Latest Library Links
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Amy Wyckoff and Marie Harris write: “If you tell teens you are hosting a career workshop where they can meet a professional and learn about a specific job, you may see some eye-rolling. The workshop is not an automatic sell, but it can be turned into a huge success as a series with a little effort. It thrives when teens are given partial ownership by helping to choose the professions featured. Library staffers can use this feedback to sculpt the series and market it.” -
Liu Cixin, author of the Three-Body trilogy, has won the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society from the Clarke Foundation. An international bestseller, the trilogy has sold in excess of a million copies in China, and 400,000 copies into the UK and Commonwealth. Referring to “new challenges” faced by human society in the 21st century, the director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, Sheldon Brown, said Cixin’s triology “helps us to see our problems.” The lifetime award is given each year for “imagination in service.”
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Harvard professor Maya Jasanoff has won the 2018 Cundill History Prize for her “genre-bending” and “immaculately researched” account of the life of Polish-born British writer Joseph Conrad. Jasanoff accepted the $75,000 prize, the richest in nonfiction for a single work in English, for The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World (published by William Collins in the UK) at a gala event held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on November 15. -
Melissa Lindberg writes: “Library of Congress staff members compile subject guides to help researchers find the contents of the collections on a particular subject. LC recently launched the first batch of guides in a new format, utilizing the LibGuides platform, which we hope will make learning about the collections a bit easier. The Prints and Photographs Division’s first guide is in American Indian history and culture. Links to selected collections, searching for images, major reference works, and related resources are given in a sidebar.”
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County officials have hired Costa Mesa law firm Woodruff, Spradlin & Smart to investigate allegations of cultural censorship at the La Quinta branch of the Riverside County (Calif.) Library System in September. County Supervisor V. Manuel Perez said he hopes a thorough investigation will help the public understand what happened at the library during a September 16 presentation by students from Cesar Chavez Elementary School in Coachella. The children were ordered to remove the Mexican flag and not present an essay about Mexican history during their performance.
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A white school media specialist in Maryland was caught on camera November 12 admitting to using a racial slur. The video, posted on Facebook by Dawn Tolson-Hightower under the name Dawn Nichelle Lennon, was taken in a Walmart parking lot in La Plata, Maryland. She can be heard: “Did you call my husband the n-word?” The woman, said to be Darlene Sale, an employee of Potomac Landing Elementary School in Prince George’s County, said: “Yes I did.” Tolson-Hightower said she apparently used the slur “because he didn’t move out the parking spot the way she wanted him to.” Sale has reportedly been reassigned by the school district.
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Mitchell Kuga writes: “Author Michelle Tea started Drag Queen Story Hour in 2015, shortly after giving birth to her son Atticus. As a new mother, she suddenly found herself at events like storytimes at her local San Francisco library branch, which felt welcoming but ‘really straight,’ she said. The writer, who identifies as queer, imagined a storytime that promoted diversity and inclusion, with a pinch of camp. Today, Drag Queen Story Hour has 27 official chapters, and it has inspired countless unofficial offshoots. Readings have mostly found a home at public libraries, often into the crosshairs of the culture wars.”
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YALSA has selected Kacy Helwick, youth collection development librarian at New Orleans Public Library, as its 2019 Emerging Leader. Helwick will receive funding from Friends of YALSA to attend the 2019 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Seattle and the 2019 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. The ALA Emerging Leaders program is designed to enable library staff to serve the profession in a leadership capacity early in their careers. -
Ashly Horace, a graduate student studying library science at Columbia University, has been to libraries across the Houston area to observe storytime activities. But she met with resistance when she tried to attend a storytime at the West University branch of the Harris County (Tex.) Public Library recently. After sitting in for a few minutes, an employee approached and told her the library manager said she had to leave. Five policemen arrived in response to a call from the library. Horace believes she was targeted because she is black, but HCPL officials say it was because she did not have a child with her.
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Anythink, the public library system for Adams County, Colorado, has signed on to implement OCLC Wise, a community engagement system for US public libraries. Anythink joins Allen County (Ind.) Public Library as an early adopter for Wise. The Wise system transforms traditional library management with a holistic people-centric approach. It combines the power of customer relationship management, marketing, and analytics with such standard functions as circulation, acquisitions, and discovery. Wise is a customizable service that is currently used by more than 75% of public libraries in the Netherlands.
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Patrick Cavanaugh writes: “In the aftermath of Stan Lee’s passing earlier this week, fans have been sharing tributes to the comic book legend in a number of ways. Libraries across America are also showing their support for Lee, as his impact on promoting literacy was undeniable. While some might dismiss comic books as being an inferior form of literature, libraries know their value and the mark Lee left on literacy. Here are some ways that libraries are honoring the creator.”
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Judith A. Downie writes: “‘Who’s collecting San Diego’s beer history?’ This question—asked by Char Booth, California State University San Marcos Library associate dean, during a brewing science certificate proposal review in 2016—launched what would become the Brewchive at CSUSM Library. In 2018, the archive received the ALA John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award. Brewchive planning began in 2016 with a small advisory group of local brewing-industry professionals. We decided to focus on evidence of personal and business brewing activity in San Diego County from the 1980s to the present.”
