“So what do you do for a living?” she asked, pushing her comb through my dampened hair. It was an innocent question from a hair stylist, who by all outward appearances, seemed to be innocent herself. I know it’s one of the first questions we all ask when we meet people, but I absolutely hate … Continue reading A Bookworm By Any Other Name
If by vocation or avocation you’ve come to cherish children’s literature, you’ve no doubt encountered some skepticism about this particular passion. For too many people, children’s books simply don’t merit serious consideration. As Seth Lerer aptly observes in his award-winning Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter, “For a long time, what … Continue reading It’s Not Monkey Business
The author of five bestselling books, Marlo Thomas is most famous for her groundbreaking television comedy series That Girl and her equally pioneering recording for children Free to Be . . . You and Me. She is the winner of numerous awards, including four Emmys, a Golden Globe, a Grammy, and a Peabody, and she … Continue reading That Girl Loves Libraries: An Interview with Marlo Thomas
For many years after the 1991 conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions in Moscow, longtime IFLA-goers who witnessed the coup d’etat that broke out there in the middle of the meeting would greet one another with memories of that historic event. The coup marked the beginning of the end for communism … Continue reading Photo Essay: Were You in Moscow in ’91?
Lady Gaga is totally playing us. I mean, “Alejandro,” a song that even ABBA couldn’t get past the semifinals of the Eurovision Song Contest, a video that includes her wearing a machine-gun bra that Madonna would be embarrassed by . . . and it’s a worldwide hit. (For my money, “Bad Romance” is much more … Continue reading Who’s in Charge Here?
Some six months after Burlington County, New Jersey, resident Beverly Martinelli appeared before the Rancocas Valley Regional High School Board of Education seeking the removal of Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology from the school library collection, a Freedom of Information Act request has revealed that the Burlington County (N.J.) Library System has removed … Continue reading Gay-Anthology Ban Engulfs Burlington County Public Library
Members of the American Library Association have been talking a lot about books these days, the future of the book as a delivery mechanism, as opposed to a quaint artifact. Readers of American Libraries have responded by writing some provocative articles for the August 2010 issue about the future of the book in a digital … Continue reading Unnecessary Choices
The following story is a cautionary tale for all of those people who say that the internet has replaced the reference collection and that Google has replaced reference librarians. On a cheery morning in late April 1992, I had a flight of whimsy. I woke up to the sounds of birds chirping outside and thought, … Continue reading Surveying My Sex Appeal
In the first edition of Developing an Outstanding Core Collection Carol Alabaster outlined her principles of adult core collections, based on her work at Phoenix Public Library. In the second, she revisits those principles to make sure they are still valid (they are) and also addresses the technological changes that have occurred since the first … Continue reading New from ALA
Whenever I’ve created an instructional handout for students, I’ve struggled with what to include. For everything that ends up on the sheet, there’s usually five times as much that would be useful to students in the class. I include the URL to a web page with more content, but URLs are often long and I … Continue reading Guided by Barcodes
I recently finished reading James Kaplan’s Frank: The Voice, a wonderful new biography of Frank Sinatra from his birth in 1915 through 1954, when he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in From Here to Eternity. What impressed me most about the book—besides the account of Sinatra’s volcanic love affair with Ava Gardner … Continue reading Frankie Catches a Break
