Library News, Reviews, and Views
“Close the door,” said the director, as the assistant director escorted me into the office. Well, that got my attention. You know the thought process: “Have I done something I shouldn’t have? Well, at least something they found out about? Did a patron complain about one of the books in the collection? What in the heck is this about?” The next thing I heard was that we were starting an English as a Second Language (ESL) program, and they wanted me to coordinate it.
Central to the library profession is our role as protectors of the freedom of information. With higher education facing greater scrutiny from regulatory agencies and citizenry in general, we have an important opportunity to affirm the importance of freely accessible information. If we seize this opportunity to protect the public’s right to information, the library will honor its role as an institutional conscience.
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) this year was held in friendly, design-minded Helsinki Finland on August 11-17. The stellar conference brought together library professionals from all over the world with a diversity of interests but also, as the conference theme— “Libraries Now! Inspiring, Surprising, Empowering”—suggests, [...]
Libraries and librarians are a regular occurrence in popular culture. From the occasional commercial to television and film, libraries pop up pretty frequently in any format you can imagine. Comics are dedicated to them, superheroes are evolved from them, songs are sung in them, and hellmouths are located underneath them. Libraries are a ubiquitous part [...]
Georgia State University (GSU) Library recently launched a new campaign promoting open access (OA) to the campus research community. Librarians distributed 150 copies of Peter Suber’s new book Open Access from MIT Press to new faculty and campus administrators in a push to increase awareness about OA in general and provide practical information to [...]
I recently read an interesting article titled Make Room for Daddy…And Mommy: Helicopter Parents Are Here, which states, “Helicopter Parents hover over their children interceding as soon as the child faces an unpleasant situation or uncertainty. The parents are ‘over-involved’ in their child’s life.” Although Helicopter Parents can be viewed negatively, not every characteristic is [...]
Russell Shank was undeniably one of the profession’s most distinguished librarians of the 20th century. Russell served 10 years as the Smithsonian’s first Library Director, but it wasn’t until he was named University Librarian at UCLA in 1977 that he and I became colleagues, sometimes competitors, but always close friends.
An architect says that staff-generated signage may not always bring out the best in a library’s design.
INFOdocket by Gary Price
