Page 860 – American Libraries Magazine

Midwinter Tuesday: Treasurer Urges New Business Development

January 27, 2009

ALA is a pretty big organization, with a $58-million annual budget, ALA Treasurer Rod Hersberger said at the second Midwinter session of the ALA Council. He's concerned about ALA's "mature businesses" that are not yielding annual revenue growth and the need to develop new businesses. Echoing what he said at the Planning and Budget Assembly, Hersberger talked about … Continue reading Midwinter Tuesday: Treasurer Urges New Business Development →

Midwinter Monday: Muhammad Yunus on Defeating Poverty

January 27, 2009

Could ALA President Jim Rettig have picked a better speaker for this Midwinter President’s Program than Muhammad Yunus? I don't think so. With American capitalism failing at numerous levels, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty told the amazing story of his … Continue reading Midwinter Monday: Muhammad Yunus on Defeating Poverty →

Midwinter Monday: Youth Media Awards

January 26, 2009

The big news of Monday at Midwinter is always the Youth Media Awards announcements—the naming of the winning books of the Newbery, Caldecott, Printz, King, and 12 other awards. I’m not breaking any news about who the winners are (though here’s the full list if you’ve missed it). I’m also not the first to relay … Continue reading Midwinter Monday: Youth Media Awards →

Midwinter Sunday: Planning and Budgeting for the Unknown

January 25, 2009

During today’s Planning and Budget Assembly, ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels and President-elect Camila Alire fielded questions from members. One ALAer representing ACRL brought up an issue that has been much commented on in Inside Scoop: What’s the future of print journals? And she wanted to know what ALA was doing about the issue of … Continue reading Midwinter Sunday: Planning and Budgeting for the Unknown →

Midwinter Sunday: Top Tech Trends

January 25, 2009

LITA's traditional Top Tech Trends discussion played to a standing-room-only crowd this morning, although the event was briefly delayed by a fire alarm in the hotel. Participants and attendees ignored the alarm, which proved to be nothing, and focused on four topics: the management of open-source software, the growth of geolocational technologies, linked data, and … Continue reading Midwinter Sunday: Top Tech Trends →

Midwinter Sunday: Authors Take the Stage

January 25, 2009

Emceed by Tina Jordan of HarperCollins, this morning's breakfast program offering from the Association of American Publishers' Trade Libraries Committee turned out to be a surprise treat amidst the business meetings. Eight authors shared stories about their writing lives, their latest books, and their love of libraries: Eli Gottlieb, Now You See Him (Harper Perennial); Brian … Continue reading Midwinter Sunday: Authors Take the Stage →

2009 ALA Presidential Candidates Forum

January 25, 2009

2009 ALA Presidential Candidates Kenton Oliver and Roberta Stevens respond to member questions at the Presidential Candidates Forum held January 24, 2009, at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver. ALA Past-President Loriene Roy moderated the forum. Questions asked (with time of question in parentheses) were: What might your presidential theme be? (at 0:15) How soon … Continue reading 2009 ALA Presidential Candidates Forum →

Midwinter Saturday: Membership Town Hall

January 25, 2009

The full breadth of ALA's membership was on display at the well-attended and generally upbeat Membership Town Hall Meeting sponsored by ALA's Executive Board and Membership Meeting Committee. Dozens of members offered their voices on the topic "What Do Library Staff Want President Obama to Know?" Members asked ALA President Jim Rettig to remind the … Continue reading Midwinter Saturday: Membership Town Hall →

Midwinter Saturday: Presidential Candidates Forum

January 24, 2009

The first of my big technical challenges of Midwinter, filming the ALA Presidential Candidates Forum and editing and posting the video, is nearly complete, except for several hours of computing time to make the necessary file conversions and transfers, which will mostly happen overnight while I'm asleep. I'm calling this one mostly successful. Leonard Kniffel … Continue reading Midwinter Saturday: Presidential Candidates Forum →

Midwinter Saturday: Advocating in a Tough Economy

January 24, 2009

Washington Update: from left, Ken Gordon, Stephanie Vance, Ken Wiggin, Emily Sheketoff The ALA Washington Office Update this morning offered Midwinter Meeting goers an opportunity to connect in person with Washington Office staffers. Lynne Bradley, director of the Office of Government Relations noted that on the Hill, traditional library issues are still on … Continue reading Midwinter Saturday: Advocating in a Tough Economy →

Midwinter Saturday: The Randomness of Inspiration

January 24, 2009

I've been to two author functions thus far, Women of Mystery yesterday and the Sunrise Speaker series featuring cartoonist Leigh Rubin today. The surprising, if apropos, common theme between them is the randomness of inspiration. Mary Jane Clark addressed that theme directly yesterday as she described how she sees stories on the Today Show that … Continue reading Midwinter Saturday: The Randomness of Inspiration →

Midwinter Friday: The View from the Top

January 24, 2009

Add-on product demand has increased because ILS vendors have not kept up with what libraries want, asserted Rob McGee of RMG Consultants, at the 19th annual “View from the Top” seminar this afternoon, kicking off ALA’s January 23-28 Midwinter Meeting here in Denver. This situation is “similar to the early days when libraries came up … Continue reading Midwinter Friday: The View from the Top →

Latest Library Links

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Jennifer Nardine writes: “I recently finished a second master’s degree, an MaEd in Counseling from Virginia Tech’s School of Education. Shortly after graduating, I was startled when a colleague asked, ‘How are you going to show that [mental health] counseling is related to your work?’ Her implication: even though I’d put in the work to earn the degree, it wouldn’t serve me when it came time to apply for promotion. My response: It’s obvious to me that education, librarianship, and counseling are related.”

ACRLog, July 18
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Willem Marx writes: “Sometimes it’s not about catching up on the newest news or the hottest debut. Sometimes it’s about taking a bath with a cup of tea on a Sunday morning and listening to famous writers laugh about their MFA students while going nuts about their favorite short story writers. Sometimes it’s about taking a plane across the Atlantic just to visit a bookstore and pretend it’s still 1922 and Ulysses is all the rage. The book life is about a lot of things and these podcasts cover every single one.”

Electric Literature, July 19
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Stephanie Buffamonte writes: “Altamonte Springs (Fla.) residents came together to save their local library. In an Altamonte Springs City Commission meeting July 18, commissioners voted to keep the city’s local library after the city announced it would close. The city held a special meeting to discuss the library shutting down, and residents came out in droves. Most argued to commissioners that the library should not shut down and is vital to the city.” Commissioners voted at the meeting to raise the city’s property tax rate from 3.01 mills to 4 mills.

WRBW-TV (Orlando), July 19; WESH-TV (Orlando), July 9; Orlando Sentinel, July 19
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ALA applauded the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s July 18 vote allowing libraries and schools to use federal E-Rate funding to purchase Wi-Fi hotspots for lending. The new policy is a keystone of FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel’s Learn Without Limits proposal, announced at ALA Annual Conference in June 2023, to meet increasing connectivity needs nationwide by expanding and modernizing the E-Rate program. The move comes amid concerns about the impact of recently sunset pandemic-era programs, including the Emergency Connectivity Fund, which helped more than a thousand libraries provide Wi-Fi hotspots during the past three years.

ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Office, July 18
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$Sheep doing math wrong$ Heather Kelly writes: “Anyone with an internet connection can watch breaking news unfold in real time, or at least some version of it. Across social media, posts can fly up faster than most fact-checkers and moderators can handle, and they are often an unpredictable mix of true, fake, out of context, and straight propaganda. The risk is higher immediately after politically charged incidents such as the Trump rally shooting, which has already flooded social media with incorrect information and spawned a number of conspiracy theories. Here are some basic tools everyone should use when consuming breaking news online.”

Washington Post, July 15
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Martin Appel writes: “Sometimes small news can reveal big truths. When Microsoft released its annual sustainability report in May, the numbers hid something interesting: the company has increased its emissions by 30% since 2020. Why? One key explanation can be summarized in two letters: AI. Microsoft’s massive investment in artificial intelligence (AI) has led to proportionally massive climate emissions. AI and cloud computing are here to stay and there’s nothing we can do to stop that. In that case, how long can we—the consumers and people of the world—continue to use them without paying?”

PC World, July 10
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Brown University’s John Hay Library in Providence, Rhode Island, has acquired the contemporary papers of poet, musician, playwright, author, and activist Joy Harjo, the 23rd US poet laureate. Harjo, who served in that role from 2019–2022, was the first Native American to hold the position. The acquisition primarily includes materials from 2021–2024, and Harjo will continue to send materials to the library throughout her life. Harjo received an honorary degree from Brown in May, and had been mentored by Brown’s late Professor of Literary Arts and English Michael S. Harper.

Brown University, July 11

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