Advocacy Archives | Page 43 of 46 | American Libraries Magazine

Measuring E-Resource Use: Standards and Practice for Counting Remote Users

By Rachel A. Fleming-May and Jill E. Grogg | August 23, 2010

Over the years, librarians and researchers have studied the usage of books, journals, meeting rooms, photocopiers, programs, and just about any other resource or service libraries have chosen to provide. The reasons for doing so are simple: Librarians wish to provide their communities with resources and services of the highest utility, effectively foreseeing which materials … Continue reading Measuring E-Resource Use: Standards and Practice for Counting Remote Users →

Charles Ogletree on Race, Reading, and the Presumption of Guilt

August 20, 2010

Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School professor and founder of Harvard Law’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, serves as one of several celebrity honorary co-chairs of the American Library Association’s Spectrum Presidential Initiative, an effort to raise $1 million in scholarships for minority students pursuing a master’s degreee in library and information science. … Continue reading Charles Ogletree on Race, Reading, and the Presumption of Guilt →

Your Reality, Augmented

Meredith Farkas | August 19, 2010

Last time, I discussed QR codes and how they can link you to content that provides further information about an object. But what if you didn’t have to put barcodes all over everything you wanted people to scan? What if all it took to get that content was to walk up to an item or … Continue reading Your Reality, Augmented →

Dollar General Invests in the American Dream

By Leonard Kniffel | August 18, 2010

Through community partnerships, Wauconda (Ill.) Area Public Library developed Spanish- and English-language brochures, as well as a video that was posted to YouTube. Housed in a brand-new doublewide trailer, the tiny Pinewoods branch of the Athens (Ga.) Regional Library System developed a volunteer ESL training manual that’s on the library’s website. These are among the … Continue reading Dollar General Invests in the American Dream →

Early Literacy: A Sustainable Statewide Approach

By Bonnie McCune | August 17, 2010

Public libraries have maintained that they are significant in boosting children’s literacy since the first children’s section was established in the late 1800s. But in times of economic uncertainty, decision-makers find it easy to levy budget cuts against discrete, relatively powerless entities such as libraries. Regional approaches create entrée for libraries to gain greater visibility … Continue reading Early Literacy: A Sustainable Statewide Approach →

The Customer’s Always Right

Brian Mathews | August 16, 2010

We strive to provide great customer service, yet few of us actually use the “C” word. We have many names—patron, borrower, user, reader—but “customer” remains controversial and typically we avoid it. Not so at Howard County Library, located in the Baltimore suburbs. At HCL, they embrace the term, feeling that it accurately conveys the relationships … Continue reading The Customer’s Always Right →

Reaching Undergrads: Recruitment via Internship

By Sara D. Smith | August 10, 2010

When Noelle Rader, a junior at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, applied for a student job in the library’s music and dance department, she was mostly looking to earn some money to pay rent and tuition. And as a music major and violist, she was also interested in working with the library’s viola … Continue reading Reaching Undergrads: Recruitment via Internship →

Facts, with a Generous Helping of Heart

August 4, 2010

Two different library stories in Texas crossed my desk in the past week that gave me pause. The first was the discouraging news from far southeast Jefferson County that county commissioners seeking to close a several-million-dollar deficit have zeroed out the $297,236 budget for the 80-year-old county library, which serves 33,000 residents in unincorporated and … Continue reading Facts, with a Generous Helping of Heart →

Guided by Barcodes

By Meredith Farkas | July 22, 2010

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 →

Our Authors, Our Advocates

July 20, 2010

The American Library Association got a brand-new president June 29, when Roberta Stevens of the Library of Congress entered the ballroom at the Renaissance hotel in Washington, D.C., dancing to the tune of “Celebration,” along with the incoming presidents of the 11 ALA divisions and four of her favorite authors: Marie Arana, Brad Meltzer, Sharon … Continue reading Our Authors, Our Advocates →

Signage: Better None Than Bad

Leah L. White | July 12, 2010

A quick search of the photo website Flickr for the keywords “library signage” can produce interesting results. You will find everything from café-style chalkboard advertisements to sheets of white paper with a few pieces of clip art thrown in. Poor visual communication can create a frustrating environment for users, but it's a practice that librarians … Continue reading Signage: Better None Than Bad →

Libraries Reach FY2011 – Some Relieved, All Wary

By Beverly Goldberg | June 29, 2010

The FY2010 roller-coaster ride is just about over, and many a library advocate is undoubtedly glad to see the back of it. There’s a curious symmetry about the timing: Thousands of tenacious front-line library supporters are taking stock of their finalized local budgets even as a swarm of library boosters descended on Capitol Hill June … Continue reading Libraries Reach FY2011 – Some Relieved, All Wary →

Latest Library Links

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Emanuel Maiberg writes: “AI bots that scrape the internet for training data are hammering the servers of libraries, archives, museums, and galleries, and are in some cases knocking their collections offline, according to a new survey from the GLAM-E Lab. The survey is the first attempt at measuring the problem, which in the worst cases can make valuable, public resources unavailable to humans because the servers they’re hosted on are being swamped by bots scraping the internet for AI training data.” The University of North Carolina Libraries in Chapel Hill recently shared its experience with AI bots attempting to scrape its catalog.

404 Media, June 17; GLAM-E Lab, June 17; University of North Carolina Libraries, June 9
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Mark Samuels writes: “Becoming a successful manager is far from straightforward. Leading people requires a series of crucial characteristics, and research suggests one of the most important is positivity. A Harvard Business Review survey found that team members felt more highly respected when leaders expressed positivity during the early stages of a project. So how can leaders develop the right tone and be seen by their staff as positive leaders? Five business leaders give their top tips.”

ZDNET, June 13; Harvard Business Review, Apr. 25
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Adrienne De Luna writes: “Among Us is a multiplayer online game where players work together on a spaceship to complete tasks while trying to identify imposters, who attempt to secretly sabotage the mission and eliminate players. Crewmates must use communication and deduction to vote out suspected imposters, while imposters try to deceive the group and avoid detection.” De Luna shares how Whiting (Ind.) Public Library launched a popular after-hours, real-life Among Us program.

Programming Librarian, June 12
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Noah Biesiada writes: “Huntington Beach (Calif.) voters weighed in on the future of their city’s library June 10, [repealing an approved-but-never-created] book review committee and blocking city leaders from selling the library or privatizing its operations. City Council members have been loudly calling for residents to vote no on both initiatives for months. But library volunteers and residents came out in force at city council meetings, calling for city leaders to keep their hands off the shelves and leave book selection to librarians.

Voice of OC, June 10; American Libraries Online, Apr. 4
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Hannah Weinberg writes: “Since our last report, libraries have continued to experience significant upheaval from President Trump’s actions. In May, the Trump administration fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter. We also saw legal cases challenging the administration’s defunding of the Institute of Museum and Library Services continue to make their way through the courts in May and June. Meanwhile, library advocates contacted their legislators to fight for federal library funding in fiscal year 2026. Here are several updates on the attacks against libraries across the US and the ways in which library supporters are pushing back.”

American Libraries Online, June 18, Apr. 30
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Jacksonville (Fla.) Public Library writes: “Considered the longest-running African American holiday, Juneteenth has been celebrated by African Americans since the 1800s and became a federal holiday in 2021. A combination of the words ‘June’ and ‘nineteenth,’ it is celebrated on the anniversary of the order, issued by Major General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, proclaiming freedom for slaves in Texas. If you’re still somewhat new to Juneteenth celebrations or you’d like to share the history with your children, the library has books to help you out!” Lone Star College–University Park (Texas) Library offers a research guide with history, ebooks, primary sources, and more.

Jacksonville (Fla.) Public Library, June 13; Lone Star College University Park (Texas) Library, May 27
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Rob Bittner writes: “ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children and Young Adult Library Services Association are embarking on a new adventure together. We will be reunifying and the two divisions will once again be combined, with a mission to serve both children’s and teen librarians. I know that there will be many questions that I am unable to answer in a blog post or in our FAQ page, but we will be looking to the memberships of both divisions to provide feedback and input that we can use to ensure that we can best serve our newly reunited division starting in 2026.”

ALSC Blog, June 11

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