can you help the LA State Library with technology equipment?

The State Library of Lousiana has increased its hours so that people can use its computers. They could use even more computers and printers. If you can donate, please help. You may remember that Rebecca Hamilton the Louisiana State Librarian has been at her job only a month or two, though she was Associate State Librarian for a few years previously.

“To all-we are in desperate need of computers/printers. We are being inundated with evacuees needing to file FEMA applications, unemployment, search for loved ones, etc. and are coming into our public libraries to use the computers. Our libraries have greatly extended their hours to accommodate the people but they need additional computers and printers. If you can please put the word out that if anyone wants to help immediately, this is our greatest need.”

resources in a post-Katrina world

The LibraryLaw blog has some summaries of libraries’ efforts to get organized, find colleagues and get connected in the aftermath of Katrina. She points to the NOPL list [mentioned here already] as well as AALL’s LawLibAssist blog set up for law librarians to help friends and colleagues. The LA State Library now has a big list of links to help evacuees and refugees and librarians with all the aspects of their post-Katrina lives.

emergencies, public information, and libraries

When disaster strikes, is the library web site a place you could go to for breaking news, even if the library was closed? I hate to be a disaster vulture, but I always wonder when things happen like the tsunami, or 9/11, or this hurricane, what is the library’s role? How could their web presence help people? Here are some other New Orleans web sites, to demonstrate what I mean.

  • the Loyola web site automatically redirects their home page to the emergency announcement page and includes a bright yellow button on the footer of every page on the site so even if you start on a page within the site, you’ll see their announcements.
  • Louisiana State has a news sidebar explaining that the school will be closed
  • The Louisiana Library Collection Database even managed to put two links in which aren’t too styling but direct people to FEMA and the National Hurricane Center
  • LSU Health Sciences does it quickly and simply with a big emergency headline across the main page.
  • Nichols State even appears to have a blog ready for emergency preparedness with a way to post regular updates, linked off of the main page.

My question to you: if there was an emergency, could you update your library home page quickly to inform your patrons?

update: due to sporadic electricity in the Louisiana area, many of these sites are now down. I’ve added a bit more description in lieu of actual pages you can look at.

eulogy for the “university of the ghetto”

A poignant tale of a library becoming an Idea Store.

On the record the staff talk brightly of the new Idea Store which will replace both the Whitechapel and Stepney libraries from mid-September – the glossy leaflet boasts not only “more books, CDs and DVDs” and seven-day-a-week opening, but also that it “is located right in front of Sainsbury’s”.

Off the record they feel bereaved, despite struggling once its fate was sealed and maintenance virtually stopped: in a recent flood the usual buckets were clearly failing to cope.

[thanks ej]