne’er-do-wells roaming the stacks, library means a place to cop a free feel and grab a free laptop. When librarians go slumming for patrons, the slum’s problems become the ...
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This is the saddest library story I’ve ever read. The headline is bland: "For young readers, a chance to work off library debt." We could also call it Indentured servitude @ your library. Or just the kind of thing poor kids have to do to get along in the world. The story is all about “creative” ways that libraries have to help poor children work off piddling amounts of fines and “make them responsible people.” We open with a scene of many children reading in a branch of the Queens library. The room was filled with readers, as would be expected. But in Mark’s case, his motivation was not simply the joy of reading – it was a matter of dollars and cents. By reading, Mark was reducing the fines he had accrued for failing to return several books that he had borrowed on time. It doesn’t say how much the fines are, but they’re probably not that much. The limit before you can’t check out books is $15. That’s considerably less than a lot of people pay for a meal ...
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A few weeks ago I wrote about a dispute on the ALA Council list with one councilor arguing that the Council was bloated and useless or something like that. He’s back at it again, this time railing against the length of the ALA Council ballot, another sign of bloat I suppose. The ALA Council ballot is indeed long, with 80 candidates vying for only 36 positions highly coveted by people who want to sit in a large room with a lot of librarians for 4 straight days and be bored silly. The claim is that’s just too darn many candidates to really examine. In an email with the subject “Let’s do the math,” we’re asked, how much of our time and consideration is each candidate statement and proposal worth, on average? Two minutes? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Let’s go the safe route, and say that a proper analysis of each ballot item should take around three minutes on average – some more, some less – about the length of time it would to thoroughly read each statement and then ...
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There seems to be no end to pointless ways that people use to supposedly promote libraries. The latest comes from Poland of all places, according to this article. The headline asks “would more people use the library if it had a water slide?” We can turn to Betteridge’s law of headlines and safely answer no. In the opening paragraphs, we move from an alleged crisis to a really bad solution: In 2010, Poland's National Library performed a survey to determine the reading habits of the Polish citizenry. The results were not buoying: 56 percent of Poles had not read a book in the past year, either in hard or electronic form. Just as bad was that 46 percent had not attempted to digest anything longer than three pages in the previous month – and this included students and university graduates. Why not put these numbers the other way? Almost half the country read a book last year! Over half the country read more than three pages last month! It sounds pretty stupid trumpeting ...
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