My Sunday Afternoon at Midwinter

A photo essay

January 27, 2014

After attending the update on the Digital Public Library of America, I made my way through the Pennsylvania Convention Center to facilitate a discussion at the ALCTS Creative Ideas in Technical Services Interest Group about successful collaboration between public services and technical services.

Along the way I ran into my counterpart at Duke University, Teddy Gray, who has recently succeeded Nancy Gibbs as head of the Acquisitions Department. While we were catching up, Teddy’s mentor and friend Anne Langley, the head librarian of the Science and Technology Libraries at Princeton University, came by and joined us in conversation.

I found Room 105B easily enough—and very early—and settled in way in advance of the discussion I was to facilitate.

We had close to 20 participants talking about successful public services/ technical services collaborations.

After about 45 minutes of discussion, all three tables reported back to the large group about their discussions.

My Sunday was a great day at Midwinter.

STEPHEN M. BROOKS is head, monographic services, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Email him at stephen_brooks[at]unc.edu.

See, hear, and read more about what’s going on at Midwinter—in real time and after.

Twitter: @alamw and #alamw14

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/512164432210368

YouTube: youtube.com/user/AmLibraryAssociation

Flickr: flickr.com/groups/2422196@N23

Pinterest: pinterest.com/alamidwinter

Interview with Melissa Sweet

The award-winning author and illustrator talks with American Libraries about the art of crafting a children’s book

Latest Library Links

2m

Becky Siegel Spratford writes: “I am constantly correcting people—educated people, library users, readers—who think that when we buy a book for the library we get it in all formats for one price. They assume we pay slightly more [for electronic formats] than them, but they think for that price we get all those copies they see in our collections. We need to also work on how we communicate this issue to our card holders. So how can we share this complex issue more easily?”

RA for All, Sept. 11
17h

Chris Lewis writes: “For my generation and generations before us, the public library was an equalizing force in every town, helping anyone move toward the American dream. A ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive has just thrown that promise of equality into doubt by limiting libraries’ access to controlled digital lending (CDL). On September 4, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals [affirmed a lower court’s decision that CDL through the National Emergency Library was not fair use.] If the courts won’t recognize CDL-based library lending as fair use, then the next step falls to Congress.”

MIT Technology Review, Sept. 11
21h

“Hispanic Heritage Month honors the contributions and influence of Hispanic and Latine Americans to the history, culture, and achievements of the United States, and is celebrated from September 15 to October 15 annually. Check out these recent releases from authors of Hispanic or Latine background!”

Seattle Public Library, September
1d

Cara S. Bertram writes: “The year 2023 was another record-breaker for book bans. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) documented 1,247 attempts to censor library books and other materials—most of which were works by or about people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, or both. But attempts to limit access to literature in the US are as old as our nation itself. American Libraries travels through time to outline our country’s history of censorship—and the library workers, authors, and advocates who have defended the right to read.”

American Libraries feature, Sept./Oct.
4d

The Library of Congress’s 2024 Literacy Awards recognized four top honorees on September 8, International Literacy Day: The LaundryCares Foundation, an Illinois-based nonprofit that installs learning spaces in laundromats across the country; New Zealand’s Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori Inc., a network of schools working to preserve and promote the Māori language; We Need Diverse Books of Bethesda, Maryland, which helps authors and illustrators with diverse backgrounds get their books published; and the Alsama Project in Beirut, Lebanon, which educates Syrian refugee youth frequently left out of Lebanese schools.

Library of Congress Timeless, Sept. 9
4d

Michael Rodriguez writes: “In the first half of 2024, institutions of higher education in the United States closed permanently at the rate of one per week, according to one estimate, with little sign of slowing down. Where the author lives in Pennsylvania, eight colleges have closed, consolidated, or announced plans to do so since January 2024 alone. These closures directly impact small private colleges and the communities built around them, but closures also ripple throughout the academy, disbanding libraries and archives and endangering access to and preservation of the scholarly record.”

The Scholarly Kitchen, Sept. 5
5d

Daniel M. Rothschild writes: “Discussions of reading habits typically break down, at least in the first instance, along the binary of fiction and nonfiction. If you ask most people what they read, they’ll give you some version of ‘mostly fiction’ or ‘mostly nonfiction.’ I write today in praise of a third genre that few self-respecting intellectuals admit to reading regularly, though many do: the reference book. Real reference books are unpretentious, which is part of their charm. You as the reader can make them comply with the demands of your knowledge, intellect, and time constraints, not vice versa.”

Discourse, Aug. 30