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Joe Penney / Reuters
An Islamist fighter has pleaded guilty in the
Hague for destroying parts of the fabled West African trading city of
Timbuktu, in the International Criminal Court’s first case based on the
destruction of cultural artifacts.
Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi has admitted today (Aug
22) to razing all but two of the city’s 16 mausoleums as well as a
mosque dating back to 1400 during a raid by Islamist radicals in 2012.
Ahmad told the tribunal in the Netherlands that he regretted “the damage
[his] actions have caused.” Read more...
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Showing posts with label advocacy for libraries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label advocacy for libraries. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Destroying History Is Now Being Charged As A War Crime
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Why We Need Diverse Libraries By Rachel Smalter Hall Sep 1, 2015
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| www.nationofchange.org |
Public librarians fight the good fight: we’re champions of literacy and intellectual freedom, we oppose book bannings, and we’re pro-education and public service. We’ve had a bit of a public image problem what with our shushing and our late fees, but we’ve been hard at work reinventing our image as welcoming, affirming professionals who are here to spread the love of books and information. We even have literary tattoos and bookish roller derby names.
All of this makes it harder to say this next thing: Public librarians need to do better with race.
When I recently read about the Napa Valley Wine Train that apologized for wrongfully escorting a book club of 11 black women off the train for being “too boisterous” (i.e. #laughingwhileblack), my first thought was of how many times I’ve seen the same thing happen in public libraries — I’ve witnessed many similar microaggressions against people of color throughout my time in libraries.
The nature of microaggressions makes them tricky to define, especially since they’re often so specific and personal, but I’ll do my best to describe a few of the instances I’ve seen.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
How libraries can compete with Google and Amazon
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| Every kid needs a tablet nowadays. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) |
Visit the Central branch of New York City’s Queens Library at 12:55 pm on a Tuesday, and you’ll see about 100 people outside, waiting for the doors to open. At 1 pm they file in: Some settle in the comfy saucer chairs, while others rest in armchairs facing four TVs and open a newspaper. Splashes of blue and green interrupt white walls, and computer areas are separated by category: job information, adult learning center, and “young adult learning.”
But the reach of the Queens Library extends beyond the walls of its 65 physical branches. Dotting the borough are thousands of New Yorkers logged into their own mini-libraries, using the library’s mobile app to do research for homework, or the WiFi hotspots they checked out to fill in the holes in broadband access at home, or accessing e-books on one of the libraries’ tablets they can take home.
Throughout the country, library initiatives are emerging to keep up with technological advances. And libraries are finding that one population they can serve better than anyone else is low-income Americans.
Read more: http://qz.com/454586/how-libraries-can-compete-with-google-and-amazon/
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