Two different kind readers alerted me to a “nasty discussion” happening on the ALA Council listserv. I don’t know about nasty, but there are certainly some councilors who don’t like the questions one councilor is asking, or the way he asks them. To get an idea of what people are upset about, check out the first couple of paragraphs of the offending email: Dear Division and Roundtable Councilors: :) I have an honest question for you all, and I am in need of an honest answer from each of you, please: What is your opinion of the ALA Council? Would you say that it is functional, efficient, and relevant to the everyday professional concerns of libraries and librarians? Or would you say that it is inefficient, frustrating, irrelevant, hopeless, etc.? I would appreciate hearing your thoughts, observations, and stories about it. I ask because the amount of wasted time and effort I have witnessed in just the past three Council conventions spanning three cities, is ...
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A guy who writes kid’s books is raising a brouhaha, at least in Britain--home of the dying public library, by claiming that libraries are “outdated and harmful to the publishing industry.” His claims are certainly interesting, which must be true because people have found them of interest. Here are some of his juicy quotes: This is not the Victorian age, when we wanted to allow the impoverished access to literature. We pay for compulsory schooling to do that. Okay, not the Victorian age. Got it. Can't argue with you there. How are we different? Because now we don’t want to allow the impoverished access to literature? Excellent point. Wait, compulsory schooling takes care of that? Can the adults keep getting books from their school libraries after they graduate? What kind of crazy system do they have over there! Books aren't public property, and writers aren't Enid Blyton, middle-class women indulging in a pleasant little hobby. They've got to make a living. Authors, ...
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We have apparently entered the libel suit silly season. Last week we had a librarian blogger sued for libel by the Edwin Mellen Press (which for the record, in my humble opinion, is the finest scholarly press in the whole darned world). Mellen is suing an American librarian who works in Canada in Canadian court for a blog post he wrote while working in America. Now we have someplace called the Canadian Center for Science and Education suing a librarian at the University of Colorado Denver in a California court. Presumably that makes sense to someone. The librarian included the Canadian Center for Science and Education on his Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2013. The CC for S&E claims that is “actionable libel.” Since I’m not a lawyer, as far as you know, I went out on the Internet to find someone who might be. According to the Citizen Media Law Project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society (which sound very official like): A defamatory statement is a ...
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Fortunately, there are people at LJ who do actual reporting so that we get one of the best news articles on that librarian being sued by the Edwin Mellen Press. What distinguishes this article is the quote from a lawyer on Canadian libel law and how different it is from U.S. law: Askey’s lawyer, Brian MacLeod Rogers, told LJ, “In Canada, even in libel cases involving public figures and matters of public interest, the onus remains on defendants to prove a defense for any defamatory statement they have published; its falsity and damage are presumed. While defamation defenses have greatly improved in Canada over the past five years – thanks to our constitutional equivalent of the First Amendment for protecting free expression – it is up to defendants to show that: contentious facts are true; any defamatory opinions are ones a person could honestly hold; or they were ‘responsible’ in publishing what they did.” Moreover, he continued, “In the United States, section 230 ...
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There’s a librarian in the Great White North (or at least McMaster University in Ontario) under legal siege by the Edwin Mellen Press for writing a blog post criticizing EMP. A “faithful reader” sent these links about the story and wondered what my take on them would be. My first take was a double take. Suing a librarian for criticizing your press? Doesn't that seem excessive? The best summary of the story at this point is probably this Inside Higher Education article, following up on the blog posts. The librarian in question wrote a blog post in 2010 critical of everything EMP. Now EMP wants $3 million from him and McMaster for defamation. Oh, and the librarian is an American who was at an American university when he wrote the blog post, but wasn’t sued until 2012, after he had moved to Canada to take a job at McMaster. We can’t say for sure why on the timing, but EMP did sue an American magazine in American court in 1993 for a devastating article criticizing ...
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Last week Salon published an article a lot of librarians probably don’t like: Bring Back Shushing Librarians. It illuminated part of a recent Pew study on libraries that many librarians would prefer to keep dark, and showed a big contrast between the public and an “online panel of library staffers” consulted by Pew. The big news is that 76% of respondents thought “quiet study spaces for adults and children” was important for a public library. That follows 80% thinking “librarians to help people find information” and “borrowing books” is important, and 77% thinking “free access to computers and the Internet” was important. Based on those percentages, being a quiet space is among the core attributes the public believes libraries should have. The next closest priorities are “programs and classes for children and teens” (74%) and “research resources such as free databases (73%). “Job/career resources” got 67%, “Free events/activities” 63%, and ...
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