Nancy Pearl speaks at Simmons College in Boston this evening. If you’re in the area, I suggest stopping in, Nancy gives great book talk.
Month: April 2004
take the lii.org survey
LII is having their annual user survey. Please help them out by filling out this ten-question survey by May 14.
you know what I think about this…
The more documents are classified by our own government, the less The People have access to the information they need in order to be part of a functioning democracy. No wonder Bush & Co. want to replace the National Archivist with one of their own.
The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), a division of the National Archives, has released its report for fiscal year 2003, and it confirms what we’ve suspected: The government is classifying information at a staggering, sharply increasing rate. During the year, 14,228,020 documents were classified. This is an increase of 25% over last year.
what is wrong with uk [and other] libraries?
How are UK libraries failing users? A new study entitled “Who’s in Charge?” by charity group Libri proposes some questions, and some answers. Long document, but worth a read.
“Performance management is poor and planning is disconnected from the preparation of budgets. The extent and nature of the problems are such that the heads of library services do not have the authority to act and resolve them. Because costs in other areas are difficult to reduce,whenever savings are needed it is the book budget along with opening hours and buildings maintenance which bear the brunt of cuts. Alternatively, library closures are proposed, even though these measures inevitably result in a reduction in service to the public.Cost control is not directed so as to improve or maintain the service,but rather to avoid making difficult decisions with which public servants feel it unfair to task their staff.” [thanks all]
yes THAT Heinz
The headline Heinz Museum cuts employees due to budget cuts deftly skips over the fact that most of those employees were library and archive staff.
Reducing library hours… makes sense because the number of authors, researchers, genealogists and students using the library is not growing. The number of people using the library’s collections and images online has increased, he said. [thanks barbara]