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With communities still recovering from the Great Recession, academic, school, and public libraries continue to transform and shift resources and services to meet the needs of tech-savvy patrons. This and other library trends of 2015 are detailed in ALA’s The State of America’s Libraries 2016 report, released April 11 in recognition of National Library Week, April 10–16. The report also reveals the Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2015. Watch the video (3:11)....
AL: The Scoop, Apr. 11; Intellectual Freedom Blog, Apr. 11; ALA YouTube channel, Apr. 11 |
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Sheila O’Donnell (right) knows fundraising. With more than 15 years of experience in the field of development and philanthropy, O’Donnell appears well suited to head the ALA Development Office, a position she started March 28. Amid the frenzy of orientation and traveling to Denver for the PLA conference, O’Donnell generously took time to participate in our “11 Questions” series to help introduce herself to ALA members....
AL: The Scoop, Apr. 12 |
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When Huffington Post chair, president, and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington (right) fell and broke her cheekbone in 2007, she went to numerous doctors to find out what was wrong. The simple answer, it seems, was a lack of sleep. Exhaustion. Huffington, the Adult Author Lunch speaker on April 8 at the PLA 2016 conference in Denver, took the fall as a literal wake-up call. She had been “running on empty” with just 4–5 hours of sleep a night. For other PLA Conference coverage, see The Scoop....
AL: The Scoop, Apr. 8 |
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Rachel Smalter Hall writes: “The Topeka and Shawnee County (Kans.) Public Library has transformed 18 of their staff members into exact replicas of vintage ALA Celebrity READ posters to celebrate National Library Week. The staff created the remakes as an homage to the National Library Week theme ‘Libraries Transform’ and hopes the project will touch a nerve with people who grew up seeing these posters but might not realise how libraries have transformed since then.”...
Book Riot, Apr. 11; Topeka and Shawnee County (Kans.) Public Library |
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Melanie Townsend Diggs (right), Pennsylvania Avenue branch manager of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, has been selected as the recipient of the 2016 Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity. Daniel Handler, also known as Lemony Snicket, will co-present her with the prize during the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando. Townsend Diggs is cited for keeping the branch open in the days following protests in their neighborhood after the arrest and death of Freddie Gray....
Office of ALA Governance, Apr. 12 |
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YALSA has launched its 2016 Teen Read Week website. YALSA encourages libraries to use a multilingual “Read for the fun of it” theme during Teen Read Week, October 9–15, and to highlight services and resources for and with the 22% of the nation’s youth who speak a language other than English at home. This year’s Teen Read Week poster features the theme in the six most spoken languages in the US: English, Chinese (Mandarin), French, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Tagalog. Eligible library staff, afterschool providers, and educators can now apply for a YALSA 2016 Teen Read Week Activity Grant....
YALSA, Apr. 8, 11 |
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Tennessee’s public schools and colleges risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding if a transgender bathroom bill becomes law, state Attorney General Herbert Slatery warned on April 11. The bill would require students to use bathrooms based on their gender at birth. Slatery’s comments came as gay rights advocates sought to amp up pressure on Tennessee Republican lawmakers to demand bills targeting the LGBT community be scratched, including one that prevents mental health counseling. Proponents say the concern is privacy protection....
Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press, Apr. 11; The Guardian (UK), Apr. 12; Huffpost Politics, Apr. 11 |
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Jonathan R. Cole writes: “America’s great public research universities, which produce path-breaking discoveries and train some of the country’s most talented young students, are under siege. The result may be a significant weakening of the nation’s preeminence in higher education. A type of delusional thinking seems to convince American policymakers that excellent public colleges and universities can continue to be great without serious investment.”...
The Atlantic, Apr. 10
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Lauren Magnuson writes: “Keeping up with technical skills and finding time to learn new things can be a struggle, no matter your role. In some academic libraries, professional development opportunities have been historically available to librarians and library faculty, and less available for staff positions. In this post, I argue that this disparity, where it may exist, is not only prima facie unfair, but can reduce innovation and willingness to change in the library.”...
ACRL TechConnect Blog, Apr. 11
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David Gonzalez writes: “Several days a week, Ridwan Sururi, an Indonesian man with a horse, loads books onto makeshift shelves he drapes over his steed, taking them to eager schoolchildren in the remote village of Serang, in central Java. His efforts can seem insignificant, given that a study ranked Indonesia 60th out of 61 nations on measures of literate behavior measured by such factors as access to newspapers, libraries, and computers. Yet he is called ‘the Don Quixote of literacy’ by the photographer Putu Sayoga.”...
New York Times: Lens, Apr. 12; Central Connecticut State University
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Ben Patterson writes: “The bigger Instagram gets, the more complicated its app becomes. Indeed, it’s easy to miss some of Instagram’s most clever shortcuts, such as the quickest way to ‘heart’ a photo or preview a snapshot in your feed. There’s also a way to see your geotagged photos on a map—or wipe them off the map. You can set your account to private, block unwanted followers, and erase tags of yourself that others have added. Read on for nine must-know tips for Instagram newbies.”...
PC World, Apr. 12
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Elisabeth Gattullo Marrocolla writes: “Broadway’s hit show Hamilton is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon: Sold out until January 2017, its cast album just became a gold record. So how can we capitalize on this Hamilton hunger in the children’s library? True, the musical is based on a book, but not many 10-year-olds are wiling to haul an 800+ page, Pulitzer Prize–winning behemoth (Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton) to school. Luckily, offerings for the young reader are not as slim as you might think.”...
ALSC Blog, Apr. 12
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