7 statements library professionals should rethink in 2019

Public libraries | Library services | Library advocacy | Best practices | Access

by Jane Cowell and Ian Anstice | Princh

 

Another year has ended and now it is a great time for library professionals to look back at their activity and plan for 2019 with a fresh view.

Another year has ended and now it is a great time for #library professionals to look back at their activity and plan for 2019 with a fresh view. Click To Tweet

  There are many things that libraries got attached to in their long history such as fines, the library card, the Dewey classification and many other things that librarians have tested: the switch of focus from books to other activities, the removal of quiet zones and more. Some of them are not that successful anymore or still need more time to see the actual results.

To get more insights about a few statements library professionals should rethink in 2019, we have talked with two library experts for their insights and advice: Ian Anstice, editor of Public Libraries News (United Kingdom) and Jane Cowell, Chief Executive Officer at Yarra Plenty Regional Library (Australia). Here is what they said: Read more...

The Hunt for the Nazi Loot Still Sitting on Library Shelves

Nazi Loot | Stolen books | Holocaust | Jewish libraries

The Nazis left the task of creating inventories for the millions of books they seized to a special task force, members of which are seen here in Estonia.CreditCreditYad Vashem Photo Archives

 

By Milton Esterow

• Jan. 14, 2019

 

The hunt for the millions of books stolen by the Nazis during World War II has been pursued quietly and diligently for decades, but it has been largely ignored, even as the search for lost art drew headlines. The plundered volumes seldom carried the same glamour as the looted paintings, which were often masterpieces worth millions of dollars.

But recently, with little fanfare, the search for the books has intensified, driven by researchers in America and Europe who have developed a road map of sorts to track the stolen books, many of which are still hiding in plain sight on library shelves throughout Europe.

Their work has been aided by newly opened archives, the internet, and the growing number of European librarians who have made such searches a priority, researchers say.

“People have looked away for so long,” said Anders Rydell, author of “The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance,” “but I don’t think they can anymore.”  Read more...

 

Bibliotherapy: how reading and writing have been healing trauma since World War I

Bibliotherapy | War trauma | World War I | Wounded veterans

15 November 2018

Longshaw Lodge Convalescent Home for Wounded Soldiers, Grindleford, near Sheffield. Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums

Bibliotherapy – the idea that reading can have a beneficial effect on mental health – has undergone a resurgence. There is mounting clinical evidence that reading can, for example, help people overcome loneliness and social exclusion. One scheme in Coventry allows health professionals to prescribe books to their patients from a list drawn up by mental health experts. 

Even as public library services across Britain are cut back, the healing potential of books is increasingly recognised.

The idea of the healing book has a long history. Key concepts were forged in the crucible of World War I, as nurses, doctors and volunteer librarians grappled with treating soldiers’ minds as well as bodies. The word “bibliotherapy” itself was coined in 1914, by American author and minister Samuel McChord Crothers. Helen Mary Gaskell (1853-1940), a pioneer of “literary caregiving”, wrote about the beginnings of her war library in 1918:

Surely many of us lay awake the night after the declaration of War, debating … how best we could help in the coming struggle … Into the mind of the writer came, like a flash, the necessity of providing literature for the sick and wounded.

The well-connected Gaskell took her idea to the medical and governmental authorities, gaining official approval. Lady Battersea, a close friend, offered her a Marble Arch mansion to store donated books, and The Times carried multiple successful public appeals. As Gaskell wrote:

What was our astonishment when not only parcels and boxes, but whole libraries poured in. Day after day vans stood unloading at the door.

Read more...

Remembering the Howard University Librarian Who Decolonized the Way Books Were Catalogued

African-American History | Cataloguing |Racial bias

by Zita Cristina Nunes

American Historical Association's Perspectives on History

Smithsonian.com

November 26, 2018

Dorothy Porter challenged the racial bias in the Dewey Decimal System, putting black scholars alongside white colleagues 

 

 

 

In a 1995 interview with Linton Weeks of the Washington Post, the Howard University librarian, collector and self-described “bibliomaniac” Dorothy Porter reflected on the focus of her 43-year career: “The only rewarding thing for me is to bring to light information that no one knows. What’s the point of rehashing the same old thing?” For Porter, this mission involved not only collecting and preserving a wide range of materials related to the global black experience, but also addressing how these works demanded new and specific qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to collect, assess, and catalog them.

As some librarians today contemplate ways to decolonize libraries—for example, to make them less reflective of Eurocentric ways of organizing knowledge—it is instructive to look to Porter as a progenitor of the movement. Starting with little, she used her tenacious curiosity to build one of the world’s leading repositories for black history and culture: Howard’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. But she also brought critical acumen to bear on the way the center’s materials were cataloged, rejecting commonly taught methods as too reflective of the way whites thought of the world.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/remembering-howard-university-librarian-who-decolonized-way-books-were-catalogued-180970890/#pY8YYwIXYHSpxhcc.99

 

 

TBLC Talk: Andrew Beman-Cavallaro on Mentoring in Librarianship – March 2015

Mentoring | Librarianship | Professional advice | Career Development

Andrew Beman-Cavallaro, Associate Director of Libraries at Pasco-Hernando State College Spring Hill Campus, talks about Mentoring in Librarianship in this session of TBLC Talks.

Open Invitation: Fall Reception of the New York Library Club, Inc. Thursday, 18th October 2018

Library event  | Networking | Professional Library Organizations

Are you a librarian? Library Student? Writer? Publisher? Looking to network with other like professionals?

The New York Library Club, Inc. invites you to their annual Fall kick-off reception:

John Ashbery: The Construction of Fiction

UPCOMING EVENTS
October 18, 2018, 6PM-8PM

• Fall Social at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery (144 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011).
• We would Love to meet you and hear your thoughts and concerns on Librarianship as a career! Learn about the club including its social events, members, history and its vision.
• Take advantage of Networking/Mentoring and Leadership Opportunities
• Explore the details regarding our available yearly Scholarship Award
• Light refreshments will be served

Please RSVP to membership@nylibraryclub.org with your name and affiliation by October 17th so we can get a list to Security and assure your entry.

Reclaiming Reference at the Library

Reference | Public libraries | Information seeking

For librarians, reference work today is increasingly about community service

by Sari Feldman |

Sep 14, 2018 

 

 

.......

 

Then Came Google...

In the late 1990s, as internet search engines were becoming more powerful and Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin were creating Google, that powerful feeling librarians once had at the reference desk began to dim. Initially, librarians called out internet search engines, criticizing them as imperfect and often inaccurate reference tools. But not for long.

Sure, the public’s willingness to take an answer rather than the answer was problematic. But immediacy has its advantages. For many simple questions, patrons could find answers quickly online. For the tougher questions, librarians soon came to use search engines at least as a starting point for research. And as the internet grew more powerful, connections got faster, and Google and other search engines rapidly improved, online research was embraced by librarians.

Today, information—once the domain of libraries, and the provenance of reference librarians—is increasingly accessible, with answers to a range of questions available at the swipe of a finger. As we transitioned to a digital world, I, like many librarians, wondered what such powerful information technology would mean for librarians in the future. With so much information readily available, why would anyone need a reference librarian? Read article...

 

To Restore Civil Society, Start With the Library | Opinion

Louie Chin

Libraries | Society | Public service

This crucial institution is being neglected just when we need it the most.

By Eric Klinenberg

Mr. Klinenberg is a sociologist.

• Sept. 8, 2018

 

Is the public library obsolete? 

A lot of powerful forces in society seem to think so. In recent years, declines in the circulation of bound books in some parts of the country have led prominent critics to argue that libraries are no longer serving their historical function. Countless elected officials insist that in the 21st century — when so many books are digitized, so much public culture exists online and so often people interact virtually — libraries no longer need the support they once commanded.

Libraries are already starved for resources. In some cities, even affluent ones like Atlanta, entire branches are being shut down. In San Jose, Calif., just down the road from Facebook, Google and Apple, the public library budget is so tight that users with overdue fees above $20 aren’t allowed to borrow books or use computers. 

But the problem that libraries face today isn’t irrelevance. Indeed, in New York and many other cities, library circulation, program attendance and average hours spent visiting are up. The real problem that libraries face is that so many people are using them, and for such a wide variety of purposes, that library systems and their employees are overwhelmed. According to a 2016 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, about half of all Americans ages 16 and over used a public library in the past year, and two-thirds say that closing their local branch would have a “major impact on their community.”

Libraries are being disparaged and neglected at precisely the moment when they are most valued and necessary. Why the disconnect? In part it’s because the founding principle of the public library — that all people deserve free, open access to our shared culture and heritage — is out of sync with the market logic that dominates our world. But it’s also because so few influential people understand the expansive role that libraries play in modern communities. Read more...

 

Do College Librarians Have Academic Freedom? Amid Push, California’s ‘Will Not Be Silent’

Academic Freedom | Academic Librarians | Higher Education

By Lindsay Ellis August 27, 2018 


 Elaine Franco didn’t think the title of her presentation at the American Library Association’s midwinter meeting six years ago was all that controversial: "Copy cataloging gets some respect from administrators."

But an administrative colleague of Franco’s at the University of California at Davis raised concerns about the title, an allusion to Rodney Dangerfield’s "I don’t get no respect" catchphrase. When she saw the 2012 slide deck, which Franco had emailed her, she wondered if the title inappropriately implied that copy catalogers had been disrespected by administrators previously, Franco recalled.

The disagreement caught the attention of a union negotiator. And now the episode has helped set off a crusade for academic freedom for employees of the 100-library UC System, amid negotiations to replace a contract that is set to expire at the end of September. Read more...

Courtesy of Holly Craig Wehrle

Librarians from across the U. of California system gathered at UCLA last month during contract talks. Their union is seeking explicit recognition of their academic freedom in a new contract. Administrators disagree.

 

 

How an Artist Is Rebuilding a Baghdad Library Destroyed During the Iraq War

Iraq | Foreign libraries | Gulf War |Libraries

“168:01,” an installation now on view at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, encourages visitors to donate books to the University of Baghdad 

 

By Brigit Katz

smithsonian.com
August 15, 2018

 

Aly Manji

 

 

 In 2003, at the start of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, looters set fire to the College of Fine Arts at the University of Baghdad. The college’s vast collection of 70,000 books was destroyed, and 15 years later, students still have few titles at their disposal. So, as Hadani Ditmars reports for the Art Newspaper, an installation

 

“168:01,” as the project by Iraqi-American artist Wafaa Bilal is titled, is a stark white display featuring bookshelves filled with 1,000 blank books. Visitors are encouraged to replenish the volumes with titles from an Amazon wish list compiled by the college’s students and faculty; donations can be made by sending the books on the wish list to the museum, or by gifting funds to the project through Bilal’s website.

In exchange for their donations, visitors are able to take home one of the exhibition’s white volumes that represent a rich cultural heritage stripped bare by years of conflict. In turn, the colorful books they contributed to the project will ultimately be sent to the College of Fine Arts.

“I wanted a simple visual representation of what’s been lost,” Bilal told Murray Whyte of the Toronto Star last month. “But what’s important is that, over time, this place comes back to life.” Read more...