Category: blogz

have you done your donut duty today?

Posted on by jessamyn

A quotation I liked from a blog I read frequently. Check out all the library posts.

“Show me a town that denies funding to a library, and I’ll show you a librarian who stays in the office. Show me a town that funds its library, and I’ll show you a librarian who takes donuts down to the fire department. Who goes down to the city hall and goes into offices asking if they need anything. You have to be proactive. It might come as a shock to some of you, but a large part of the success of that library is your personality and the way you treat people.”

what does it mean to call OCLC a monopoly?

Posted on by jessamyn

Karen Coyle has a new blog post detailing what Sky River’s specific allegations against OCLC are.

[O]ne could look on WorldCat as a shared community resource, not the property of OCLC. In fact, OCLC uses this kind of argument in its record use policy, but somehow leads to the conclusion that WorldCat should not be used to foster non-OCLC library services. It seems easy to make the opposite argument, which would be that WorldCat could be the basis for a wide range of services that would benefit libraries, even if they do not come from OCLC.

some library love links from astronauts and actors and poets and fans

Posted on by jessamyn

Sometimes it’s a good thin to remember that libraries have big imacts on people who do big things. The ripple effect is hard to quantify, but it’s a good thing to remember. From my inbox

  • Ronald McNair was one of the astronuauts killed in the Challenger explosion 25 years ago. There was a piece on NPR about his brother reminiscing about how McNair was adamant about using his public library in South Carolina despite the fact that it was supposedly for “whites only”
  • Wil Wheaton, actor and blogger shared a short bit he wrote for a literacy project explaining why he thinks librarians are awesome.
  • In the comments of that post is a link to this poem published in Library Journal: Why I Am In Love With Librarians.
  • Another booster site that I forgot to mention earlier is the Library History Buff site. Larry Nix is a retired librarian and library history enthusiast. I’ve linked to his library history page many times over the years, but I’m not sure if I’ve linked to his blog. He recently did a post wrapping up the work he did in 2010 and pointing to the page he created for it. Good stuff, worth reading.

g

library blogs & news quicklist

Posted on by jessamyn

I don’t get time to sit down and read blogs as much as I used to, but I still see them scooting through my feed reader, or in the profiles of people following me on Twitter, or sometimes just linked in random places. A few I’ve been enjoying lately.

“Sicko” showing cancelled at Enfield PL – link round-up

Posted on by jessamyn

Connecticut Library Association has a great link round-up about the Enfield Public Library’s decision to cancel its showing of the movie Sicko in response to pressure from town council.

Under pressure from the town council to either reschedule or reformat the nature of the screening, the Enfield Public Library decided to cancel its Friday showing of Michael Moore’s 2007 film “Sicko,” which is critical of the U.S. health care industry.

The decision to cancel the showing, which stemmed from a complaint by a resident, has been criticized by the Connecticut Library Association, which called the decision “an insult to our form of government” and said that the library should be a “battleground for ideas.”