Author Archive: Carrie Smith

Left to right: Susan Harris, Ross Ufberg, Jamie LaRue, Inci Sariz, and Peter Blackstock

“If People Don’t Read It Here, It Doesn’t Help Much”

By Carrie Smith | June 27, 2017

On Monday, June 26, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), the Association of American Publishers, and the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative brought together for the program “Banned Abroad: Stories of International Censorship” panelists who have worked as publishers, translators, editors, and researchers to discuss their experiences with works that have been censored … Continue reading “If People Don’t Read It Here, It Doesn’t Help Much” →

From left, Laura Damon-Moore, Michael Spelman, Kylee Stoor, and Janie Hermann

Madison’s Library Takeover

By Carrie Smith | June 25, 2017

Over the course of a year and a half, the Library Takeover project—inspired by a similar teen program founded by Apples & Snakes and Half-Moon Theatre in the UK—went from grant proposal to three fully realized, polished library programs that were informed by community input at each step in the process. Engaging community need Analysis … Continue reading Madison’s Library Takeover →

Kathryn Matthew, director of the Institute for Museum and Library Services, speaks at the American Library Association’s 2017 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago on June 24, 2017.Photo: Rebecca Lomax/American Libraries

Becoming Catalysts in a Changing World

By Carrie Smith | June 24, 2017

In “Be a Catalyst: Harnessing Your Portfolio of Resources to Create Catalytic Change in Communities,” sponsored by the ALA Washington Office, Matthew provided advice on how libraries can learn about their communities in order to strengthen their connections to them, while Rip Rapson and Barbara Bartle provided context from national and regional funder points of view. … Continue reading Becoming Catalysts in a Changing World →

Spacesaver cantilever shelving units on casters at the Glendale branch of the Salt Lake City Public Library

Extend Your Space

By Carrie Smith | June 1, 2017

Spacesaver Cantilever Shelving Spacesaver’s cantilever library shelving has the ability to evolve with changing needs. It has a range of interchangeable accessories—pull-out shelves, media hangers, and slat-wall add-ons—and can also accommodate larger changes. You can mount its shelving onto casters to make it easily movable to create open spaces for events or other library services. The new A-frame cantilever display … Continue reading Extend Your Space →

The Day USA, a daily news resource for students, used in the classroom

Sources and Searches

By Carrie Smith | May 1, 2017

The Day USA In 2011, British journalist Richard Addis founded a daily online newspaper called The Day to provide news to classrooms across the UK. The objective was to focus on unbiased reporting and curriculum integration. A parallel North American service, called The Day USA, was launched this past February. It is available to US, US … Continue reading Sources and Searches →

In the plenary session, Sarah Burnes, Jennifer Brier, Nell Taylor, and Luis Herrera discuss how archives are put together.

DPLAfest: Inclusion, Community, and Outreach

By Carrie Smith | April 25, 2017

In the same rooms where the final planning sessions establishing the DPLA were held five years ago, Executive Director Dan Cohen announced that the archive now held more than 16 million items from 2,350 member institutions and is on track to have hubs in all 50 states. The Open eBooks program, launched in 2016 to provide free access … Continue reading DPLAfest: Inclusion, Community, and Outreach →

Crowley Imaging Services’s new 100MP digital back camera system

Saving Your Media

By Carrie Smith | March 1, 2017

Document capture at Crowley Imaging Services The Crowley Company has been providing micrographic and digital archiving services for more than 30 years. Crowley Imaging Services uses equipment from its own manufacturing arm and other vendors to offer services to libraries and archives that don’t have an in-house digitization department. The company recently purchased two Phase One IQ3 … Continue reading Saving Your Media →

By the Numbers: Atlanta

By Carrie Smith and Terra Dankowski | January 3, 2017

4 Number of names the city went through—Terminus, Thrasherville, Marthasville, Atlantica-Pacifica—before being incorporated as Atlanta in 1847. 1905 Year that the Southern Library School, later renamed the Carnegie Library School of Atlanta, opened. Considered the first library school in the South, it was located at Emory University from 1930 until its closing in 1988. 1959 … Continue reading By the Numbers: Atlanta →

Improving Library Websites

By Carrie Smith | January 3, 2017

Syndetics Unbound Syndetic Solutions and LibraryThing for Libraries were designed to make online library catalogs more informational and interactive. ProQuest has now combined these two services into Syndetics Unbound, which provides 16 different catalog enrichment elements in one service. Many of the features will be familiar to those who are used to shopping for books … Continue reading Improving Library Websites →

Hoopla’s catalog includes more than 500,000 items and is accessible by mobile app.

Online Streaming Options

By Carrie Smith | November 1, 2016

Hoopla Hoopla, launched in 2013 by Midwest Tape, provides single-platform access to most major types of digital holdings: audiobooks, ebooks, video, and music. Patrons can access content either by streaming it from the Hoopla website or by using the mobile app, which allows both streaming and temporary downloads for offline access. Items are automatically removed … Continue reading Online Streaming Options →

Latest Library Links

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ALA President Wanda Brown issued a statement in response to Macmillan CEO John Sargent’s “Ask Me Anything” session at the ALA Midwinter Meeting on January 25. “Today, Mr. Sargent invited conference attendees to ask him anything,” it read. “He talked, and stakeholders from the library community asked questions and engaged. Unfortunately, he has not been listening to us…. Delaying, denying, or limiting access to new titles for libraries means limiting access for readers. We see only one acceptable outcome for this situation: Macmillan must lift the embargo.”
ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Office, Jan. 24
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Authors and Olympic ice dancing medalists Maia and Alex Shibutani will promote the value of libraries as honorary chairs of National Library Week, April 19–25. The Shibutanis will shine a spotlight on our nation’s libraries, librarians, and library workers. “Find Your Place at the Library” is the theme for this year’s National Library Week, which emphasizes that everyone is welcome at the library. Maia and Alex Shibutani (aka the ShibSibs) are two-time Olympic bronze medalists, three-time world medalists, Four Continents Champions, and two-time US National Champions.
ALA Communications and Marketing Office, Jan. 24
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ALCTS, LITA, and LLAMA have announced that Emily Drabinski and Rebekkah Smith Aldrich will deliver keynote addresses at the Exchange Virtual Forum. The theme is “Building the Future Together,” and it will take place on the afternoons of May 4, 6, and 8. Each day has a different focus, with day 1 exploring leadership and change management, day 2 examining continuity and sustainability, and day 3 focusing on collaborations. Drabinski’s keynote will be on May 4, and Smith Aldrich’s will be on May 8. To get more information about the proposed future for joint projects such as the Exchange, join the conversation about #TheCoreQuestion.
ALCTS, Jan. 24
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Officials at the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City said perhaps 85,000 historic and artistic items it had carefully collected for the past 40 years were most likely lost after a fire tore through a Chinatown building where its archives were stored on the evening of January 23. Museum President Nancy Yao Maasbach said that the collection, stored in the building at 70 Mulberry Street, was one of a kind and represented the single most important repository of New York’s Chinese community. While about 40,000 items in the archives were digitized, many physical items are irreplaceable. No one will be able to enter and retrieve items for at least three weeks.
New York Times, Jan. 24
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Visiting the library remains the most common cultural activity Americans engage in, by far. The average of 10.5 trips to the library that US adults report taking in 2019 exceeds their participation in eight other common leisure activities. Americans attend live music or theatrical events and visit national or historic parks roughly 4 times a year on average and visit museums and gambling casinos 2.5 times annually. Trips to amusement or theme parks (1.5) and zoos (0.9) are the least common activities on this list. Women report visiting the library nearly twice as frequently as men, and adults aged 18–29 visit the library much more than all older age groups.
Gallup, Jan. 24
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The Cleveland Public Library and the union representing library workers said January 23 they reached a tentative deal to resolve their simmering labor dispute, avoiding a potential strike that would have shut down some library branches and services. About 400 librarians, library assistants, clerks, maintenance workers, and custodians have been without a contract since December 2019. Contract talks between the library system and the union, the Service Employees International Union District 1199, have been ongoing since September, but broke down around the new year. Workers will vote on the contract on January 29.
Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jan. 23
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Natasha Lomas writes: “Did you notice a recent change to how Google search results are displayed on the desktop? I noticed something last week—thinking there must be some kind of weird bug messing up the browser’s page rendering because suddenly everything looked similar: a homogenous sea of blue text links and favicons that, on such a large expanse of screen, come across as one block of background noise. I found myself clicking on an ad link rather than the organic search result I was looking for. This is Google’s latest dark pattern: The adtech giant has made organic results even more closely resemble the ads it serves against keyword searches.”
TechCrunch, Jan. 23

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