15 4 / 2013
Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. This decision would not only integrate baseball, but would help the country work to achieve equal rights for all. Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., once commented to baseball pitcher Don Newcombe, “Don, you and Jackie will never know how easy you made my job, through what you went through on the baseball field.”
Before becoming famous, Lt. Jack R. Robinson was court-martialed at Camp Hood, Texas, because he refused to move to the back of the bus after being told to do so by a bus driver and disobeying an order from a superior officer. Robinson was acquitted of all charges and received an honorable discharge, but this was not the only experience he would have in fighting discrimination.
After retiring from baseball, Robinson turned much of his attention to civil rights issues. He wrote to several Presidents about the cause, and even attended the March on Washington.
Many of these milestone events from Robinson’s life are documented in primary sources from the National Archives.
via The Rest of 42’s Story: Jackie Robinson as Civil Rights Activist
(via ourpresidents)
15 4 / 2013
Sherlock is all the rage right now so we thought we would share with you an old library training video we used to use here in LTS.
It is cheesy library fun at its best!
(via libraryjournal)
15 4 / 2013
Librarian Pirate's tumblr for Librarian stuff: Tumblarian question
I’m weeding today and as I weed I’ve been thinking about all those little things I do when I weed that I think makes weeding more effective/more efficient/more fun - these tips are the reason that I can make weeding an ongoing constant thing and I don’t have to do a huge once a year weed.
If I typed them all up with pictures and examples, would y’all think that was helpful or would it be dry boring school stuff that y’all know already? (Side note: I probably wouldn’t get around to typing this up until Friday, my day off, so if the answer is yes, it’ll be a few)Signal boost!
15 4 / 2013
Serving Deaf/Hard of Hearing Teen Patrons
(h/t Anna/ehbeesea)
This is a list of tips on how to serve your teen patrons who are deaf & hard of hearing, and it’s pretty great! Teens are such a specialized population group to work with anyway, since they deal in all manner of emotions (or non-emotions) and can even be intimidating. Deaf/hoh teens may still be struggling with advocacy skills (I know I sure did), and need that extra boost of confidence. If you recognize a teen is deaf or hard of hearing, use these tips!
The only one I really question is the use of the microphone, because while microphones make sound louder, they don’t clarify the sound. The issue sometimes isn’t hearing the other person, but understanding them, and there’s a huge difference there that people don’t seem to grasp. I would suggest reserving spaces/seats specifically for your deaf/hoh teens to sit in the front, as close as they can be, on the off chance they can see the speaker better and therefore pick up on visual cues.
(via mollitudo)
13 4 / 2013
"Recently I was engaged in an online discussion about whether there are or can be a basic set of skills that all librarians should master. I have yet to see a persuasive argument for any particular library-specific skill that absolutely every librarian or library school graduate must have, and I’m pretty sure that’s because no such argument can be made. Most claims about what all librarians need to know or do or think rest on the assumption that there is a mythical creature—The Librarian. However, The Librarian doesn’t exist."
The Librarian Doesn’t Exist | Peer to Peer Review, Library Journal
In which Wayne Bivens-Tatum talks about the TV movie The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (starring Noah Wyle) among other things.
(via libraryjournal)
Not to mention the many, many things that fall under “What They Don’t Teach You in Library School” and “Other Duties as Assigned”—all librarians have to be ready to do things they didn’t think they were going to be doing.
(via patrondebris)
(via librarean)
09 4 / 2013
"Now many public libraries want to lend e-books, not simply to patrons who come in to download, but to anybody with a reading device, a library card and an Internet connection. In this new reality, the only incentive to buy, rather than borrow, an e-book is the fact that the lent copy vanishes after a couple of weeks. As a result, many publishers currently refuse to sell e-books to public libraries."
Authors Guild president Scott Turow in his New York Times editorial last Sunday, which many in the publishing world have criticized for its negativity and defensiveness.
He claims to be looking out for the financial and creative interests of new and midlist authors, and yet, as I myself have pointed out, he fails to acknowledge how invested the American public library system is in launching writing careers. (First novels are always a draw for collection development librarians, and I market them aggressively.)
Turow is, how do you say, desperately out of touch with the opportunities of the digital age. Sad.
(via cloudunbound)
Wildly out of touch—and out of touch with the opportunities of the analog age? What does he think libraries have been up to all this time?
(via thelifeguardlibrarian)
He makes it sound like anyone can go online to any library and download their ebooks. Digital books work just like physical books - a library card is required. The requirements for getting a library card doesn’t change just because you only want ebooks.
(via thelifeguardlibrarian)
25 3 / 2013
the pinakes: The Resignation of the Editorial Board of the JLA
There’s a breaking story in the world of scholarly journals and library science that’s worth tuning into. It kicked off with a post by Brian Mathewson his Chronicle of Higher Education blogThe Ubiquitous Librarian, in which he revealed that the entire editorial board of the prestigiousJournal of Library Administration(or JLA) had resigned due to the publisher’s onerous author requirements regarding copyright and access.
Mathews is the Associate Dean for the Virginia Tech Libraries, and had been asked to serve as guest editor for a special, speculative issue of the journal on the academic library in fifteen years. This is how he described it:
This special issue explores the possibilities of what libraries might become or cease to be. Experts from different sectors of academia, publishing, technology, and design will share their thoughts, dreams, fears, and hopes about the future. The intention is to produce insights that ignite the imagination — to leapfrog the adjacencies of the coming years and land on a strategic plateau of the near future. This is an opportunity to speculate on the arriving advances as well as to warn of potential loss due to these changes.
Invited authors included not only academic librarians such as Kelly Miller (UCLA), Michael Levine-Clark (University of Denver), and Steven Bell (Temple), but also Google engineer and search educatorDan Russell, Lennie Scott-Webber, an educational environment expert at Steelcase Furniture, and two authors affiliated with electronic resource vendors. It’s a compelling mix, but with the resignation of the JLA’s board, it’s not going to happen — at least in that venue.
Mathews had also invitedJason Griffeyto contribute, but in a move that anticipated the decision made by the editorial board, he declined participation due to the publisher’s restrictions. After Mathews broke the news, Griffeyposted on the subject himself:
On Feb 14, I got an intriguing email from Brian Matthews [sic] about a special edition of the Journal of Library Administration he was editing. It was a request for a chapter for an edition of the journal called Imagining the Future of Libraries, and the Brian’s pitch to me was enough to make me very interested:
[Brian]: “I’d love for you to contribute an essay around the topic of technology. Beyond most digital collections. Beyond everyone and everything mobile— what unfolds then?”
I mean, if I have a specialty, this is it. I love nothing more than I love a good dose of futurism, and told him so. My one concern was the Journal’s publisher, Taylor & Francis, and the fact that I refuse to sign over my copyright on work I create. I’m happy to license it in any number of ways that gives the publisher the rights they need to distribute the work, but I won’t write something for someone else to own.
Thefinal post covering the story(so far; there will be more, I’m sure) is from Chris Bourg, who had recently joined the editorial board of theJournal of Academic Librarianshipand resigned along with her colleagues. She describes the lengths editor Damon Jaggars had gone to convince the publisher to change its practices:
In the meantime, Damon continued to try to convince Taylor & Francis (on behalf of the entire Editorial Board, and with our full support), that their licensing terms were too confusing and too restrictive. A big part of the argument is that the Taylor & Francis author agreement is a real turn-off for authors and was handicapping the Editorial Board’s ability to attract quality content to the journal. The best Taylor & Francis could come up with was a less restrictive license that would cost authors nearly $3000 per article. The Board agreed that this alternative was simply not tenable, so we collectively resigned.
Look for more to emerge on this subject, as librarians start to assert their demand for change in the world of scholarly publishing. And hopefully, somewhere, Brian Mathews’ special issue will find a home — since it sounded fantastic.
Sources:
So I’m editing this journal issue and…| Brian Mathews, The Ubiquitous Librarian
The Journal of Library Administration| Jason Griffey, Pattern Recognition
My short stint on the JLA editorial board| Chris Bourg, Feral Librarian
Great round up!
15 2 / 2013
“Outrageous Fortune!”
In which Bottom Shelf Books creates what is possibly the best remix of Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy ever. Click through to enjoy the rest.
(via yahighway)
14 2 / 2013
Also what my horse used to look like right after I wrapped her legs for trailoring.
(Source: cute-overload, via thefrogman)
14 2 / 2013
14 2 / 2013
13 2 / 2013
DVD “Japanese American History Unknown” to be distributed to schools for free in US and Japan
Filmmaker Junichi Suzuki’s trilogy “Toyo’s Camera, Japanese American History during WWII,” “442, Live with Honor, Die with Dignity,” and “MIS, Human Secret Weapon” becomes one DVD “Japanese American History Unknown” (40 minutes) for distributing 2,000 educational facilities in the U.S. and Japan.
Approx. 1,000 schools in the U.S. and 500 schools in Japan have already been chosen. The remaining 500 DVD will be sent upon request.
Producer of the DVD, UTB Hollywood is accepting requests for the DVD from schools through early February. Distribution will be complete by end of February. Shipping is free of charge.
For request, contact Shigeto Terasaka in the U.S. attera@utbhollywood.com
and Junichi Suzuki in Japan at suzuki@suzukijunichi.com
All films used for making this documentary won at the Maui Film Festival and Fumiko Yamaji Culture Award in Japan.
The production and free distribution of “Japanese American History Unknown” was made possible with the generosity of Dr. Paul Tersaki in Los Angeles.
“Japanese American History Unknown”
Director: Junichi Suzuki
Original Music: Kitaro,
Format: 40 minutes, Color (black and white in some scenes), 16:9, HD, Stereo
(via stfuconservatives)
