Popular wisdom says if you want to learn how to use your latest piece of consumer technology, you find an 8-year-old to teach you. In “The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s,” (The New York Times, Jan. 9, 2010), Brad Stone looked at how children view technology differently than adults, and even how … Continue reading Bridging the Digital Divide
Standing outside the ice cream freezers at the local grocery store, a notion struck me from out of the blue. “There ought to be a library-themed Ben & Jerry’s flavor.” Alas, to this day, this has not come to pass. But this single serendipitous thought on an otherwise uneventful evening shopping trip is a testament … Continue reading Analog Ideas, Digital Activism
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As always, it was a pleasure to welcome friends and colleagues to Seattle for the Midwinter Meeting this past January. Two topics of conversation often arose, unexpectedly: our recent ballot measures on marriage equality and marijuana legalization. Of course, we’d been living with those issues all through the election, so the fact that anybody else … Continue reading As a Matter of Fact . . .
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
With this collection of books, we’re looking at ways technology—old and new—contributes to the management of libraries. In some cases, such as the card catalog, it answers a need and creates its own uses. In other cases, such as the cellphone, the technology was created for a different purpose but its adaptations transform library services … Continue reading Technology in the Library
One of the best perks of working at ALA is picking up “gently used” advance reading copies (or ARCs, as they’re known) of yet-to-be-published books. Every few weeks, Booklist editors share with the ALA staff piles of bound galleys and ARCs that have been considered for review by the magazine. When these books arrive in … Continue reading Chicago, My Kind of Town
As librarians, our skills are as embedded in our personal lives as in our work, and they do not desert us when we leave our positions. After retiring in 2009, I began volunteering at Hedgebrook, a writing residency program for women on Whidbey Island in northwest Washington State. Inspired by its founder, Nancy Skinner Nordhoff, … Continue reading Retired, but Embedded
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
In late April, the ALA Executive Board and the Budget Analysis and Review Committee met to review the status of the current 2013 ALA budget and to approve a preliminary budget for the 2014 fiscal year that begins September 1, 2013. The continuing impact of the recession on libraries and projected revenues this year and … Continue reading Rethinking, Reinventing
It has been a privilege this year to serve as your president. The experience exceeded my expectations in so many ways. I especially enjoyed representing ALA in the larger world. One of the special joys was working closely with Immediate Past President Molly Raphael and President-Elect Barbara Stripling to ensure continuity across our terms to … Continue reading Representing ALA
Helping launch the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done in my many years at Booklist. We had very little time to get the awards off the ground last year. The official announcement that Booklist, RUSA, and Carnegie Corporation of New York would … Continue reading Reading the Carnegie Longlist
Content creation may seem like a novel function for libraries, but it’s nothing new. If you think back to the traditional library of yesteryear (or even traditional services in today’s library), you will notice plenty of examples of content being created. For instance, has your library ever done any of the following? Produced a pathfinder … Continue reading Libraries as Content Creators
