librarian.net

I was happy that I caught the tweet early when the Men of the Stacks calendar came out because it’s been fascinating to watch this project grow and blosson. If for some reason you haven’t heard of it, the website is here and they have a facebook page here. Thanks to some nice photography, some cute librarians and a good message, this project has taken off, been mentioned in international news outlets, hit boingboing, Oprah and the Village Voice. The calendars cost $5 to produce through MagCloud and are sold for $20 which means for every calendar that gets purchased $15 goes to the It Gets Better Project. There’s a thoughtful post by the MotS administrator Megan about bullying and jerks online and why this sort of thing is so important. My favorite thing is probably close to what Will Manley says, this is “an image buster with a sense of humor.” My second favorite thing about this is, hey, I know those guys! A lot of the fellas in the photos are librarians we’ve known online for years and years–Brett and Trevor and Von and Gabe are people I know, and the others seem like people I’d like to know–and so we can smile along with them and say “Way to go guys!” Can’t wait to see how this evolves.

“Today, the marriage rate among librarians is the highest it has ever been with 62 percent of librarians married in 2009.”

There is a lot of data in the world. Librarians are good at using census data to help people find families, get local information and just learn something about the way the world used to be. Here’s a neat post about using hte census data from the last 120 years to learn something about librarianship as a profession. Did you know that the number of self-reported librarians peaked in 1990 and has declined almost 30% since then? I am somewhat curious if this is just because people with library and information science backgrounds are calling themselves all manner of things now [Is a taxonomist a librarian? How about a metadata specialist?]. You can read the full post, with graphs, over at Oxford University Press’s Social explorer.

I’ve paid particular attention to obituaries since finishing Marilyn Johnson’s excellent book Dead Beat. There are some great librarian obituaries; a life of pulbic service seems to lend itself to this. A local librarian pal pointed this one out to me and I thought it was worth sharing: Brenda Moon: University librarian who had a clear vision of the transformative effects of digitisation, here is a personal rememberance of Ms. Moon at The Guardian. [thanks Barbara!]

SXSW 2011 was the year of the librarian and I was glad to be a part of it. I’m still slowly heading homeward but you might enjoy this short Atlantic article.

Bitch magazine has a lending library in Portland Oregon. The library has a blog and they would like your zine donations. They make posts about books in their collection and today’s post is about Celeste West and a new book out on Library Juice Press celebrating her life. [via]

She Was A Booklegger: Remembering Celeste West is a collection of essays, excerpts, and photos that attempt to capture the spirit of Celeste West, a woman whose influence on feminist librarianship, publishing, journalism, and activism was monumental. After West passed away in 2008, a few friends and admirers (Toni Samek, Moyra Lang, and K.R. Roberto) decided to embark on a project that would honor West’s work and life. This book, which acts as a comprehensive and compassionate obituary, was the result.

I mentioned, back in 2006, the case of Scott Savage vs Ohio State University. Inside Higher Ed has a post about the results of Savage’s lawsuit against the university. Upshot, “a federal judge rejected a former librarian’s lawsuit against the university.” [pdf of decision]. Depending on how you lean in this case, this is either terrific or troubling news (or possibly both) but it’s been interesting to read various reporting about it to see how it’s represented. I think my favorite analysis occurs in a comment on the site.

The headline seems to be “conservative academic forced out for Christian views” ( the headline on Horowitz’s FrontPage, for example, is “Savage Injustice” ) but the story is nothing of the sort. As much as the right wants to depict our colleges and universities as dominated by leftists and radicals the truth is that complaints against Savage were dismissed, he was backed by his supervisors and his position was secure. The headline should have been “University protects conservative academic’s right to express Christian views” because those are the facts of the case, which have been known from the beginning and which have now been established by a court of law.

Just a small heads up in case you missed it. The woman who was responsible for the deaths of the two Connecticut librarians, Kate McClelland and Kathy Krasniewicz, on their way home from ALA in Colorado has received a sentence of 36 years in jail, the maximum allowable sentence.

“Copyright for Librarians is a joint project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL), a consortium of libraries from 50 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. The goal of the project is to provide librarians in developing and transitional countries information concerning copyright law.” Here’s the press release.

“The bottom line: the priorities for the library staff and for the library users are poorly aligned.” Complete article available via Project MUSE or email me and I’ll “check out” a copy from my library for you.

“Refuse to deal with life. Make it deal with you.” The World’s Strongest Librarian is full of good advice. Read more about library director Josh Hanagarne in the Salt Lake Tribune.