A 2016 study of the web evaluation skills of middle school, high school, and college students by Stanford University’s History Education Group found that young people are quite likely to be duped by misleading or false information. Even Stanford’s own students, when evaluating articles from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the conservative fringe group … Continue reading Beyond Fake News
Let’s start with Revised Standards and Guidelines of Service for the Library of Congress Network of Libraries for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, 2017, from the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (ASCLA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). Developed by the Library of Congress and ASCLA, these supersede the 2011 standards. … Continue reading Information Access for All
DiscoverMobile by Demco The recently launched DiscoverMobile app connects communities to everything their libraries have to offer. The app is available to all types of libraries and is designed to run on both Android and iOS devices. The app is hosted and maintained by Demco—libraries manage only their own content and branding. Libraries can add … Continue reading Reaching Patrons on the Go
A total of 39,634 failed to vote on the question. Yet of those who did, a majority stated they wanted the executive director to be a librarian. The question is not so much about a skill set but about the relevance of our degree and our profession. It makes one wonder how important the library … Continue reading The Librarian Identity Crisis
The current and prospectively annual battles over funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and Innovative Approaches to Literacy have dominated our advocacy work. We have sustained and even expanded funding for IMLS in FY2018, but we are already pushing for support for FY2019 appropriations. At the same time, other important aspects … Continue reading Hope, Power, Action
The rally was hosted by the UW College Republicans, who invited Patriot Prayer—a right-wing group based in the Pacific Northwest—as a way to exercise free speech rights. As many open-carry advocates, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis voiced their intentions to attend the rally, fears of maintaining campus safety increased. (Just last year, a protester was shot … Continue reading Institutional Neutrality Isn’t Reality
Many libraries have turned to embedded librarianship as one solution to better serving patrons and demonstrating value to their communities. The term comes from the expression embedded journalism, which was first used at the start of the Iraq War in 2003 when journalists traveled with military units and reported from within the action itself. Similarly, … Continue reading Get Out of the Library
At the New Albany–Floyd County (Ind.) Public Library, where I work, we have a teen volunteer program that starts at age 11. We get a high volume of requests for volunteer hours because of a service requirement at a nearby middle school. We’re one of the only games in town for these kids, many of … Continue reading Helping Hands
My mom was the first of many inspirations in my professional life. She took a job at our smallish public library when I was a kid. I started hanging around there, which led to helping out, shelving, and eventually working the desk, and I never really left. She and my dad worked very hard to … Continue reading The Last Story
Most likely your library still has traditional customers who ask questions at the reference desk and check out physical books. You also have a new breed of library customer who brings in any number of electronic devices and expects those devices to work with your library’s technology. They want to plug into your public computers. … Continue reading Futureproofing Your Library
littleBits Code Kit Little Bits has been used in classrooms and makerspaces for years as a platform for building and experimenting with electronics. The Code Kit, released in summer 2017, is its first education-oriented kit to incorporate simple coding into projects. The kit introduces an LED matrix and a “codeBit” to the littleBits collection of … Continue reading Coding for Fun
Building or renovating a library is often only cursorily covered. The Practical Handbook of Library Architecture: Creating Building Spaces That Work, by Fred Schlipf and John A. Moorman, is long overdue. Its functional predecessor, Planning Academic and Research Library Buildings, third edition, by Philip D. Leighton and David C. Weber (ALA Editions, 1999), answers many … Continue reading Learning Outside the Box
