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Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Baltimore Libraries Stay Open Through Riots, Because 'The Community Needs Us' - MTV

All library locations, including those at the epicenter of the riots, are welcoming patrons today.

You can find more than books at the Baltimore public library today,
as all branches remain open and fully staffed in the wake of protests
and riots that have rocked the city.

With a state of emergency declared and schools closed citywide
Tuesday morning, the Enoch Pratt Free Library has chosen to stay open,
providing a hub of comfort and community to all Baltimore neighborhoods,
including the ones most affected by the mayhem.

“It’s at times like this that the community needs us,” library
Director of Communications Roswell Encina told MTV News. “That’s what
the library has always been there for, from crises like this to a
recession to the aftermath of severe weather. The library has been
there. It happened in Ferguson; it’s happening here.”

Reports of violence, looting, and coordinated gang activity have been
coming out of Baltimore since Monday night, erupting within hours of
the funeral of Freddie Gray. Gray died late last week from injuries he
apparently sustained while in police custody, resulting in an outpouring
of anger from protesters who point to his death as the latest in a
nationwide epidemic of police violence against unarmed black men. Read more....

Friday, April 24, 2015

Denying New York Libraries the Fuel They Need - NYTimes.com



Hsia Jian Li of Queens browsed at the Bayside library branch in 2011.

Credit
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times 
 
Suppose you guess where people spend at least some of their time in the city.
For instance, what attractions draw the most visitors?

A.
Major museums, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern
Art, American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Museum or Museum of
the City of New York.

B. Libraries, including the neighborhood branches and research centers.

C. Performing arts, like those at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, City Center and Snug Harbor.

D. Sports teams like the Yankees, Mets, Knicks, Nets, Rangers, Jets and Giants.

E. Natural-world attractions: the botanical gardens, Wave Hill, the zoos and aquariums.
 
Read more...

Monday, April 20, 2015

In This Digital Age, Book Collecting Is Still Going Strong - WSJ

Peter Miller’s Freebird Books in Brooklyn, N.Y., focuses on used and rare books about New York.
  Photo: Jonathan Cramer 
Digital disruption notwithstanding, book collecting appears to be
alive and well, sustained in part by the very same people who are
driving adoption of smartphones, tablets, e-readers and the like.



Take JT Bachman,
a 28-year-old architect with Rockwell Group in New York. He gets his
news from digital sources but prefers printed material when reading for
pleasure and says he has become a recent convert to book collecting. Mr.
Bachman says he has about 100 new, used and out-of-print titles on his
shelves, including the architectural tome “Herzog & de Meuron:
Natural History” by Pierre de Meuron and Jacques Herzog, and plans on
buying more.



“I started collecting books because it is a way to catalog time,” Mr. Bachman says. “I want to keep them for the longer term.” Read more....

Metro Money: Growing Number of New Yorkers Are Using the Library for Office Space - WSJ



By

App designer Jay Collins loves his free office space. The building
features fireplaces, hardwood floors, oversize windows and oak
bookcases. The Wi-Fi is excellent. The research facilities, superb.

The location? Staten Island’s Port Richmond Library.



“I usually find myself in the teen room, because no one’s ever in there,” says Mr. Collins.

The
32-year-old, who schleps his laptop and iPad to the library four days a
week, says he has tried other options, “but once I found the library, I
didn’t have to stay home being lazy, or at Starbucks getting fat.”



The
library may lack the cachet of a rented desk at a pricey co-working
space, but as Mr. Collins discovered, the stacks even offer networking
opportunities. He has landed side jobs designing logos for fellow
entrepreneurs, not to mention a gig designing a clown suit for a
professional jester. read more...

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Workforce Literacy: Supporting Job Seekers in Your Community

MAY
6

Workforce Literacy: Supporting Job Seekers in Your Community

A webinar exploring ways libraries of all sizes can provide services and support for job seekers in their communities.

As job seekers of all kinds continue to come to the library for
resources and support, libraries continue to find new ways to respond to
this essential community need. Workforce literacy impacts a variety of
patrons, including ex-offenders reentering the workforce, small
businesses looking to grow, young first time job seekers, military
personnel and veterans, and older adults seeking new skills to stay in
the workforce. Work SC brings a
comprehensive, yet accessible, set of tools to South Carolina residents
through the State Library, and Jason played no small part in making it
happen. Find out how your library, large or small, can adapt
these service models and partnerships to provide the resources and
support your local community needs to thrive in today’s workforce.




Presented by: Jason Broughton, Outreach Coordinator, South Carolina State Library, and 2015 Library Journal Mover & Shaker




Tweet: #wjwebinar



Read more....

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

7 Classrooms: library as pedagogical incubator - The Ubiquitous Librarian - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Three years ago we had two classrooms in our library. They looked like this:


207_old
The former “training-based” classrooms at VT Library. Photo: R. Miller

These were suitable for training-based instruction but our program
has evolved. Librarians wanted to be able to reach more students (larger
class sizes) as well as utilize many different teaching methods.

We’re
upgrading both rooms this summer.

read more...

Monday, April 13, 2015

April 2015 Former Lives of Libraries

Jefferson Market Branch of New York Public Library

Originally a courthouse, the Jefferson Market Library has served the Greenwich Village community for over forty years. The building, a New York City landmark,
was designed by architects Frederick Clark Withers and Calvert Vaux
(who also assisted in the design of Central Park) in a Victorian Gothic
style. It was erected—along with an adjacent prison and market—between
1875 and 1877 and cost the city almost $360,000.



What the city got for its money, in addition to an architectural
gem—voted one of the ten most beautiful buildings in America by a poll
of ahitects in the 1880s—was a civil court on the second floor, now the
Adult Reading Room, and a police court, now the first-floor Children's
Room. The beautiful brick-arched basement, now the Reference Room, was
used as a holding area for prisoners on their way to jail or trial.
Scattered about the building were offices and chambers, and looming a
hundred feet above ground was the firewatcher's tower. The tower, still
intact, commands an uninterrupted view of Greenwich Village, and houses
the bell that would summon volunteer firemen.

The courthouse was the center of national attention in 1906, when
Harry K. Thaw was formally charged with homicide in the first degree -
willful murder - and committed to prison without bail for the murder of
architect Stanford White (the infamous Girl in the Red Velvet Swing
case). White's firm, McKim, Mead and White had, coincidentally,
designed 11 branch library buildings for The New York Public Library.
White's affair with chorus girl/model Evelyn Nesbit before her marriage
to Thaw was the motive in this crime of passion. Thaw was eventually
judged to be insane and was sent to an asylum until his release in 1915.
This story was later immortalized by E. L. Doctorow in his book Ragtime.



Earlier, in 1896, Stephen Crane, author of The Red Badge of Courage,
testified in the courthouse on behalf of a woman he felt was unjustly
arrested for prostitution. Crane related that he was "studying human
nature" in the dicey Tenderloin area of the city, when the alleged
solicitation occurred. Front page headlines the next day praised Crane's
"chivalry and courage" for speaking out on behalf of the wrongly
accused woman.


In 1909, Triangle Shirtwaist Company workers were taken to the
Jefferson Market Courthouse and tried in night court: a tactic meant to
intimidate the female strikers arrested while protesting unfair labor
practices, as prositution cases generally filled the court's dockets at
that time. As one arrested shirtwaist maker said, "No nice girls go
there." These intimidation tactics did not succeed. The striking women's
spirits were not broken and great strides were achieved in their
working conditions.

Unfortunately, not enough changed for the better.
The factory was the site of a tragic fire in 1911, when 125 garment
workers, most very young girls, died or were killed jumping from the
factory windows to the pavement below. read more...

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Book Discussion History Reading | Video | C-SPAN.org




Book Discussion on A History of Reading

Mr. Manguel spoke about his recent book, A History of Reading. It
traces the history of written communication from 4000 B.C. to the
present through stylistic, material and other changes. He also took
questions from the audience.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

University libraries face uncertain future in a crowded information marketplace | University Affairs

For the record, Ken Haycock believes the future of libraries
“can be very bright.” The long-time consultant and expert in library and
information management said he’s “very optimistic,” adding for
emphasis, “I am a critical friend of libraries.”


But those who heard his presentation at the Ontario Library Association annual conference
in Toronto at the end of January may not have felt reassured. Dr.
Haycock spent the next hour outlining serious challenges facing both
public and academic libraries.


There are some “very basic questions we need to ask ourselves in
order to figure out our future and our place in the information
marketplace,” he said. Top among these questions: “What exactly is our
mission?”


Dr. Haycock offered this rhetorical response: “to organize the
world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” –
except that is already the mission statement of Google. His point was
that “the information marketplace is a very crowded place to be, and we
can’t distinguish ourselves very well there. So, if we’re going to play
in that marketplace we have to have a unique value proposition or we
have to redefine what that playground is going to be.” Read more...

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

The 1709 Blog: The London Manifesto: time for reform?

Wednesday, 1 April 2015


The London Manifesto: time for reform?


"“Fair copyright for all across Europe” rallying call from libraries,
archives and charities" is the title of a media release that went live
the moment this blogpost did, at one minute past midnight on 1 April.
Issued by the Chartered Institute of Library & Information
Professionals (CILIP), it reads as follows:



In a bid for fair copyright laws that will benefit citizens and
researchers across Europe organisations including the Wellcome Trust,
the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales, the
Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals, Royal
Museums Greenwich and the Open Rights Group have called for much needed
reforms.




The London Manifesto calls for fair copyright for libraries and archives
across Europe. The manifesto outlines needed reforms that will better
support research, innovation and growth and will help create a digital
single market. It focuses on the important role of libraries and
archives.




The reforms would bolster the rights of disabled people by supporting
equal access to knowledge. They would mean that libraries can acquire
and lend commercially available digital materials and, with archives,
can continue to underpin knowledgeable societies in the digital age. The
reforms would allow libraries and archives to better support research
through modern text and data mining techniques. They would also create a
more manageable system of harmonised copyright laws across EU member
states.




Non standardised copyright laws across Europe are failing to support the
vision of a digital single market because they currently prevent fair
access and use of digital content. This means that researchers and
citizens in one country can be subject to a completely different
copyright regime than in another country. For example this creates
significant problems for researchers who are working collaboratively
across Europe. ... .”



Organisations will be able to show their support for fair copyright
across Europe by signing in support of the London Manifesto at www.cilip.org.uk/londonmanifesto


Read more...