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Gwinnett board names interim director; Pinder asks for apology
Gwinnett County (Ga.) Public Library trustees named an interim executive director in a closed session June 15 to replace Jo Ann Pinder, whom the board fired without explanation three days earlier. Pinder’s attorney, Judith O’Brien, sent a letter to trustees June 15 asking for a public apology and claiming the board violated Georgia open-meeting and library laws by “executing a game plan that obviously had been scripted ahead of time by four of its members and their behind-the-scenes legal adviser.”...

Miami-Dade bans A Visit to Cuba in all its schools
The Miami–Dade County school board voted 6–3 June 14 to remove Alta Schreier’s Vamos a Cuba (A Visit to Cuba) from its libraries in response to a parent’s complaint that it portrays a deceptively idealistic view of life in Cuba....

Griffiths nominated to National Science Board
José-Marie Griffiths, dean of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been chosen by President Bush to serve on the National Science Board, the 24-member policymaking group that oversees and guides the activities of the National Science Foundation....

Vandal sets fire to gay collection in Chicago branch
Gay rights activists in Chicago say a June 13 arson fire at the John Merlo branch of the Chicago Public Library may have been a hate crime. About 100 books were destroyed after someone set a fire on the library’s second floor, where a 1,000+ collection of gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender books is located....

Boycott threatened over library gay pride program
A town councilor in Southbridge, Massachusetts, has called for a boycott of the Jacob Edwards Library if it proceeds with a fundraiser featuring a gay author and two displays marking June as national Gay Pride Month. James J. Marino Sr. made his comments at a recent forum of the town council, according to the June 15 Worcester Telegram and Gazette, which noted that he did not ask the body to take any action....

Insurance adjuster hints UNM fire was intentional
Although the state fire marshal is still conducting an investigation of the April 30 blaze that damaged the University of New Mexico’s Zimmerman Library, an adjuster for insurance broker Keenan and Associates told university officials the fire apparently was set intentionally....

Medway Library to stay open part-time; certification loss seen
At a June 12 town meeting, residents of Medway, Massachusetts, approved a plan to keep the library open 20 hours a week. After voters failed to override the state’s Proposition 2 1/2 tax-limitation law, the town’s Finance Committee had recommended in May that the library be closed July 1....

Cokie Roberts to keynote closing session
Journalist and author Cokie Roberts will keynote the closing session at the ALA Annual Conference, June 27, 8–9 a.m. Roberts currently is the chief congressional analyst for ABC News and is a news analyst for National Public Radio. She is also the author of We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters, which tells stories of the fascinating women of the American Revolution....

Laura Bush invited to AASL town hall meeting
First Lady Laura Bush has been invited as keynote speaker to School Libraries Work: Rebuilding for Learning, a national town hall meeting sponsored by AASL and Scholastic to be held on Monday, June 26, from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. at the New Orleans Convention Center. Lester Holt, NBC News Weekend Today anchor, will moderate. Doors will open at noon; no one will be able to enter after 12:30 p.m....

American Libraries columnist blogs at Hectic Pace
Andrew K. Pace, who writes the popular “Technically Speaking” column in each issue of American Libraries magazine, is launching the Hectic Pace technology blog in conjunction with the Annual Conference in New Orleans. Head of information technology at North Carolina State University Libraries, Pace has been AL’s go-to guru for cutting-edge technology news and views since 2004....

Jenny Levine joins ALA as internet development specialist
ALA Publishing and ALA’s Information Technology and Telecommunications Unit have hired Jenny Levine as internet development specialist and strategy guide, effective July 31. Levine comes to ALA with extensive experience in emerging technologies, service development, and integration of services into library environments. Her achievements with other organizations include creating and teaching continuing education events. She also maintains her own blog and has done several speaking engagements with the Special Libraries Association and the ALA divisions.

Register on-site for 2006 Advocacy Institute
On-site registration will be available for the Advocacy Institute, held in conjunction with the ALA 2006 Annual Conference in New Orleans....

Guide to Best Reading goes digital
The ALA Guide to Best Reading in 2006, a coproduction of ALSC, Booklist, RUSA, and YALSA, is available for the first time as a digital download from the ALA Store. The guide is filled with annotated recommended and notable booklists such as “Notable Children’s Books,” “Notable Books,” “Editor’s Choice,” and “Best Books for Young Adults.”...

Last-minute preparedness tips
Walt Crawford dispenses some useful advice for conference-goers on what to expect when you get to New Orleans....
Walt at Random, June 15

New Orleans is ready for ALA
The buzzword in the city is “The librarians are coming!” Taxi drivers are excited and ready for the first big convention since Katrina. The major hotel chains have brought in additional workers from their other properties to make sure we all have a good time....
YALSA Blog, June 19

Children’s Museum will reopen June 24
The Louisiana Children’s Museum, at 420 Julia St. in the historic Warehouse District, will reopen to the public June 24 after completing extensive roof and water damage throughout the building. A team of first responders and their families will cut the ribbon to welcome the general public at 9:30 a.m....
New Orleans City Business, June 19

Harry Shearer’s New Orleans diary, part 1
After the human suffering and the loss of historic buildings by the mile, what hurt the most in contemplating the disaster to this city last year was the potential loss of the canopy—the glorious green umbrella of trees that offers necessary shade in these most intensely sunny summers. The human suffering and building loss continue, but it’s summertime, and the canopy has rebuilt itself to a surprising degree. This greenest of cities is once again abloom....
Huffington Post, June 19

Katrina fattens up Crescent City cuisine
The whole New Orleans food scene rebounded with astonishing speed and strength after the hurricane. It shot up like a super ball. Restaurants and chefs showed an inspiring commitment to their mission. Customers responded with deep satisfaction and more dollars than anybody projected....
New Orleans City Business, June 12

So many fathers
In his newly published memoir, A Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White, musician Tom Sancton does take the measure of his father, New Orleans writer Thomas Sancton, as well the spiritual fathers he found in the older black jazz men of Preservation Hall who taught him how to play the clarinet. The result is a loving portrait of complex people living in a time of change in New Orleans during the 1950s and ’60s....
New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 18

Walk for higher education
The Katrina Higher Education Assistance Fund is sponsoring a 5K run/walk on Saturday, June 24, starting at 8:30 a.m. at Audubon Park Shelter #10, to benefit nine educational institutions—among them Dillard, Xavier, and Loyola universities—to rebuild in the New Orleans area. The registration fee is $25....
Katrina Higher Education Assistance Fund

City says it’s ready for hurricane evacuation
Joseph Matthews, director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, says the city has developed a sound evacuation plan coordinated with the Federal Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, and the State of Louisiana for the 2006 hurricane season....
Bayou Buzz, June 16

Severe drought puts pressure on region
In a ironic twist after most of New Orleans sat submerged in water for weeks, the eight months since October 1 have been the driest south Louisiana has seen in the 111 years that the state has kept rainfall records, said state climatologist Barry Keim....
New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 15

Scientists are breeding fish to control Gulf Coast mosquitos
The abundance of standing water and hot summer temperatures can create a mosquito-breeding haven. And with as many as 6,000 abandoned pools in New Orleans alone, mosquito experts say the tiny mosquito fish (Gambusia affinis) is their biggest ally in protecting the Gulf Coast from a nasty mosquito infestation....
Associated Press, June 16

Orca to give away books to new YALSA members
Orca Book Publishers will donate new titles from the Orca Soundings series of teen novels for reluctant readers and the Orca Currents series of novels for reluctant middle school readers to anyone who joins the YALSA division between now and September 15....

Carolyn Caywood named 2006 FTRF Roll of Honor Award recipient
Carolyn Caywood, manager of the Virginia Beach Public Library’s Bayside Area Library and Special Services Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, is the recipient of the 2006 Freedom to Read Foundation Roll of Honor Award. Caywood is a past FTRF trustee and currently is the Intellectual Freedom Round Table’s representative to ALA Council. She also has served as chair of the Virginia Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee....

W.Y. Boyd Literary Award recipient named
Nick Arvin’s book Articles of War (Doubleday, 2005) is the winner of the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction for 2005. The award honors the best fiction set in a period when the United States was at war....

Library phone answerers survive the internet
For years, a small band of researchers at the New York Public Library has been tackling questions from young and old, the clueless and the haughty, the vexed and the unvexed, reducing life’s infinite jumble to an answer, more or less. Today, despite the internet, the eight women and two men of what is known as the telephone reference service are still at it....
New York Times, June 19

Newberry Library finds a treasure in maps
One by one, Newberry Library curator Robert Karrow pulled old maps from oversized file folders, each recovered from a treasure trove that had been packed away and forgotten for nearly a quarter-century. The maps show the range of 388 items the Newberry bought for $120,000, getting the cream of an archive of 1,371 maps and atlases that the Chicago History Museum had packed up for disposal in 1982, then left in a storage room....
Chicago Tribune, June 19

IMLS awards Native American grants
The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded Native American tribes across the country $1.3 million in grants to improve library services June 19. In all, 224 grants will strengthen library service for 232 Native American tribal communities and Alaska Native villages....
Institute of Museum and Library Services, June 19

The Library Services Act turns 50
Kathleen de la Peña McCook notes that President Eisenhower signed the Library Services Act on June 19, 1956, and offers some background on the people who made the legislation happen....
Librarian, Jan. 1

Carleton College library trading cards
Librarians at the Laurence McKinley Gould Library at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, have created sets of trading cards since 2002/2003 to publicize their services. You can visit their poster session, “Penguins, Frisbees, and Trading Cards: Catching the Student Eye,” Monday, June 26, 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m., in the Exhibit Hall at Table V-15, at Annual Conference in New Orleans....
Carleton College

Newspaper archive offers free library access
Heritage Microfilm is offering public libraries and K–12 schools free access to its online newspaper database archive. Access NewspaperARCHIVE allows students and patrons to search tens of millions of historical newspaper pages from anywhere in their school or library....
NewspaperARCHIVE, June 19

WLA adopts resolution on regional EPA Library (PDF file)
At its June 9 meeting, the Washington Library Association board called on state legislators to use their influence to restore the EPA Region 10 Library’s budget to at least the FY 2006 level, adjusted for inflation....
Washington Library Association, June 9

Do I still use reference books?
Rick Roche began wondering how often he still used reference books. “There seem to be days that I use none and days that I use many. Not knowing exactly what portion of my reference work involves books I decided to keep a log of resources used.”...
Ricklibrarian, June 12

Cultural tourism is a growing segment of the travel market
An increasing number of tourists are special-interest travelers who rank the arts, heritage, or other cultural activities as one of the top five reasons for traveling....
National Endowment for the Arts

Annual Conference
in New Orleans,
June 22–28.

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