|
|
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
For daily ALA and library news, check the American Libraries website or subscribe to our RSS feed.
|
|
|
Nnedi Okorafor (right), a Nigerian-American author of African-based science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism for children and adults, will be the ALA President’s Program speaker at the 2019 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., on June 23. Her works include Who Fears Death (currently in development at HBO for a TV series), the Binti novella trilogy, The Book of Phoenix, the Akata books, and Lagoon. Her appearance at the conference is sponsored by Dark Horse Comics....
ALA Conference Services, May 13 |
|
American Libraries’ Art Director Rebecca Lomax (right) has been awarded a 2018 Peter Lisagor Award for best design by a specialty or trade publication. Presented by the Chicago Headline Club, the largest chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the awards recognize the best of Chicago journalism. Lomax was recognized for her design work on the March/April 2018 (“In a Virtual World”), September/October 2018 (“The 2018 Library Design Showcase”), and the November/December 2018 (“Good Job Hunting”) issues. The winners were announced May 10 at the Union League Club of Chicago....
American Libraries, May 13; Chicago Headline Club, May 10 |
|
|
Cambria, a Wisconsin village with a population north of 700, doesn’t have a dry cleaners—but residents know if they need an item pressed, stitched, or altered, they can drop off their duds at Jane Morgan Memorial Library. “Sandy’s willing to take a look at anything, from mending pants to replacing zippers to sewing buttons on a shirt or pants,” says Director Jennifer Tallman about Sandra Vardell, a former board member who volunteers one Saturday per month to tackle the town’s toughest tailoring....
American Libraries Bookend, May |
|
Peter Langella writes: “I’m one of the advisors for my school’s Racial Alliance Committee, and earlier this year my library was the target of racist and anti-Semitic writing, drawing, and graffiti. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that my library is not—and never has been—a safe space for all students. It took an overtly racist act for me to move beyond my progressive and intellectual ideals about race, diversity, inclusion, and equity and turn them into proactive practice. So far, this is taking two forms: reading and curriculum, and normalizing conversations.”...
Knowledge Quest blog, May 13 |
|
|
Legislation allowing libraries to stock and administer opioid overdose drugs is on pace to reach the governor’s desk by June. The state Senate Health Policy Committee approved four bills on May 9. The committee’s chairman, state Sen. Curt VanderWall (R-Ludington) says libraries have become an unlikely front in the opioid epidemic as addicts often seek shelter in public libraries. One of the bills making its way through the legislature would give liability protection to library staff members if they administer the drug to someone who’s overdosing....
Michigan Radio, May 11; July 25, Oct. 24, 2018; American Libraries, June 21, 2017 |
|
For the 15th consecutive year, there are nesting peregrine falcons at Evanston (Ill.) Public Library. The two falcons currently nesting on the library’s roof are sitting on a total of four eggs, according to local falcon watchers. They are the same pair that has settled on the library rooftop for three years running. Squawker, the male falcon, hatched in 2003 and first was identified on the library scrape in 2007, said Deborah Cohen, who founded Evanston Peregrine Falcon Watch in 2007. The female falcon appears to be Fay, who has returned for her third year in a row. The library hosts a Falcon Cam on its website....
Evanston (Ill.) Review, May 11 |
|
Corey Hutchins writes: “A late-night debate in a sparsely attended city council chamber in Colorado on May 7 opened a new front in the national conversation about how to sustain local news. Voters in Longmont could be asked to consider new taxes to fund a library district. Roughly a dozen residents are pushing to explore the library district to include some form of community news component. ‘A thing like a modern library can fund news,’ said W. Vito Montone, who is helping organize the project. ‘It’s just a function that belongs in modern information.’”...
Columbia Journalism Review, May 10 |
|
Lesley Farmer writes: “Academic librarians have begun to use an embedded model as a way to deepen their connection with instructors and offer more systematic collection development and instruction. They are focusing more on their partnerships with course instructors. Through such partnerships, the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) literacy can be tracked from the process of course development to the assessment of students’ final projects. One model that captures the idea of expertise is TPACK: Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge.”...
Educause Review, May 9 |
|
|
Carl Malamud believes in open access to government records, and he has spent more than a decade putting them online. You might think states would welcome the help. But when Malamud’s group posted the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, the state sued for copyright infringement. Providing public access to the state’s laws and related legal materials, Georgia’s lawyers said, was part of a “strategy of terrorism.” A federal appeals court ruled against the state, which has asked the Supreme Court to step in. On May 10, Malamud’s group, Public.Resource.Org, said the issue is whether citizens can have access to “the raw materials of our democracy.”...
New York Times, May 13 |
|
Aida Edemariam’s The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History, a biography of her grandmother who was born in northern Ethiopia more than 100 years ago and married at the age of 8, has won the £10,000 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. Given to a work of literature that best evokes the “spirit of a place,” the award counts Edmund de Waal’s The Hare With Amber Eyes and Alan Johnson’s This Boy among its former winners. Prize judge and novelist Michèle Roberts said Edemariam’s “original form and newly minted language create a strong, delicate structure embodying her grandmother’s spirit and will to survive.”...
The Guardian (UK), May 13 |
|
|
Irish author Sally Rooney’s Normal People won the 2019 Book of the Year award on May 13 at the British Book Awards ceremony in London. Leila Slimani’s Lullaby won in the Debut Fiction category, while Michelle Obama’s Becoming secured two wins: Nonfiction Narrative Book of the Year and Audiobook of the Year. David Walliams’s mammoth-seller The Ice Monster (illustrated by Tony Ross) took Children’s Fiction Book of the Year. Thriller writer Lee Child was named Author of the Year, while Judith Kerr was presented with Illustrator of the Year at the awards, known in the trade as the “Nibbies.”...
The Bookseller (UK), May 13 |
|
Emily Temple writes: “There are as many different author photos as there are authors (naturally), but if you look at a lot of them, as I do in my line of work, you begin to notice some trends. Some are good. Some are perplexing. Some are straightforward, while others are more mysterious. Here, I attempt to create a taxonomy of some of the most common versions: the prominent hands, the self-hugging, the bend-and-clasp, the animal accompaniment, the looking mysteriously away, the confrontational, the full length and living live, the passport photo, and the oozing luxurious mystery.”...
Literary Hub, May 10 |
AL Direct is a free electronic newsletter emailed every Tuesday and Friday to personal members of the American Library Association.
Editor, AL Direct: George M. Eberhart, geberhart@ala.org
|
Send news and feedback: aldirect@ala.org
Direct ad inquiries to: Michael Stack, mstack@ala.org
AL Direct FAQ: americanlibrariesmagazine.org/al-direct
All links outside the ALA website
are provided for informational purposes only. Questions about the
content of any external site should be addressed to the administrator of
that site.
AL Direct will not sell your email to outside parties, but your email may be shared with advertisers in this newsletter should you express interest in their products by clicking on their ads or content. If the advertisers choose to communicate with you by email, they are obligated to provide you with an opportunity to opt-out from future emails in compliance with the CAN-SPAM act of 2003 and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation of 2018. Read the ALA privacy policy.
American Libraries
50 E. Huron St.
Chicago, IL 60611
800-545-2433, ext. 4216
ISSN 1559-369X
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
