What’s not to like about bibliotherapy? Bringing readers to books, whether fiction or nonfiction, that respond to personal problems and promote well-being seems like powerful testimony to the notion that reading changes lives. Bibliotherapy has been described as an extension of readers’ advisory, a specialized kind of information provision, or even a means of healing. … Continue reading A Feeling for Books
There are two kinds of horse-racing stories. The most common are the sentimental ones (think National Velvet) in which an underdog horse triumphs over seemingly insurmountable odds. Sometimes the same formula is used in more realistic treatments of the racing world (Seabiscuit) that embroider the march to victory with plenty of social and historical landscape. … Continue reading I’ve Got a Horse Right Here
My car, a Subaru Outback, doubles as a library. There are always a lot of books in there. I never go anywhere without a copy of the Bible, the Qur’an, Ulysses, Gravity’s Rainbow, assorted editions of Mother Goose, a complete collection of the Peter Rabbit series, and a vast and diverse array of brain-candy books. … Continue reading My Own Private Bookmobile
Information overload is nothing new. First there were all those clay tablets, then the manuscripts, then what philosopher/librarian Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) referred to as “that horrible mass of books which keeps on growing.” In Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age, Ann M. Blair explores how the flood of information was … Continue reading Premodern Information Overload
With the November/December 2010 issue, American Libraries print moves permanently to bimonthly publication. Monthly print as a viable delivery vehicle for anything that can be called “news” is clearly limited, and publishing to the web allows for faster and more flexible dissemination and is a general industry trend. Although manufacturing and postage costs are certainly … Continue reading Less Ink, More Words
The good people of Sunrise, on the east coast of Florida, want you to know that they do exist, still, and have not been wiped off the map by a hurricane, or supervillain, or Godzilla. This is despite the fact that on three—three—separate occasions, Google has failed to return any results for a search for … Continue reading Sunrise, Sunset
The library world, in general, has done a poor job of keeping up with new technologies over the past decade, and that has hurt us in many ways. Many libraries and librarians are working hard to catch up, but the broader library culture is still sluggish. The world of information exchange is in constant flux, … Continue reading Why Must a Card Be a Card?
In the November/December issue of Library Technology Reports, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom Collaborated with Jason Griffey, Sarah Houghton-Jan and Eli Neiburger to produce “Privacy and Freedom of Information in 21st Century Libraries”, a practical guide to issues facing today’s library professionals. This excerpt comes from the issue’s introduction. The intersections of technology, security, and … Continue reading Bridging Intellectual Freedom and Technology
Although it seems that the question of whether librarianship is a profession might have been settled when Melvil Dewey declared it to be one back in 1876 (the same year the American Library Association was formed), the debate goes on. In The MLS Project: An Assessment after Sixty Years, Boyd Keith Swigger enters the conversation, … Continue reading The MLS Project
Hardly a month goes by without a story in the newspapers or elsewhere in the media about a scholar who has “discovered” a lost or hitherto unknown manuscript of a text or musical work by a famous author or composer. Typically, following a headline such as “Twain’s Lost Story Discovered by Professor” or “Scholar Asks: … Continue reading The Unknown Cataloger
There probably isn’t a person alive who’s read the Terms of Service (TOS) of every technology or service they use. Those TOS statements are usually quite long and full of boilerplate legalese that any company must include. When you’re quickly trying to load and use new software, reading a TOS statement is not a priority, … Continue reading Read the Fine Print
One of the best aspects of being ALA president is the opportunity to be a part of state chapter conferences. I’d like to focus on my experience at the Kentucky Library Association/Kentucky School Media Association joint conference in Louisville, September 15-18. The hospitality of colleagues in Kentucky was outstanding, thanks to Emmalee Hoover, Leoma Dunn, and … Continue reading Some Good News Out There Too
