Mr. Library Dude: A Little Library History: 1912 Library Director's Report

A Little Library History: 1912 Library Director's Report
by Joe Hardenbrook
April 20, 2015

Last week was National Library Week. Our library director shared with us her predecessor’s library report from 1912. I was struck by how many of the report’s themes are still integral to today’s libraries.

Library Director's Report from 1912 - photo courtesy Carroll University Archives

Authored by Amanda Flattery, who worked as college librarian from 1905-1915 and who was described as possessing “outstanding scholarship, high ideals, and ready humor” (see her obituary – page 2), starts her report by describing the the juggling of multiple duties. Sound familiar, librarians? It then moves on to the year’s major activities and issues. Here’s where I see parallels to today’s library work:

• Creating bibliographies: Aren’t those today’s LibGuides?
• Students unable to find desired information: Yep, even in today’s info-rich environment, this is still a hallmark of what we do.
• A course in reference work and bibliography: That has morphed into information literacy.
• Issues with organizing information and providing access: A key issue in the 21st century!

Below are some excerpts relating to the main themes:

Research

“Many hours of time are required for research work for students who are ignorant of books, or unable for find information.”

“Exhaustive bibliographies have been prepared by the librarian for all inter-collegiate debates.”

Check out some of the topics that students were researching at the library:

• Japanese social classes
• Witchcraft in England
• Student government at Princeton
• Statistics on condensed milk
• Visiting nurses
• Hamlet’s insanity
• National music of Scotland
• Description of a cash register
• Municipal aid for the unemployed
• Headache powders

Information Literacy

“a course in reference work and bibliography has been given, consisting of lectures, with criticism of practice work done by the class.”

Collection Development

“A notable addition to the resources of the library consists of about 350 pamphlets on up-to-date subjects…prove to be excellent materials for debate work.”

Outreach

“To establish cordial relations with the women of the town, the librarian has given help to different members of the women’s clubs…”

Organization of Information

“Of the 3000 vols…only 1183 had been recorded in the accession book. There was no shelf-list, and the cataloging had been done in a confused and imperfect manner. It was impossible to build upon such a flimsy superstructure. It was absolutely necessary to go back to the very beginning and make the records correct and complete.”

Consistent Core Services

Years pass by, technology changes, people come and go, but a library’s core duties remain the same:

• Providing access to information
• Organizing information
• A place to learn and get help
• Materials for your community

PDF of the 1912 Library Director’s Report.

Source: Mr. Library Dude

The New York Times: Transgender Children’s Books Fill a Void and Break a Taboo

Transgender Children’s Books Fill a Void and Break a Taboo
By Alexandra Alter
June 6, 2015

Sam Martin was browsing in a Boston record store 23 years ago when an unusual photography book caught his eye. Mr. Martin flipped through its pages, which featured portraits and interviews with women who had become men, and started to cry.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I’m not the only one,’” said Mr. Martin, 43, who started transitioning to male from female after he bought the book. “When I was growing up, I never saw people like me in movies or books.”

Mr. Martin is now on a mission to change that. He belongs to a small group of emerging authors who are writing children’s literature that centers on transgender characters, hoping to fill the void they felt as young readers. His debut work of fiction — a semi-autobiographical story about a transgender teenage boy who falls in love with an older boy on the beach in Cape Cod — will be published in a collection this month by Duet, a new young adult publisher that specializes in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer fiction.

“My goal was to write stories that would have helped me feel less alone at that age,” said Mr. Martin, who works as a Starbucks barista in Washington and writes at night.

A few years ago, gender fluidity was rarely addressed in children’s and young adult fiction. It remained one of the last taboos in a publishing category that had already taken on difficult issues like suicide, drug abuse, rape and sex trafficking. But children’s literature is catching up to the broader culture, as stereotypes of transgender characters have given way to nuanced and sympathetic portrayals on TV shows like “Orange Is the New Black” and “Transparent.”

Recently, the highly publicized transformation of the reality TV star and former Olympian Bruce Jenner into Caitlyn Jenner — revealed to the world via a glamorous portrait on the cover of Vanity Fair — brought even more visibility to the movement for transgender equality.

More writers and publishers have started tackling the subject, not just with memoirs and self-help guides tailored to transgender youth, but through novels aimed at a broad readership. This year, children’s publishers are releasing around half a dozen novels in a spectrum of genres, including science fiction and young adult romance, that star transgender children and teenagers. “In our culture, it was really something that was in the shadows, but suddenly people are talking about it,” said David Levithan, vice president and publisher of Scholastic Press. “As our culture is starting to acknowledge transgender people and acknowledge that they are part of the fabric of who we are, literature is reflecting that.”

Several of the movement’s debut authors have published books drawn from their own experiences. Last fall, a transgender teenager named Jazz Jennings published “I Am Jazz,” a picture book she co-wrote about a transgender girl. Simon & Schuster released dual memoirs by Katie Rain Hill and Arin Andrews, two transgender teenagers from Oklahoma who met and fell in love.

Mr. Andrews, 19, said that books for young adults on the subject were scarce when he began transitioning to male from female in 2011.

“When I first started transitioning, I mostly had YouTube as a source,” he said. “I wanted to write a book to help others because there were not a lot of sources out there, and I thought that one book could save a person’s life.”

Mr. Andrews says he receives 15 to 20 Facebook messages a day from readers about his memoir, “Some Assembly Required,” including notes from children as young as 8 and readers in their 60s and 70s who say the book helps them navigate questions about their gender identity.

The body of children’s literature on the subject is still tiny and relatively new. When Julie Anne Peters published “Luna,” a novel about a teenage girl whose brother wants to be a girl, in 2004, it was the first young-adult novel with a transgender character to be released by a mainstream publisher. Since then, more than 50 novels with transgender characters have been published, mostly for teenagers, according to Talya Sokoll, a librarian who compiled a reading list of children’s books with trans characters.

Some of the writers who are exploring the topic have faced criticism and online attacks. A blistering Amazon review for “I am Jazz,” written for 4- to 8-year-olds, called the story of a transgender girl “inappropriate material for young readers,” while another reviewer scolded, “We should not be indoctrinating young kids about ‘trans.’ ”

But writers and publishers have been undeterred, noting that child psychologists and L.G.B.T. advocacy groups argue that very young children can question their gender identity and that families should be open to discussing the subject. The next frontier for authors writing about transgender people seems to be middle-grade literature, or books aimed at 8- to 12-year-olds. In November, Disney Hyperion published “Gracefully Grayson,” a novel for readers ages 10 and up about a sixth-grade boy who feels like a girl.

In August, Scholastic will publish “George,” a middle-grade debut novel about a boy who knows he is a girl but doesn’t know how to tell his family and friends. George decides to try out for the part of Charlotte in a school production of “Charlotte’s Web” in hopes that it will help others see him the way he sees himself. For readers, it’s not much of a leap. From the first paragraph, an omniscient narrator refers to George as “she,” so that when other characters use male pronouns to refer to George, it feels jarring.

The author, Alex Gino, who grew up in Staten Island and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, identifies as genderqueer, a gender identity that falls outside of the male/female binary, and goes by the pronoun “they.” Alex started writing “George” 12 years ago, while working as a tutor, and wrote more than a dozen drafts.

“I wrote it because it was the book I wanted to read,” Alex said. “I wanted trans voices telling trans stories.”

In the first draft, Alex didn’t even use the word “transgender.” “I was like, how would a 10-year-old ever come across that word, but now I’m like, of course they would,” Alex said.

Scholastic is facing resistance from some teachers and librarians who question whether third and fourth graders are ready for the discussion. About a month ago, the publisher sent 10,000 early copies to teachers around the country to get feedback, and the responses were largely positive with some mixed reactions.

But Scholastic is aiming to turn the book into a mainstream success. It increased the first printing to 50,000 from 35,000 based on strong preorders and sent Alex to meet with booksellers and librarians at the ABC Children’s Institute in Pasadena, Calif., and at BookExpo in New York. They hired Jamie Clayton, a transgender actress, to narrate the audiobook.

So far, early responses from parents of young readers have been encouraging. Marietta Zacker, a literary agent who lives in South Orange, N.J., picked up a copy of “George” at the expo and read it with her 11-year-old daughter, Natalia, who loved it.

“It was not shocking to her,” Ms. Zacker said. “It’s the story of every person, the quest to be your own self.”

Carolyn Mackler, a young-adult novelist who lives in Manhattan, gave a copy of “George” to her 10-year-old son to read. She told him that it was about a transgender child and explained what that meant. After he read it, she asked him what he thought.

“I said, ‘If you met George, would you be friends with him?’ ” she recalled. “And he said, ‘Mom, it’s her, and I would be friends with her if she was nice.’ ”

Source: The New York Times.

The Mississauga News: Creating space in Canada’s cultural fabric, a story at a time

Creating space in Canada’s cultural fabric, a story at a time

Apr 09, 2015

Teenaz Javat

The SPACE women are invading Mississauga next week.

On Tuesday they land on the stage of the Noel Ryan Auditorium at Central Library to tell us, in their own words, what it’s like being a creature from outer space, or at least, from outside Canada’s boundaries.

The members of the Shoe Project Alumni Collective Educational are highly-educated, highly-motivated educators, psychologists, scientists, writers and professionals who have been brought together to find their individual voices through the far-sighted work of former Sheridan College teacher and novelist Kathryn Govier.

Through the conceit of telling a story about what they have worn on their feet at various times of their lives, the women develop powerful, evocative expressions of how their homelands and their adopted lands have changed their lives and how their former and current lives reverberate through one another.

Gathered in a circle they tell stories about how they came to be in Canada, shape them into short essays and performance pieces and help themselves, and their receiving Canadian family, figure out what’s going on with this whole intriguing immigrant business.

“It distills your thought process,” says Teenaz Javat, a 46-year-old Churchill Meadows resident who will be one of those presenting the array of song, dance and stories. “It just distills your story through the lens of a shoe. Nobody came to Canada barefoot, These are real shoes and they are our own.”

Javat describes herself as Indian by blood, Pakistani by bond (she moved there after marrying her husband) and Canadian by choice.

Although she’s a writer by profession, who pens the 65-character crawls that snake the bottom of your TV screen as you watch CBC News Network on weekends, the Mumbai native has never written personal memoir before.

Her first story was about the black baby shoes that her then-eight-month-old daughter wore June 22, 1997 when she and her doubting husband first arrived in Canada. The shoes hang on her Christmas tree each year and remind her of the nine years she stayed at home caring for her two children.

Her latest story features a pair of shiny dress sandals known as chappals, covered with “bling” that she bought a couple of years ago on a return visit to India to see her mother, who still clips and saves all the stories her daughter writes as a freelancer for two major newspapers in India.

Titled I Missed the Bus And Survived, it tells the story of how Javat’s dream of becoming a civil servant by attending Nehru University in New Delhi was shattered before it began when her mother refused to let her attend the school after visiting Delhi, which she termed “the thug capital of India.” Her mother turned the cab around even before her university tour was to start.

It was at a bus stop near Nehru University where the infamous bus gang rape took place in 2012.

“She would have worn chappals similar to mine. They look good and are even quite comfortable, But they are no good for running. They would not have helped her escape,” the story ends.

Sitting in a Tim Hortons across the street from the low-rise building at The Collegeway and Glen Erin Dr. where the family lived for five years when they came to Canada, Javat says “I wanted to go to that university so badly and it changed the course of my whole life.”

Different choices were made, choices which introduced her to the joys of pushing a stroller through the snow from The Collegeway to Woodchester Plaza to cash in the beer bottle empties, which gave you $1.20, the perfect amount to buy a coffee at the Tim Hortons next door.

She didn’t know what Tim Hortons was when she came to Canada but she figured out quickly, from the constant mentions, that it was some kind of touchstone of national culture.

Writing her story was liberating for Javat, especially since she was in complete control of how she presented her story for consumption. It wasn’t filtered by mainstream media.

Saima Hussain was the book editor at The Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper to which Javat often submitted reviews.

Now they both live in Mississauga and participate in The Shoe Project.

Hussain was a shy 19-year-old introvert when she came to Canada to get undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Toronto.

Embarrassed by her accent, she wore baggy dark clothes and tried her best to be invisible on campus. After nine years here, she moved back to Pakistan with her family.

On her brother’s wedding day there, she wore a ruby red outfit and decided to forego the hijab that previously covered her “thick, frizzy hair.”

Her story, This Time in Technicolour details how she returned to Canada four years ago to study publishing at Ryerson University with a bright pink pair of highly symbolic footwear called khussas in her luggage.

The freelance writer is now coordinator of the Shoe Project, which she likens to an English immersion program whose real effect is to “draw people out of their shells.”

The stories and the process that produces them is much more powerful than she anticipated, says Hussain. “It makes me realize just how privileged we are to have these people here.”

As project coordinator for George Brown College’s program for internationally-trained newcomers to Canada, Chi Diep “is humbled every time I see their resumés.”

Diep’s family escaped Vietnam, sponsored by a Port Perry church, and came to Canada when she was eight-years-old. Now in her early 40s, the Cooksville resident used the Shoe Project to write Traces, a story of a troubling childhood incident, a street suicide she witnessed as a five-year-old on the day Saigon fell to North Vietnam.

Every day on her way to school she would stop at the site of the shooting, grinding her heel into the ground, acknowledging what happened, though unclear of its meaning.

There’s no admission price to The Shoe Project Tuesday, unless it’s surrendering your preconceptions and opening your eyes to how broad the Canadian experience is.

And there’s one more reason why Saima Hussain and her colleagues call themselves SPACE women.

“We are making a space for ourselves” in this country’s narrative, she says.

It’s no longer a quiet space told via translation by mainstream media. It’s a real space told by the authentic voices you can hear Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

NOTES:

• Teenaz Javat still feels a warm attachment to the Erin Mills neighbourhood she lived in for five years when she first came to Canada. Some of the community organizations that we might take for granted were godsends to her, she says, That includes PLASP which offered preschool and post school programs so she could go back to school. The old Knob Hill Farms outlet in Dixie Mall had the cheapest groceries in town. She’s also a big fan of the Tender Years pre-school program which “was a like a seque into Canadian society. “If I ever win the lottery I’m going to give them a lot of money,” she says with a laugh.

• Javat had a BA from her hometown university in Mumbai in political science and economics and a master’s in economics from the University of Poona but she knew she had to retrain to try to get into journalism here. She had started as a cub reporter at the Dalal St. Journal (equivalent to the Wall St. Journal), covered politics and business for the Observer. She moved to Pakistan after marrying her husband, becoming a Pakistani citizen so she could work for The Dawn Economic Business Review. She then branched out into writing broader material on everything from food to Bollywood.

She’d been out of the work force for almost eight years when she found a course called Canadian Journalism for Internationally-Trained Writers at Sheridan College. That’s where she met Katharine Govier, who established and taught the program along with Joyce Wayne. It was a one-year program designed to allow for easy transition from foreign to Canadian newsrooms. “We were like as mini-UN,” says Javat, who has warm memories of the program and still is in touch with some former classmates. There were participants from Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Japan, India, Pakistan and Nigeria to name but a few.

The program ran five years, with mixed results, says Javat. From her class just she and one other woman, who works at the BBC, got jobs in mainstream media. They were already very proficient at speaking English. For those who weren’t so well-versed in the language, it was much harder. While they did get internships which often do lead to permanent jobs, their media supervisors were usually to preoccupied with trying to get their own impossibly busy jobs done to find time for the appropriate mentoring, Javat says.

• Javat has taught convergent media writing for four years and has taken advantage of her experience with The Shoe Project to become a teacher and mentor herself, working with at-risk pregnant and young mothers in Toronto in the Literature For Life program who gain clarity and perspective by writing about their own changing lives.

• “Even with a kid, when I went back to school I wasn’t going to take any McJobs,” says Javat, who points out that immigrants were often condemned to job ghettoes in the past, despite their eminent qualifications to do more challenging work.

While immigrants traditionally came here to escape war and make a better life for her children, today’s new Canadians don’t want to wait. “I didn’t come here fleeing the potato famine,” she says. “I was not fleeing war. I came here for my life. I had already invested in my education.”

Coming to Canada may have been hardest for her husband, who left his family behind in Pakistan. An auto mechanic, he was able to get a job right away and support his wife while she stayed home. When she went back to work it was “one job - three students” as her husband liked to remind her.

• Pavat likens the Shoe Project to adult “show and tell.” It’s so empowering because the participants get to tell their unfiltered stories. “We all had stories to tell but no one in the mainstream media was willing to listen at the time,” she says. “We needed a platform for sharing, so we decided to create our own platform. I will forever be grateful to Katharine for that.”

• Liz McQuaig, the librarian in the arts and history department of Central Library who is bringing The Shoe Project to town for the second time (it was at the Srt Gallery of Mississauga on its first sojourn) says “we wanted to bring it to Mississauga because it will resonate with a lot of people here,” since more people who live here were born outside Canada’s boundaries than within them. The message of The Shoe Project is “very welcoming.”

From: The Mississauga News

CBC News: E-book prices marked up too high, libraries protest

E-book prices marked up too high, libraries protest

With markups of up to 8 times retail price, libraries say they can't afford a good range of content

By Emily Chung, CBC News Posted: Jun 22, 2015 5:33 PM ET

Why aren't there more e-books on your library's virtual shelves? Libraries say it's because publishers are sometimes charging them more than $100 per copy — and they can't afford it.

The Kindle edition of Lena Dunham's bestselling memoir Not that Kind of Girl retails for $14.99 at Amazon.ca. But the book's publisher, Random House, charges Canadian libraries $85 per copy of the e-book — five times more, according to the Canadian Library Association. You can buy the Kindle version of Donna Tartt's Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Goldfinch for $12.99, but publisher Little, Brown and Company charges libraries $114 per copy or nearly nine times more.

'Libraries are basically at the publishers' mercy.'- Michael Kozlowski, e-book website owner

Despite the premium, only one borrower can access each copy of the book at a time.

The Canadian Library Association launched a public campaign at fairpricingforlibrarires.org earlier this month trying to draw attention to the huge markup and what it means for the public.

"We want the public to understand why they don't see all the e-books maybe they would like to see when they go to the public library website," said Vickery Bowles, city librarian for the Toronto Public Library, which is leading the campaign.

"We're very concerned about what this means for mandate of the public library in providing universal access to a diverse collection in a range of formats … we need to be able to provide customers with access to e-content in the same way that we've always provided access to other forms of content in books and DVDS and CDs et cetera."

That's a big concern because demand for e-books among library users is soaring.

With print books, libraries have traditionally paid less than retail price for copies. With e-books, it's the opposite.

Some publishers charge libraries up to eight times retail price for "perpetual access," where the book remains in their collection forever. Others charge a more "reasonable" price, such as $30 per copy, but allow access for a limited period of time, such as a year, or a limited number of borrowers. Once the limit is reached, the book disappears and the library has to repurchase it.

"Those are not sustainable models," Bowles said.

Soaring demand

The end result is libraries can buy much less digital content than traditional content for the same price.

Meanwhile, Bowles said demand at the Toronto Public Library for digital content has increased 4,200 per cent since 2008. In 2014, he said Toronto residents borrowed 3.5 million e-books, e-audio books and e-videos – "mainly e-books."

'We want the public to understand why they don't see all the e-books maybe they would like to see when they go to the public library website,' says Vickery Bowles, city librarian for the Toronto Public Library. (Shawn Benjamin/CBC)

That still only represents 11 per cent of overall library use, she added, but demand continues to grow as more digital content becomes available and more people have devices like e-readers and tablets to read it on.

The Canadian Publishers' Council, which represents the Canadian branches of the large international publishers, including HarperCollins, Penguin, Random House, Hachette and Simon & Schuster, chose not to comment for this story despite being given ample time to respond to CBC's queries.

So why are the e-book prices charged to libraries so high? It's not because e-books cost more to publish than print books, said Michael Kozlowski, editor in chief of GoodeReader.com, a website devoted to e-book and e-reader news. With print books, publishers need to pay for paper, printing, warehousing and shipping — costs that don't exist with e-books, he added.

He said what's happening is that there's no clear "ownership" of a digital file like an e-book the way there is with print books.

"So publishers can do what they want to libraries and libraries are basically at the publishers' mercy."

Ebooks don't wear out

Krystyna Ross is chief executive officer of ebound Canada, a group that helps smaller, independent Canadian publishers with the transition to digital publishing. Most of the publishers she represents sell their books to libraries through a wholesaler called Overdrive. It only allows publishers to sell permanent or perpetual access to an e-book, but lets them set the price.

The Kindle edition of a recent bestseller would cost $14.99 at Amazon.ca. But publishers like Random House charge Canadian libraries $85 per copy.

Some publishers mark the price up for libraries, and some don't, Ross added.

Those that do may be concerned that making books available through the library will reduce the number of copies they sell, she said.

Bowles acknowledged this is a bigger concern with e-books because people don't have to physically go to the library to borrow and return them.

Ross said publishers also mark up copies because e-books don't wear out like print books do. When a print book wears out, a library may have to buy another copy, so having more e-books could lower sales.

"Honestly," she added, "many of my publishers are just looking at what else is happening in the market and emulating what the multi-national publishers do."

But she said like libraries, many smaller publishers would like to have access to more e-book pricing options.

Bowles said she understands that publishers are facing a "challenging business environment." Libraries are fine with paying a higher price for e-books than consumers, she added. They're just looking for a pricing model that's more reasonable and flexible. For example, she suggests libraries could buy 10 copies of a new release for $85 and have permanent access to those, then buy another 90 copies for a lower price that only last the first year — the year when demand is highest.

"What they [publishers] need to hear is that the pricing models they're using right now don't work for public libraries at all."

With files from Shawn Benjamin and Aaron Saltzman

From: cbcnews

The Atlantic: Yale's Rare-Books Library Is Saving Old Chipotle Cups

Yale's Rare-Books Library Is Saving Old Chipotle Cups

They join a collection of American poetry and fiction printed on pencils, postage stamps, paint chips, and other unusual materials.

• ROBINSON MEYER
 
•  JUN 23, 2015
• 
  

Remember those little stories on the side of the Chipotle cups? Do you happen to have one lying in the backseat of your car?

You, then, have at least one thing in common with Yale.

Yale’s rare-book library has acquired a complete set of the Chipotle “Cultivating Thought” series—the series of short, “two-minute” essays and stories printed on the side of the company’s disposable paper goods. George Saunders, Jeffrey Eugenides, Toni Morrison, and Amy Tan all contributed to the series; Jonathan Safran Foer came up with the idea in the first place.

Like the idea of the“Cultivating Thought” series itself, the acquisition sounds like a punch line. Don’t throw out your trash—give it to Yale! But in fact it joins a large archive of poetry printed on material on which poetry is not often printed. The Beinecke Library’s rare-book and manuscript library has collected poetry printed on the side of pencils, postage stamps, bumper stickers, and commercial paint chips. It includes poems on posters by Amiri Baraka and Gwendolyn Brooks.

“The Yale Collection of American Literature collects American Literature in all its formats and in all media, documenting the ways great American writers reach diverse and unusual audiences beyond standard book publishing,” says a statement from the library.

So as much as it sounds like a joke, it fits into a tradition of American writers trying to reach unusual audiences through unusual (if brief) work—and of libraries collecting their labor. It is probably the most pecuniarily rewarding effort yet to be collected by the library, however—the same collection also contains 1980s mail art. And probably few other projects in the collection started when a writer found himself so bored in a fast-food joint that he pondered his own mortality: “I really just wanted to die with frustration,” Foer told Vanity Fairof the project’s genesis, when he was stuck in a Chipotle with nothing to read. (It’s not even close to being the only fast food-associated American literary contribution, however: At the very least, Nicholson Baker writes in a Friendly’s.)

The archive also speaks to the incredible material properties of paper. All of the items in the collection are unusual in some way, yet most are still made of dead wood or dead wood pulp. The thing meant to sell you on a different paint color,the containerboard box those paint chips come in,  is made of dead wood pulp. And here, even the thing structurally strong enough to hold a denser-than-you-want-to-think-about burrito and one pound of sugar water is made of paper.

From: The Atlantic

Portland Press Herald: Another View: Nation’s chief librarian shouldn’t be a lifetime post

Another View: Nation’s chief librarian shouldn’t be a lifetime post

In the digital age, the head of the Library of Congress should get tougher oversight and renewable terms.

Posted June 23

Librarian of Congress James Billington’s recent announcement that he plans to step down reopens the door to the modern era for the institution. President Obama’s search for a successor should also include a discussion on the suitable tenure and evaluation of the nation’s chief librarian.

Besides maintaining an unparalleled collection of books, the librarian oversees the national copyright office and provides research and analysis to Congress. The next librarian will need to develop a system to make existing materials searchable online and to digitize material as it comes in.

The world’s largest library demands technological savvy and managerial finesse as well as academic stature. Finding one individual with all these capabilities is admittedly a tall order. Whoever Obama picks will need a strong supporting team.

But even a first-rate leader and team will not be enough to ensure the library’s continued success. An esteemed scholar, Billington, now 86, assumed his post with innovative ideas. But over his nearly 28 years there, the Library of Congress failed to hire a chief information officer or keep pace with essential digitization efforts.

The U.S. has seen 44 presidents but only 13 librarians of Congress. Years of tradition have granted the post de-facto life tenure. It is time for a change. Tougher oversight and renewable terms based on performance would help ensure that the quality of the librarian always matches the immense importance of the job.

From: Portland Press Herald

Examiner.com: What is a Shelver?

What is a Shelver?

January 31, 2011

3:42 AM MST

In a large library, actual librarians do not usually do the work of placing books on bookshelves. Instead, that work is done by someone called a shelver, a library employee who does not have a Master of Library Science (M.L.S.) degree and does nothing else than place books (as well as DVDs and CDs) on shelves (and occasionally give directions to library patrons). This is the bottom of the pecking order in a library, but just as armies can’t function without infantrymen and retail stores can’t function without cashiers and stock boys, libraries can’t function without shelvers.

In a blog post last February, Christopher Bowen, Downers Grove Public Library Director, explained that people who want to volunteer at the library frequently ask to shelve books, and “They are always surprised when we explain that we do use volunteers for a variety of tasks, but we only use trained, paid employees to shelve library materials.”

In some libraries, the entry level job is that of “page.” [Yes, that’s the same title carried by little boys who carried messages in medieval courts, the errand boys (and girls) in the Canadian House of Commons and U.S. Congress. One may also picture NBC pages who act as ushers and tour guides, as depicted on 30 Rock with page Kenneth Parcell (portrayed by Jack McBrayer).] Pages and shelvers need only have high school diplomas or GEDs. They shelve books (as well as DVDs and CDs) and verify everything on a shelf is in the correct order, which is called “shelf reading.” Often, they only work part-time. Many librarians will tell you they worked as shelvers or pages while in college.

Bowen writes “The fact of the matter is that although they are on the first rung of the pay scale, shelvers are among the most important employees on a library’s staff. The ability to shelves materials accurately and quickly is critical to our mission of providing excellent library service. Most patrons know that we have been celebrating a circulation record – more than 1 million items were checked out at the Downers Grove Public Library in 2009! What most people don’t consider is that if over 1 million items were checked out, over 1 million items also have to be returned to the shelves – to exactly the right place on the shelves.”

He stresses the importance of accuracy in a shelver’s work. “We work hard to organize our collection so that material can be found. The online catalog tells a patron that the call number for ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’ by Julia Child is 641.5944/CHI and that there is a copy on the shelf. The patron expects to go to the shelf and find it there. If a staff member (or more likely, another patron intending to be helpful) places the book on the wrong shelf it is effectively lost. A mis-shelved item may not be found for some time, and then the on-shelf status will drive patrons and staff crazy whenever someone else tries to find the book (or DVD or audio CD).”

Bowen explains that the job requires not just a certain level of analytical intelligence, but also some willing and able to physically strenuous work. “We use alphabetizing and decimal sorting tests to select shelvers. New shelvers receive a lot of training and supervisors audit their work thoroughly, particularly during a new shelver’s first weeks on the job. In addition to accuracy, shelvers are monitored for productivity. They are expected to accurately sort and shelves a specified amount of material per hour. In addition to accuracy and speed, shelvers must be in good physical condition. They are constantly stretching up to the top shelves and crouching down to the low shelves for a hour shift. Shelvers must have a reasonable amount of manual dexterity in order to manage several different types of locking security cases for DVD’s [sic] and CD’s [sic]. And shelvers must be strong! Loaded book carts are really heavy.”

If a page or shelver is lucky, he or she may be promoted to library assistant or information assistant. A library assistant or library information assistant has a paraprofessional job. They do administrative work that may be performed at the check-out desk or in the library’s processing department in support of the professional librarians. If he or she is diligent at his or her work and very lucky, a library assistant or library information assistant may rise to a low-level managerial position as a circulation manager or head of circulation.A cataloger or library technician can have a similar career path.

The American Library Association (ALA) published the book Hiring, Training, and Supervising Library Shelvers by Patricia Tunstall. It is supposed to provide “practical advice to help administrators, supervisors, and human resource personnel do just that with a complete overview on how to hire, test, train, and retain shelvers.”

At the time the book was published, at least, its authoress was “an information assistant at Indian Trails Public Library in Wheeling, Illinois.” According to her ALA biography, which gives us insight into the work of information assistants, “She spends most of her time at the reference desk helping patrons with their questions and their leisure reading choices. She was first employed as a page at Indian Trails and subsequently as the supervisor of pages and shelving. Since receiving a teaching certificate from Nottingham University in England, she has held jobs in a variety of fields.”

From: Examiner.com

The Guardian: Dear librarian: New York Public Library's quirkiest inquiries

By Marianne Tatepo | May 28, 2015

Libraries have gone through many changes in recent years, some more laudable than others. Earlier this week we looked at the reinvention of the library card. Our original spotlight was on London - but such was the response that we posted a second piece featuring some of the dozens of other colourful examples sent in by readers around the world.

Today, we cast a nostalgic eye back in time – to the days when readers regarded librarians as a cross between oracles, therapists and confessors, phoning in the most personal, complex or frankly dotty questions which were dutifully copied out, often in longhand. The New York Public Library has been publishing a cache of vintage question cards on its Instagram account and on Twitter via the hashtag #letmelibrarianthatforyou. Since we first reported on it back in January, the questions have kept on coming. Here are some of our favourites, revealing the many roles that the librarian has played in the public imagination.

The New York Library and libraries worldwide are not just churches for books, they are centres of information, interaction and integration. The NYPL’s queries service is still providing answers to those without the resources to look them up for themselves. You can view more from the NYPL Archives on their Instagram page.

To see more vintage question cards from NYPL, please visit The Guardian to read the full article.

The Nation: Why Public Libraries Matter

By Katrina vanden Heuvel | June 4, 2015

(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

There are more public libraries in America—some 9,000 central buildings and 7,500 branch locations—than McDonald’s restaurants, making them one of the most ubiquitous institutions in the nation. Far from serving as obsolescent repositories for dead wood, libraries are integral, yet threatened, parts of the American social fabric. Libraries, after all, are truly democratic spaces where all are welcome and where everything inside is available to everyone. Few American institutions strive for “equity of access,” a core principle of the American Library Association, and even fewer pay more than lip service to the idea that services like the Internet are necessary aspects of life that simply must be made available to all members of society. But despite their impact and import—much of it hidden from people of means who can independently (and often expensively) secure for themselves those services provided by the library—America is starving its libraries, cutting off millions of people from the stream of information that, like oxygen, powers the development and basic functions of society.

In response to a 2010 story by Chicago’s Fox affiliate, “Are Libraries Necessary, or a Waste of Tax Money?”, Commissioner of the Chicago Public Library Mary A. Dempsey explained, “There continues to exist in this country a vast digital divide. It exists along lines of race and class and is only bridged consistently and equitably through the free access provided by the Chicago Public Library and all public libraries in this nation. Some 60 percent of the individuals who use public computers a Chicago’s libraries are searching for and applying for jobs.” It might be amusing to quip about musty, 19th-century-era card catalogs and smudgy, analog newspapers racked on giant spindles, but the access to contemporary society that public libraries provide is deadly serious.

In New York City, library funding is down $65 million since 2008, even though demand for library services is surging. At the 217 local library branches across the city, there are waiting lists for English-language classes and computer-coding classes. One-third of city residents—about 2.8 million people, more than the entire population of Chicago—has no home Internet access and must rely on services available at the public library. Indeed, the Queens Library, which serves the most ethnically and economically diverse communities in the United States and which loaned out 15.7 million items during the 2014 fiscal year, has the highest circulation rate of any public library in the country. Yet despite their popularity, City libraries are literally falling apart, and some branches in Brooklyn and the Bronx more resemble subway stations than literary oases. New York’s three library systems are requesting $1.4 billion in city funding to upgrade infrastructure over the next ten years, and Mayor De Blasio—whose administration says it’s “made a clear commitment to libraries”—needs to listen. After all, you can’t get more populist than the public library.

While it would be wonderful to assume that all media are available to all New Yorkers at all times—and that the only thing standing between us and the world is a sticky connection or a malfunctioning server—this simply isn’t so. And if you spend a morning observing a job-search program at the public library—where recent immigrants, perhaps, and parolees and recovering addicts sign up for their first email addresses and struggle with a QWERTY keyboard for the first time—you recognize such a sentiment as woefully naïve. As The New York Times editorialized last month, “The libraries are where poor children learn to read and love literature, where immigrants learn English, where job-seekers hone résumés and cover letters, and where those who lack ready access to the Internet can cross the digital divide.” Imagine everything you did today that utilized the Internet—checked your checking-account balance, ordered a birthday present for a friend, read your hometown newspaper—and now imagine having to go to the library, during library hours, to do it. Can’t make it to your local branch between 10 and 6 (between 1 and 6 at many Queens locations)? Tough luck. Hop on the bus and try again tomorrow during your 20-minute lunch break.

Beyond mere fairness, there are viable economic reasons for sustaining New York City’s public libraries. In 2010, the City of Philadelphia spent $33 million on its public libraries; private donations contributed $12 million more. Subsequent to the funding, the value of an average home located within one quarter-mile of one of the city’s 54 public library branches rose $9,630. In the aggregate, the public libraries contributed $698 million to home values in Philadelphia, which translated into an additional $18.5 million in property taxes for the city and school district. Other studies have demonstrated that for every tax dollar that libraries take in, communities receive anywhere between $2.38 and $6.54 in return. Simply put, it’s not just cruel to starve our libraries—and the communities that utilize them. It’s bad for business, and bad for America.

We must not abandon the egalitarian living rooms that our public libraries have become. Scott Sherman’s extraordinary reporting The Nation (as well as his new book) set in motion a chain of events that led the New York Public Library to abandon its Central Library Plan. Armed with Sherman’s reporting, New Yorkers (and others around the country and the world) demanded that NYPL, well, serve New Yorkers and other readers, and the library has started to respond. Sherman’s reporting shows that our libraries don’t need to be endangered at all, as long as we are willing to stand up for them. Our support is due, and empty, abandoned stacks are late fees we just can’t afford to pay.

From: The Nation

Library Journal: All-In Startup for Libraries | Library Leadership

By Diana Kander and Steven V. Potter | June 4, 2015 

Government services, such as public libraries, are often told to run their organizations “like a business.” However, when a start-up takes a risk and fails, it’s considered part of the business’s evolution. Whereas when a library takes a risk and fails, the entire program can be seen as wasteful. Can the director of a library afford to don the black mock turtleneck of a visionary entrepreneur like Steve Jobs and still stay ­employed? 

While it seems the charge to be both entrepreneurial and a good steward of tax revenue or donors’ contributions is contradictory, library leaders and entrepreneurs might find they have a lot in common.

Most successful entrepreneurs, despite their reputations, do not see themselves as risk-takers. Rather, they take educated chances or place small bets and do not go “all in” until they have built a strong foundation for success. Successful library leaders should adopt the same strategy, choosing smart risks that improve the library if they succeed—without imperiling it if they fail.

Big ideas

 

Leaders of mission-driven organizations are frequently so passionate about what they do that they jump into a solution before doing the requisite work needed to define the problem. For-profit entrepreneurs have the same potential problem. In her All in Startup: Launching a New Idea When Everything Is on the Line (Wiley, 2014), Diana Kander defines the problem this way:

[Some entrepreneurs are] great people pushing flawed concepts for which no one was ever going to become a paying customer. Startups fail because by the time the founders figure out that their idea isn’t good enough, it’s too late to make it better. They only realize that no one actually wanted their product or service after they’ve already run out of money.

Does this sound familiar? How often does a library start a new program, certain of its success, only to see a lukewarm reception at best?

A library leader might say that is where the similarity ends: even the least successful story time will attract one or two followers. Reaching those few individuals does advance the library’s mission, albeit in a very inefficient way, potentially diverting resources from new ventures. In fact, it could be argued that there is actually more at risk when mission-driven organizations miss the mark. When a start-up enterprise fails, there may not be much residual effect beyond personal loss. But when an entrepreneur in a mission-driven organization fails, not only does the program itself fail, but related outcomes can significantly impact other aspects of the organization.

Kander identifies four big ideas that entrepreneurs need to consider if they want their ventures to be successful. These apply equally to profit-driven and mission-driven entrepreneurs. A progressive library should consider them carefully when contemplating a new program or activity.

  

1) One step at a time 

Programs are about finding customers, not developing new activities

Far too often, mission-driven entrepreneurs begin by thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?” Focusing on the activity first skips important questions: Does anyone want this new service or activity? How many want it? A profit-driven entrepreneur will measure success with sales or profits. How will a mission-driven entrepreneur measure success? Does the new activity align with the mission or goals of the organization?

Librarians often follow the same path as a traditional ­businessperson:

Step 1: Come up with an idea for a new service. This could be via a “eureka” moment, or hearing about a groundbreaking program at a conference. Either way, begin by focusing on specific details.

Step 2: Develop the service and secure resources. This may mean reserving the program room or buying new books. You might have to convince someone to give you what you need or have the autonomy to create a small service with resources you control.

Step 3: Brand the service. Promotion and marketing are important in mission-driven organizations. However, it is often difficult to determine the value of promotion, so take on low-cost, low-risk options such as putting up signs in the building, posting on Facebook, talking about upcoming events during other programs, or creating bookmarks.

Step 4: Find customers.

Soon it may become clear that the new service is struggling. The natural thing to do is step back to retool. Maybe all that is needed is a tweak of the original idea. Maybe refocusing the marketing might do the trick. But what if, after all that, the outputs remain unchanged? This is known as the “start-up loop of despair.” The entrepreneur may continue to nibble at the edges, but the problem is with the order of the initial steps.

If an entrepreneur considers the customer potential right after developing the idea, chances of failure are far fewer. If there is not enough customer potential, no amount of planning, marketing, or resources will persuade people to use a program they don’t want.

A better model to find new customers and to develop successful activities and programs would be as follows:

Step 1: Come up with an idea for a new service.

Step 2: Find customers. Librarians cannot simply approach people and say, “Would you like it if the library started to do this?” Simply asking for affirmation on a new program idea will not show whether someone would really use it; libraries must solve people’s problems to engage them.

Step 3: Develop the service. As librarians learn what problems they can solve, they should tweak the program accordingly to maximize the potential customer base. They should also develop measures of success at this point. Does the library need a certain number of new library customers for the program to succeed? Would it be successful if the use of resources was ­increased?

Step 4: Brand the service. Once librarians—or entrepreneurs—know what problem they are addressing, promotion becomes a lot easier and less risky. Libraries that know their primary customers can focus on them and won’t need to “paper the town” in fliers or bookmarks (or their virtual equivalents). The important part is marketing services to someone who wants the new service.

2) Mitigating migraines

People participate in programs to solve a problem 

When people buy something, there is typically a reason. Why does someone purchase a car? While a buyer may choose one car over another based on its features, the initial reason to buy a car is to get from place to place. Buying an item is first and foremost about solving a problem.

Participating in a program or an activity is much the same. Why do parents of small children borrow 20 or 30 library books every week? Because the parents understand that early literacy activities build a strong foundation for their children, and a preschooler needs more books to gain these skills than parents might want—or be able—to buy.

The important question to consider at this point is whether this particular program solves a problem. And beyond that, how important is the problem, and the solution, to the patron? One way to think about this is in terms of headaches, as Kander does in All in Startup. With a simple, run-of-the-mill headache, people often take an aspirin or two—or if aspirin is not available, they just suffer. Given that the headache sufferer will be free from pain in a few hours either way, how expensive or invasive a treatment would that person consider?

Now consider a migraine, or a painful and debilitating cluster headache that can go on for days. If there was a pill someone could take to break the cycle and cure the headache in one minute, would a headache sufferer take that pill, even if it cost $100? Many sufferers would jump at the chance.

When considering a new program or activity, consider whether this is a solution to a problem. 

 Understand that it is unproductive to ask customers, “Wouldn’t it be cool if the library did this?” No matter what it is, most customers will agree that the library should try the proposed service. To develop a successful program, libraries must find the migraine in someone’s life. This may be a little difficult. For most libraries, we are not talking about life-altering activities…or are we?

What if we started asking people about the greatest threat to our community? What if we asked parents what their greatest concerns were for their teens and tweens? And what if the answers came back: lack of school readiness and the lack of activities outside typical school days and hours? A library response could be early literacy story time, teen lock-ins, or an active summer reading program. The key is to find an issue that concerns patrons and then develop a library response.

3) Crunch the numbers

Librarians are detectives, not fortune tellers 

Many librarians, especially those working in reference and information services, see themselves as information detectives or knowledge Sherpas. The need for these skills doesn’t go away when a librarian gets promoted beyond the reference desk.

Progressive libraries are making the move to data-driven decision-making. Starting with the adoption of Planning and Role Setting for Public Libraries (ALA Editions, 1987), libraries attempted to be smarter and more focused by trying a variety of programs and activities, measuring the outputs, and deciding what to keep. This approach was better than previous methods, but there was still room for improvement.

The desire to measure success in terms of outcomes has made libraries even more focused on data. Products like Gale’s Analytics on Demand and OrangeBoy’s Savannah can help evaluate customer data, as well as target current nonusers.

The point is to consider the program or activity, research, and test. A successful progressive library will develop a clear understanding of customers, their needs, and how to react to those needs. How does a library find this information? Have the librarians dust off their reference skills and research.

Frequently people at this stage of the process are heavily invested in the preliminary vision for the activity and are subconsciously closed to alternate methods or different ways to cure “the migraine.” Apart from documentary research, interview potential customers to find out if the new activity or program meets their needs. Ask people open-ended questions. Do not describe the new activity and follow up with, “Does this sound like something that you would like?”

 

4) Big “small bets”

Successful library directors are luck makers, not risk-takers 

When people imagine entrepreneurs, they may think of Chrysler’s recent commercial celebrating its 100th anniversary, which showed the Dodge brothers resigning from their jobs at the Ford Motor Company to start their own enterprise. While this appeals to the American mythology, the truth is a little different. The Dodges had a very successful company and developed an exclusive part supplier relationship with Ford. Eventually they realized that they could manufacture the cars they designed using the same parts that had been successful in Ford’s vehicles. Did it take guts to cut ties with Ford? It certainly did. But did the Dodge brothers take a wild, all or nothing leap? Not even close. The Dodges made a bet—a pretty small bet, really. After they ended their relationship with Ford, they continued to own over ten percent of the Ford Motor Company, as they had been paid in stock for much of the early partnership. They knew that their parts were what made Henry Ford’s cars hum. They just needed to take a small risk and a small leap. This is what true entrepreneurs do.

As a library manager, it is important to be a true entrepreneur, but it’s not necessary to leap off a cliff. Granted, a “small bet” is a matter of perspective. What a library like New York Public or Los Angeles Public views as “small” could equal a commitment to resources twice as large as a smaller library’s entire operating budget. Regardless of the resource allocation, the important point to consider is the risk associated with the behavior. Think about the three previous big ideas. If the library has developed a programming idea that centers on finding customers first, if the library has developed a program that addresses a “migraine,” if the library has done research into its customers’ needs, then a trial program will really be just a small bet. In fact, if a strong foundation has been built based on the first three big ideas, going “all in” on an idea may look like a big risk—but in truth, it will be a calculated, and likely successful, venture.

Diana Kander is the New York Times best-selling author of All in Startup: Launching a New Idea When Everything Is on the Line (Wiley); an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia; and a Senior Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. Steven V. Potter is the Director of the Mid-Continent Public Library in the Greater Kansas City, MO, area. He serves as an adjunct professor for the University of Missouri-Columbia and, with John J. Huber, is the author of The Purpose-Based Library: Finding Your Path to Survival, Success, and Growth (ALA Neal-Schuman)

From: Library Journal