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Nicholas Fandos writes: “On the night in April 2015 that Baltimore went up in flames, Carla D. Hayden, the city’s chief librarian, was under pressure to board up a neighborhood library branch and wait out the violence triggered by the death in a police van of Freddie Gray. But she had other ideas. For Hayden, who was sworn in on September 14 as the 14th librarian of Congress, the unrest was the test that clarified her values: Libraries are about far more than books.”...
New York Times, Sept. 14; YouTube, Sept. 14 |
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Linda W. Braun writes: “Youth services librarians and staff members are integrating coding into their makerspaces and fab labs. They are using software such as Scratch, hardware such as Arduino, and websites such as Hour of Code to put activities together. With so much going on in this area, the ALA Office of Information Technology Policy has partnered with Google for Education to learn about the world of coding as it intersects with public and school libraries.”...
American Libraries column, Sept./Oct. |
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Lee C. Van Orsdel writes: “In 2013, when we opened the Mary Idema Pew Library Learning and Information Commons at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, we wanted to help students manage their own learning and then have them model for each other what that looks like. We hoped to engage users in unexpected moments of discovery and delight while they were in the space. And we wanted to do all of this in a building that was beautiful, inspiring, and full of light.”...
American Libraries column, Sept./Oct. |
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Kristen Wilson writes: “The idea of an open, central, and collaboratively managed knowledge base is as old as the concept of organized mass information storage itself. The first project of this type was the Jointly Administered Knowledge Environment (jake), which began at Yale University in 1999. Though jake shut down for good in 2007, it helped set the stage for future efforts to develop open, community-run knowledge bases.”...
American Libraries column, Sept./Oct. |
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Preparing for a job interview can be nerve-racking. Looking your best often translates into feeling your best. But if you live in southwest Philadelphia, one of the city’s most economically depressed neighborhoods, your prospects may seem dim. That’s where the Paschalville branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia has been filling a demand. Since March, it has been offering patrons neckties for three-week checkouts. Branch Manager Jennifer Walker explains how the “tiebrary” came to be....
American Libraries Trend, Sept./Oct. |
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Scott Jaschik writes: “The faculty union at Long Island University on September 14 announced an agreement to end a 12-day lockout of professors at the university’s Brooklyn campus. A statement from the Long Island Faculty Federation said the lockout is over and a mediator will be used to resolve disputes over a new contract. While that process plays out, the expired contract will be in effect, until the end of May if necessary. Union leaders said they were happy with the deal.”...
Inside Higher Ed, Sept. 15 |
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Steve Duin writes: “This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki is a memorable graphic novel, a Caldecott Honor award winner. And it’s one more expressive reason why the ALA’s Banned Books Week, set for the end of September, is still an annual event. After the parents of a third-grader in Longwood, Florida, complained about profanity in the book in February, the school district not only removed it from the elementary school but restricted access at three area high schools.”...
Portland Oregonian, Sept. 10 |
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Christie Gibrich writes: “ALA’s Banned Books Week kicks off September 25 and runs through October 1. It highlights the necessity of libraries’ and teen service specialists’ being prepared for materials challenges. No matter what you call them (challenges, reconsideration of materials), in reality they can be a jolt to you and your staff. The best way to handle challenges is with impartial grace and advance preparation. Make sure that you have a solid plan before a challenge hits your staff.”...
Teen Services Underground, Sept. 16 |
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National Hispanic Heritage Month is September 15 to October 15. The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have positively influenced and enriched our nation and society....
National Hispanic Heritage Month |
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Briony Harding writes: “It wasn’t long before Victorian book binders demanded more than just black ink and gold on colored cloth, and experiments began with other colors, such as red in the 1850s. Yet these first trials were unsuccessful, with the colors quickly fading and rubbing off. Publishers therefore sought other means of getting color into their bindings. One way was by printing the color onto the cloth, from wood blocks. Another means of applying color was to use onlays.”...
Echoes from the Vault, Sept. 16
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Walter Glenn writes: “Windows 10 includes a bunch of personalization settings that let you change your desktop background, windows colors, lock screen background, and more. Here is what you need to know to get your computer looking exactly how you want it. We’re going to be talking about the personalization settings Windows makes available at Settings > Personalization, so you might as well go ahead and fire that up now.”...
How-To Geek, Sept. 15
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Susanne Althoff writes: “Jodie Archer was puzzled by the success of The Da Vinci Code. She’d worked for Penguin UK in the mid-2000s, when Dan Brown’s thriller had become a massive hit. But why? At Stanford, she met Matthew L. Jockers, whose work in text analysis had convinced him that computers could peer into books in a way that people never could. The result of their work—detailed in The Bestseller Code—is an algorithm built to predict, with 80% accuracy, which novels will become bestsellers.”...
Wired, Sept. 16
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