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ALA President Loida Garcia-Febo and members of the ALA Workplace Wellness Advisory Committee have announced the relaunch of the ALA–Allied Professional Association’s Workplace Wellness website. The site now includes additional health resources that benefit library workers in all types of working environments. The website reboot is part of Garcia-Febo’s commitment to support staff wellness. The committee is looking for stories about personal successes, ongoing journeys, successful workplace programs, or useful wellness tools....
ALA Communications and Marketing Office, July 9 |
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The ALA International Relations Committee has issued a call for nominations for ALA representative to the board of trustees of the American Library in Paris. This two-year appointment would begin in September with the appointee having to cover costs to attend two board meetings a year in Paris. The deadline to submit a nomination is August 10. If you are interested in being nominated, submit a letter of interest and résumé or CV by email to intl@ala.org. An ALA representative to the US National Commission of UNESCO is also needed for a two-year term: Submit a letter of interest and résumé or CV to the ALA International Relations Office no later than September 1....
ALA International Relations Office |
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At first glance, Baynatna—“between us” in Arabic—looks like just a few hundred books, artfully arranged in a sunny room on the ground floor of Berlin’s public library. This small collection is the first Arabic-language public library in Berlin and the first-of-its-kind Arabic-language literary and cultural center in the German capital, which is now home to tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. Maher Khwis and four other volunteers set up the library through donations and help from local university students....
Public Radio International, July 6 |
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The family separation policy has separated at least 2,300 undocumented immigrant children from their parents and placed them in governmental care in shelters and foster homes across the US. Timely and attuned intervention is needed to provide children with the support to understand what has happened to them and to help them manage their traumatic stress and feelings of danger. A group of early childhood clinicians and researchers has developed resources to help those caring for recently separated immigrant children....
Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health |
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Mary Dubbs writes: “A lot of us will serve youth who have a parent who is or has been incarcerated. Sometimes we know, and sometimes we don’t. This list of tips from Project Avary can help guide us toward being more appropriately responsive to these kids. The most important point: The circumstances of a parent’s arrest are irrelevant—don’t ever ask. The entire post is copied here with permission.”...
ALSC Blog, July 7 |
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On July 8 in London, the Sri Lanka–born Canadian author Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (1992) was announced the winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction’s 50th anniversary ‘Golden Man Booker’ prize. The Golden Man Booker Live program focused on the half-century of the prize, which is widely viewed as the world’s most coveted of awards for literary fiction. The special award honored The English Patient as the “best of the best” among the 51 Man Booker Prize for Fiction wins....
Publishing Perspectives, July 8 |
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Alan Joch writes: “Morris County, New Jersey, offers affordable suburban living in the shadow of New York City enterprise. Its proximity may fuel aspirations and dreams, making northern New Jersey a popular place to start a business or work remotely. To keep pace with regional residents’ expectations, 38 public libraries in Morris, Somerset, and Warren counties banded together as a consortium, the Morris Automated Information Network, which invests in technology upgrades that benefit the community.”...
StateTech, July 9 |
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Meaghan J. Brown writes: “A major clearinghouse for early modern theatrical information has recently found a new home at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Edited by Roslyn Knutson, David McInnis, and Matthew Steggle, the Lost Plays Database is an open-access forum for information about lost plays from England that were originally written and performed between 1570 and 1642. The previous version was hosted by the University of Melbourne, and the Folger has updated the layout and design.”...
The Collation, July 3 |
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Gareth Smit writes: “On the third floor of the New York Public Library is the Berg Reading Room, housing roughly 2,000 linear feet of archival materials that were donated in 1940 by two brothers, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg. Mary Catherine Kinniburgh is a literary-manuscript specialist in charge of its cache of artifacts, which includes a lock of Walt Whitman’s hair, Jack Kerouac’s boots, Virginia Woolf’s walking cane, Mark Twain’s pen and wire-rimmed glasses, and Vladimir Nabokov’s butterfly drawings.”...
The New Yorker, July 10 |
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Philip Pantuso writes: “In a windowless room tucked into a ground-floor corner of a coworking and incubator space in Brooklyn, New York, is the Sorted Library. It’s a social space for those who find themselves there (by invitation only, at this point). From more than 3,000 volumes spanning all categories, visitors are invited to create a miniature library around a topic or theme of their choosing by selecting three to five books and filling out a card to explain how each title fits into their collection. Its founder, Dev Aujla, wants to use it to promote nonlinear thinking.”...
Literary Hub, July 9
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The largest surviving chained library in the world is at Hereford Cathedral in the UK, where all the books are still kept under lock and key in their original chains. It has been rebuilt in its original arrangement, exactly as it had been from 1611 to 1841. In this video (3:35), BBC Culture explores the chained library with its librarian, Rosemary Firman (right), getting an insight into some of the 229 medieval manuscripts locked on its shelves and exploring how the chained library’s influence can still be felt in modern libraries....
BBC Culture, July 10 |
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Brady Gavin writes: “Keeping a Windows PC running well requires some maintenance. The good news is that you can automate most of the important maintenance tasks and keep Windows humming along like it was freshly installed. Windows 8 and 10 automatically perform basic system maintenance tasks according to a schedule you can customize. You can’t turn this automatic maintenance off, but you can change when it operates and whether or not it can wake a sleeping PC to run its tasks.”...
How-To Geek, July 10 |
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