Author Archive: Will Manley

Warming Up to End Times

By Will Manley | December 30, 2013

There is no longer any point in debating the reality of global warming (or, if you prefer to be politically correct, climate change). The handwriting is on the wall: 2012 was the hottest year on record and the polar ice caps are melting at an alarmingly fast rate. Then there’s the new research report from … Continue reading Warming Up to End Times →

What About the Children?

By Will Manley | October 29, 2013

After decades of strong leadership, Livermore (Calif.) Public Library, where I am a trustee, now has an opening at the top. Library Director Susan Gallinger has retired and we are faced with the challenge of replacing her. We spent the last board meeting with the city manager discussing the characteristics of her replacement. We talked about the … Continue reading What About the Children? →

Par for the Course

By Will Manley | September 17, 2013

I am a firm believer in the value of libraries because I have always enthusiastically accepted the axiom that you can learn how to do anything from a book, even the most difficult of all human endeavors—how to swing a golf club. In the course of my life, I have competed, at some level, in … Continue reading Par for the Course →

Reading Mom Like a Book

By Will Manley | July 23, 2013

During my senior year of high school, just as football season was overlapping basketball season, we whimpered off the field at halftime like lost little dogs. The score was 28 Them, 3 Us. Our coach launched into a tirade in the locker room: “Ladies, I’d like to start with the fundamentals. This is a football.” … Continue reading Reading Mom Like a Book →

No More Mr. Nice Guy

By Will Manley | June 4, 2013

You’ve finally arrived: After 40 years of working your library gig, it’s your dreaded retirement party. After all the “over the hill” jokes and the stories about how you started out with a stamp pad and ended with an iPad have been told, after the last piece of Costco cake has been eaten, and after … Continue reading No More Mr. Nice Guy →

Too Eager to Please

By Will Manley | March 13, 2013

Pity the poor library director, whose job description includes ensuring the work gets done, the patrons are happy, the powers that be (trustees, city managers, regents, deans, principals, school board members, city council members, county commissioners, etc.) are also happy, and library employees are happy. Oh, I forgot one thing: Do all this with a … Continue reading Too Eager to Please →

Digitized to Distraction

By Will Manley | January 8, 2013

Digital literacy is supposedly what will save the public library, and I don’t doubt that. While you hear stories about welfare recipients and street people carrying around the latest in iPhone technology, those of us who labor in the public library vineyard know that those kinds of tales are triumphs of distortion over reality. Supposedly, … Continue reading Digitized to Distraction →

Trust in Your Trustees

By Will Manley | October 30, 2012

It frustrates me profoundly to have someone in the library profession approach me at a conference to challenge my credibility as a speaker—usually in view of the fact that I’m retired, out of touch, and behind the times. In other words, I’m no longer actively involved in library matters. My defense is immediate. I explain … Continue reading Trust in Your Trustees →

Is God Really a Librarian?

By Will Manley | September 4, 2012

This old Irish joke is as old as the sod: “It’s always puzzled me,” said the Irishman, looking up from his newspaper, “how every time the Lord gets it right. People always seem to be dying in alphabetical order.” The other Irishman responds, “I guess that means God is a librarian.” I was reflecting the … Continue reading Is God Really a Librarian? →

Your Mileage May Vary

By Will Manley | July 31, 2012

It’s a question every used car buyer has to answer: “Is it the years or the miles?” Am I better off buying that vintage Pontiac LeMans with the really cool styling or that stodgy-looking two-year-old Honda? Looks can be deceiving. The vintage Pontiac was driven by a little old lady from Pasadena who used it … Continue reading Your Mileage May Vary →

The Matter of the Master’s

By Will Manley | June 5, 2012

Don’t get me wrong, I loved library school and I think programs that comprise a master’s degree in library science form the foundation of our profession. But what happens if the MLS degree withers away and dies? Let’s suppose that some time in the preapocalyptic future, the MLS ceases to be a financially viable degree. … Continue reading The Matter of the Master’s →

The Coolness Factor

By Will Manley | February 22, 2012

Age among librarians used to be fairly easy to determine, but no longer in our era of nips, tucks, Botox, and hair coloring. You can’t just come out and ask someone his or her age. We all know that in today’s world such a question is not only impolite but possibly even discriminatory. My suggestion … Continue reading The Coolness Factor →

Latest Library Links

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Genevieve Trainor writes: “The Guinness World Record holder for Most Prolific Book Thief is Ottumwa (Iowa’s) Stephen Blumberg. The 23,600 volumes he accumulated between the 1970s and his arrest in March of 1990 were all stashed in his 17-room home. Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, got involved with Blumberg as part of the FBI’s efforts to return the stolen manuscripts and rare books to their museums and libraries. Referred to as the Omaha Project, the information science proving ground involved four weeks, 44 catalogers and reference librarians and 600 volunteer hours to determine who might be the rightful owners.”

Little Village (Dubuque, Iowa), Dec. 4
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Casey Newton writes: “At the moment, no one knows for sure whether the large language models that are now under development will achieve superintelligence and transform the world. And in that uncertainty, two primary camps of criticism have emerged. The first camp, which I associate with the external critics, holds that artificial intelligence (AI) is fake and sucks. The second camp, which I associate more with the internal critics, believes that AI is real and dangerous. Today I want to lay out why I believe AI is real and dangerous.”

Platformer, Dec. 5
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Latia Ward writes: “One way to keep current with what students think of the library and its services is through Student Library Advisory Committee meetings. These meetings are a way to gather feedback and reinforce the library as a welcoming place. How do librarians create a welcoming environment within Student Library Advisory Committee meetings? Librarians create a welcoming environment through community, purpose, and dedicated space.” Also see part 1 of this blog post.

RIPS Law Librarian Blog, Nov. 13, Dec. 5
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Eleanor Hecks writes: “Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Graceful degradation is a design approach that ensures the basics of a website will still function even if specific individual parts of it stop working. The approach removes single points of failure: just because one thing stops working doesn’t mean the system as a whole fails. A site following this principle fails in pieces instead of all at once, so the most important features remain available when some components encounter an error.”

Smashing Magazine, Dec. 6
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Camruinn Morgan-Rumsey and Lexi Lepof write: “On December 3, Knox County (Tenn.) schools received a list from the district of books to be removed from school libraries under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Knox County’s board of education voted in July, passing a policy to remove ‘explicit’ books from everyday student access in response to the new law. Some of the books on the list of nearly 50 titles might surprise parents. Among those to be removed are Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”

WVLT-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.), Dec. 4
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Joe Foley writes: “Copyright rules vary from country to country and have changed over time. In the US, works created between 1929 and 1963 that gave notice and renewed copyright have 95 years from their first publication date. That means that on January 1, 2025, a host of works from 1929 will enter the public domain. This means that copyright will expire on Buck Rogers, Captain Easy, Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, Hal Foster’s first Tarzan comic strips and, yes, Popeye.” Other notable works entering public domain in the United States include the Marx Brothers’ first film, The Cocoanuts, contralto Marian Anderson’s first record, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Creative Bloq, Dec. 7; Everybody’s Libraries, Dec. 3, Dec. 7; Public Domain Review, Dec. 10
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Brittany Adams writes: “The digital landscape of libraries is expanding rapidly, with an increasing shift towards electronic resources and online services. As members of the library community, we’re witnessing a transformative era where physical collections are complemented—and sometimes replaced—by digital ones. This transition offers new opportunities for enhancing accessibility and engagement, but it also presents challenges, especially for young patrons and their families. It is essential to equip children and their caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need to navigate this evolving space confidently.”

ALSC Blog, Dec. 9

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