TILT – today in librarian tabs

I need to close some tabs on my browser so they are here.

1. Are you someone from a “diverse” group who gets frequently asked for your opinions about how to help organizations “get diverse” enough so it seems like a part time job? Follow Diversity in Design’s lead and charge people for it. No shame in it. There is also Clarity.fm which doesn’t have a specific keyword for librarians but that didn’t stop me from signing up.
2. The Open Access Button “helps researchers, patients, students and the public get access to scholarly research and to report when they’re denied access.” Learn about it. Cool stuff.
3. Fair warning: the Department of Justice is starting to get serious about public entities having accessible websites and also “web content” What they mean about web content is not totally clear but libraries should pay attention. Good blog post by this law firm who has a good accessibility blog generally.
4. Live to Run Again is a not-for-profit public education campaign against drowsy driving for people who are traveling long distances to go to dog events. They sponsor ABLE an Audio Book and Library Exchange where volunteer librarians bring audiobook CDs to dog events so that people can listen to them and stay awake on the way home. Drop off the audiobook at the next library along the way. Great idea and they are always looking for donations if you are weeding CD audiobooks.
5. I don’t think I have mentioned this here but I am teaching a Tools for Community Advocacy class at the University of Hawaii, a short summer class with eleven really interesting students. I dislike course management software so I made my own website for the class from an available template. I am proud of it. You can view it here.

screen shot from my website

Link roundup, things you might like

A good old fashioned linkdump


Public domain photograph by: US Navy, National Science Foundation. Link.

I’m back at home after meeting with a lot of terrific librarians in four different states. March is the busy month and after last month my plan is “not getting in a plane more than once a month for work.” I’ll be speaking with my good friend Michael Stephens at the Indiana Library Federation District Six conference next week. I’ll do a wrap-up of the talks I’ve been giving sometime later but news for me is mostly having more free time to actually attend things and not just speak at them. Getting to go to programs at the Tennessee Library Association conference and the National Library of Medicine’s New England Region one-day conference about social justice has really helped me connect with what other people are doing in some of the same areas I’m interested in. It’s sort of important to not just be a lone voice in the wilderness about some of this stuff, so in addition to the SXSW stuff (and talking to a great bunch of library school students in Columbia Missouri) getting to attend library events as an audience member has been a highlight of the past few weeks.

However I’ve been backed up on “stuff I read that I think other people might like to read.” Try as I may Twitter is still for hot potato stuff [i.e. Google’s April Fools Joke specifically, I felt, for librarians] and not for things that I think merit more thoughtful or wordy presentation. So, as I enter the first Thursday in over a month where I get to hang out at home all day, I’m catching up, not on reading because there is tons of time for reading while traveling, but on passing some links around. So, here are some things you might like to read, from the past few months, newest first.

National Library Week, from Texas

I was in Texas this past week, again. I was attending possibly my favorite library conference, TXLA. Part of the deal I worked out as a speaker was that I would be registered for the entire conference so that I could go to other panels and talks and events. I did. During one of the discussions, there was a fascinating segment on offshore online casinos and their impact on various industries, including libraries. I also took in a lot of Austin sights, saw a bunch of people, participated in a rally and gave a pretty good talk. My inbox filled up with links for National Library Week while I was away and only paying partial attention to my email. I’ll make another post about the conference specifically, but these are the links that I wanted to pass around, late though they may be.

some links I’ve been holding on to


I’m indoors refusing to move more than about four feet from the box fan. I am also attending to the last few emails in my inbox from people who sent me links or things they thought I’d like. Also I got caught up with my RSS feeds fairly quickly and now I feel like I’m reunited with a bunch of people. Not bad. Hi! Here are a few things that are worth passing on.