The Atlantic: How Libraries Are Becoming Modern Makerspaces

They’ve long served as communal gathering spots, but these civic institutions are becoming gateways to technological tinkering.

Ben Franklin experimenting with drawing electricity from the sky, via a kite flown in a lightning storm

A Little Maker from 
Fayetteville

By Deborah Fallows
March 11, 2016

If you could ask Ben Franklin what public institution he would like to visit in America today, I bet he would say the public library. And if you asked him which part of the library, I bet he would say the makerspace.

Ben Franklin is well known as a founder of the early subscription library, the Philadelphia Library Company, almost 300 years ago. It may be less well known that Franklin used the library’s space for some of his early experiments with electricity.

Today, perhaps taking a cue from Franklin, libraries across America are creating space for their patrons to experiment with all kinds of new technologies and tools to create and invent.

As I wrote in a short piece in the March issue of The Atlantic, called The Library Card:

Miguel Figueroa, who directs the Center for the Future of Libraries at the American Library Association, says makerspaces are part of libraries’ expanded mission to be places where people can not only consume knowledge, but create new knowledge.

Schaeffer with a
 maker’s bent wire 

The first modern library makerspace appeared about five years ago in the Fayetteville Free Library in upstate New York. Lauren Smedley, a graduate student in Library and Information Science at nearby Syracuse University, proposed the idea of bringing a 3D printer to the library. Library Director Sue Considine liked the idea and with the entire library team, built on it and created what would be the first makerspace.  That was just the beginning. Today, Fayetteville’s 2,500-square-foot Fab Lab (stands for fabrication lab, and is a common name for makerspaces) has expanded to include a Creation Lab for teens and pre-teens, and a Little Makers space for the tiniest makers.

***

While traveling around the country for the American Futures project, I was always on the lookout for makerspaces in town libraries. I found one right here, in my own backyard, at the flagship of the D.C. public-library system, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.

So, I signed up for a tour of their Fab Lab. At my Saturday afternoon tour, I joined a standing-room-only crowd of some 30 people, from 20-something hobbyists to budding entrepreneurs, including a family with their homeschooled pre-teens.

Etched pumpkin

Adam Schaeffer, the hip Library Associate and a perfect match to the accessible, collaborative culture of makerspaces, gave the tour. He introduced us to the eight 3-D printers, four of which were named Kevin Spacey, Dr. Stephen Nash (I googled him; he is a professor of Systems Engineering and Operations Research at George Mason University, right here in Northern Virginia), Johnny Pie (I googled him; this is a handle for a contributor to Reddit.), and Maria the Metropolis (a robot from the 1927 sci-fi film, Metropolis). Since heavily-used, new technology like these printers are in frequent need of monitoring and repair, the lab staffers are on a first-name basis with them.

We saw the laser scanner and the laser cutter, which can etch metals, or cut cardboard, wood, paper, and even pumpkins, one of which Adam passed around. There was a wire bender, named Fender Bender Rodriguez. There was a milling machine that can make prototypes of wood or plastics or even soft aluminum.

Tool wall at Fab Lab 

There was a tool station along one wall, which looked more like your childhood basement tool shop, with lots of super glue, duct tape, how-to inspirational books and magazine, and a collection of old-fashioned tools. If you’re lucky, you can join Adam’s Coffee Club, a coffee station using beans sourced from spots all around DC.

Like everything else in public libraries, everything in the D.C. Fab Lab is free. (Some library charge for some supplie.)

There are 25 branch libraries in the D.C. public library system, in addition to the downtown library. One branch near our house, the Tenley-Friendship Library (a.k.a. the Tenleytown Library), is newly remodeled. In an equally modern step, the Friends of the Tenley-Friendship Library, looking for a project for some extra funds they had raised, decided to sponsor the first ever Maker-in-Residence program for D.C.’s public libraries.

Billy Friedele and Mike Iacovone won the competition. Billy and Mike are artists, teachers and friends, and together they started the Free Space Collective, an arts effort that is all about engaging people with their public spaces, via art.

On my second trip to the Fab Lab, Billy was experimenting with transforming a photograph into a 3-D object. He was trying out the software and hardware systems that begin with a series of photos he made of a plant in a planter, and turning out an actual, miniature 3-D replica. The magic happens in photographing the object in 360-degrees, including from the top and the bottom, and sending that information to the 3-D printer to do its work. While we talked, the printer was patiently exuding the plastic fed from a spool of wire through a tiny pencil-like nib, onto the platform inside the small oven-looking printer. It was deep purple, Billy’s choice.

Billy Friebele with 
photo for 3D printing

Billy and Mike have been focusing on different ways for people to look at their cities. The 3-D printing was a first step in speaking to the concept. The simple task that day was to take a familiar object you see around you, like a crunched-up soda can lying on the street, and inspire a new look at it. This was experimental, and who knows where it might lead. To an artist or even a non-artist like me, I say take a leap of faith here; Ben Franklin did. Every maker does, from the sophisticated technologist to the craftsy dabbler.

As artists, and as makers-in-residence, Billy and Mike are very focused on the community. They use words like “sync up” and “interact” with the residents of D.C. I asked if they would call themselves “community artists,” but Billy said that they don’t label themselves, and that it’s much less about themselves as artists and more about the experience of the community and interaction through the art.

3-D printing purple plant 
and holder on “Maria”.

As part of the agreement for being makers-in-residence, the pair conducts community workshops at some of the libraries. I decided to attend one last fall. About a dozen folks from the neighborhood showed up on a Saturday afternoon for a project they were calling “Walking as Drawing.”

We would create input for a collective work of art. We would all walk for about 45 minutes, starting and ending at the library, and trace our paths either on our phone app, or the old-fashioned way, by hand on printed street maps of the neighborhood. The only rule was to stick to public spaces (read: don’t cut through people’s yards). They encouraged us to store up impressions of what we noticed or felt along the way. We would reconvene to share our experiences and turn in our personal maps. Then, Mike and Billy would turn our group walks into digital art. Have a look:

You can watch this video on 
Vimeo by clicking here.

I must admit, I was surprised to experience my familiar neighborhood with new eyes and ears. I hadn’t noticed a pop-up park along a street that I probably drive several days a week. Others were surprised at the sounds they heard—the trucks, the kids. We noticed the density of community spaces—besides the library, there was the elementary school, the middle and high schools, the church, the assisted living center, the public swimming pool, and more.

I would say that if the mission was to bring folks in the community together, to ask them to look at their neighborhood in a closer, different way, and to report back to share, then they completely succeeded. They produced this within the framework of art, and art they did produce.

Here is more of Billy’s work and Mike’s work.




Source: The Atlantic

Slate: Book 'Em: Why Some Libraries Offer Amnesty to Scofflaw Borrowers - and Others Call the Cops

March 28, 2016
by Helen Chen

Book 'Em
Why Some Libraries Offer Amnesty to Scofflaw Borrowers - and Others Call the Cops

The San Jose Public Library wants its books back. And its CDs and DVDs. Taken altogether, library patrons are holding onto or have damaged 97,000 items and owe the city $6.8 million in fines and fees. The situation is so out of control that about 40 percent of the city’s library cardholders can no longer borrow anything until they return their library holdings and pay what they owe. For a library, this is a DEFCON moment. Maybe not DEFCON 1, but at least DEFCON 3.

What can San Jose do? City councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio has suggested a limited-time amnesty on fines for overdue materials. “If you bring those items back, that’s worth a lot of money just in that inventory of items,” he said earlier this month. In other words, in return for its patrons doing what they’re supposed to do, the library will let bygones be bygones. What’s a little fine between friends, after all?

Over the years, libraries have fined patrons for not bringing back books and offered no-questions-asked return periods. They’ve published the names of book scofflaws in local newspapers. They’ve paid personal calls on people who hold onto books past their due dates, and even sicced the police on particularly recalcitrant readers. And they still don’t really know how to get their books back.

“Librarians have been playing with this issue for a century and a half, and there is little consensus,” says Wayne Wiegand, author of Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library.

One thing’s for sure: Taxpayers often bristle at amnesties, seeing them as gimmes for slacker citizens. And so it is in San Jose, where more than a few were quick to complain. “As a property owner, I’m sick and tired [of] subsidizing the libraries and having to subsidize malfeasance,” one person said at a city government meeting held earlier this month. An amnesty, he added, “enables lack of personal responsibility.” Online commenters weren’t much more supportive. “Once again, irresponsible people getting all the breaks,” one said over at the San Jose News.

Maybe. But no one’s actually proven that fines work. “Our first rule of thumb is we are providing materials with taxpayer funds,” says Julie Todaro, the incoming president of the American Library Association. But, she’s quick to add, “A lot of people will tell you higher fines aren’t a detriment to returns. It is a detriment to people using the library. Period.”

San Jose’s problems began when it raised fines in 2010, from 25 cents to 50 cents a day. Other area libraries charge less. San Francisco dings late borrowers 10 cents for every day late, with a hard stop at $5. The San Mateo County Library, where borrowers from wealthy Atherton check out books, charges 25 cents a day for adult books, up to $8, and 15 cents a day for children’s books, up to $3.90. Exclusive Mountain View is also at 25 cents, and allows borrowers to keep books for four weeks.

San Jose not only charges borrowers more money for late returns; it has a three- week borrowing window, and allows fees to accrue until they reach $20. At the same time, it’s likely a greater percentage of city borrowers are having a harder time paying the money. Children owe $1 million of the unpaid fines. And many of these kids need the library. While located in wealthy Silicon Valley, San Jose contains significant pockets of poverty, with 47 percent of the city’s school public school district’s students eligible for free or reduced lunch.

In Wiegand’s view, library fines are vestigial, a leftover from 200 years ago, when books were highly valuable items, and few could afford to purchase them. Handing over a book for a limited period of time involved a significant financial risk for the lender, and a fine protected that investment.

But even back when, a fine couldn’t guarantee a library would get its goods back. Even George Washington neglected to return The Law of Nations by Emer de Vattel and a volume of debates from the English Parliament to the elites-only New York Society Library.

The New York Society Library needed to wait until 2010, when the New York Daily News outed the founding father, to recover its property. Embarrassed employees of the Mount Vernon historic site saw the article and tracked the missing items down. In return, the New York Society Library gratefully waived the $300,000 in overdue fines. (Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr agreed on one thing, by the way. New York Society Records showed they returned borrowed books regularly.)

Fines had another thing in their favor: They could double as a source of revenue. During the Great Depression, the Cleveland Public Library’s budget shriveled by 40 percent. So it began promoting “overdue weeks,” in which flush patrons were encouraged to hold on to their borrowed books past their due date and pay the fine, an effort to bolster the library’s bottom line.

A large number of California municipalities turned to fines to get by in the wake of anti-tax measure Proposition 13. According to archivist Cody White, who wrote an award-winning paper on the subject, within two years of the tax-cutting initiative’s passage in 1978, 40 percent of the state’s libraries had either raised or added fees as a way to bring in desperately needed revenue. Some systems even began to charge nonresidents for the privilege of getting a card.

And when that wasn’t enough, many California libraries turned to collection agencies. This was so successful that it’s now a widespread practice. There’s even a collection agency—Unique Management Services—that specializes in library accounts, and handles the most recalcitrant of borrowers for 1,400 library systems in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Unique uses a method it calls the Gentle Nudge, which basically means that no, it won’t call you multiple times a day to ask where the books are. But it doesn’t play all that nice, either. Instead, the agency reports malfeasant patrons to credit bureaus if they don’t return the missing materials and pay up. It’s a potent threat. The Madison, Wisconsin Public Library, for example, reports that in the 10 years since it brought in Unique, it paid the company slightly more than $120,000 and, in return, got back just under $1 million in overdue fines and missing materials. Few people, after all, want to pay higher interest rates on loans ranging from mortgages to credit cards because of a library book.

Not surprisingly, patrons aren’t fans. About a decade ago, a New York City rabbi sued Unique after discovering his credit record was damaged when he failed to return several CDs to a library. Librarians don’t always like firms like Unique, either; in 2001, San Francisco politicians dinged a proposal to turn seriously overdue borrowers to a collection agency after librarians complained. Not only did they think it unfair to patrons; they insisted it was their job to rustle up the lost books.

On the other hand, a collection agency is probably preferable to the police. Arrests aren’t unheard of for book hoarders, but nothing is more absurd than the time in 2012 when police in Charlton, Massachusetts, paid a call on the family of a 5-year-old girl who hadn’t returned How to Tie My Shoes and Eloise’s Birthday. Her dad also owed money for an audiobook. National ridicule ensued, but the library said the visit inspired other borrowers to return their books. “We’ve gotten quite a bit back,” a library spokeswoman told CNN. “Even some things that weren’t overdue!” Other times, the involvement of public officials can at least be amusing. In the 1980s, the notoriously eccentric Baltimore mayor William Schaefer called surprised patrons, and said, “Hey, this is the mayor. How about returning your library books?”

Some systems try their own gentle nudges. The Phoenix Public Library, for example, will forgive fines for teenagers enrolled in summer reading programs who write book reviews of what they’re reading. In Nashville, the public library has offered a Food for Fines exchange, knocking $1 off an outstanding bill for every packaged food item a debtor owes donates.

But others swear by limited-time amnesties. They were popular during the Great Depression, when libraries couldn’t afford to replace lost materials and patrons couldn’t afford to pay the fines. They remain popular today—Chicago has offered two amnesties over the past five years, recovering more than 120,000 items. Getting decades-old overdue books isn’t unusual during amnesties. A 1983 Philadelphia amnesty netted $1.5 million worth of books and other library property, including a book originally checked out in March of 1922.

In fact, amnesties have a lot of things going for them. The limited-time offer ensures media attention, so locals will hear about it. They’re also not punitive. That’s important to librarians, who love books, want their materials back, and want their patrons visiting frequently. If fines work, they’ll go along, but if an amnesty works, they’ll take that, too.

Meanwhile, back in San Jose, the library announced plans to debut an improved texting system to notify borrowers when their books are due. Maybe some really naggy emojis will do the trick?

Source: Slate

Globe and Mail: Opening up the library

March 26, 2016
by Anya Georgijevic

Opening up the library

Book sales have turned a page and ignited new interest in creating novel nooks for reading. Anya Georgijevic profiles striking public and private spaces devoted to devouring the printed word.

A decade ago, when print sales began to dwindle, and countless bookstores closed their doors, no one could have predicted that real, hard-copy books were going to make a return – with a vengeance. Today, not only are book sales rising (industry organization BookNet reports that print copies accounted for 80 per cent of total book sales in Canada last year), but public libraries are becoming increasingly cool places to hang out.

Architect Vanessa Kassabian, a project manager behind Snøhetta’s winning design for the new Calgary Central Library, sees the once forcibly quiet institutions as a place for social activity, “Libraries now are almost more social spaces than they are about learning,” she says.

Snøhetta’s design (aimed for completion in 2018) eschews a single type of circulation in favour of several options for getting around. “We offer a lot of different ways of navigating the building,” says Kassabian over the phone from the firm’s New York office. One can climb the grand wood staircase, walk the ramp along the façade, or navigate the ascending platforms filled with bookshelves. “[The library] has a lot of interstitial space that you can hang out at,” says Kassabian, noting the moments where one can stumble upon a cluster of furniture or semi-enclosed pods, surrounded by bookshelves, serving as semi-private spaces. The design team opted for materials and objects with a domestic feel – warm wood and colourful furniture – to create a welcoming environment.

Calgary is not the only Canadian city that has invested in a new library with the aim of encouraging social gathering. The Halifax Central Library, which opened in December 2014, was conceptualized as a “city’s living room,” architect Morten Schmidt, of Schmidt Hammer Lassen, told The Globe and Mail shortly before its opening. The building’s dramatic cantilevered glass-encased fifth storey features an open space for socializing, with descending stairs doubling as seating, reminiscent of a contemporary agora. The City of Ottawa has also announced plans for a new building, and Edmonton is giving its Stanley A. Milner Library an overhaul. And perhaps not as grand in scale, but big in spirit is the Story Pod, a public book-exchange space in Newmarket, Ont. The eight-by-eightfoot wooden pavilion, designed by Atelier Kastelic Buffey, is a take on the Little Free Library project gaining steam across North America. The Story Pod, which was installed last August, features integrated seating, creating a tiny living room in the heart of the town.

While public libraries are taking inspiration from living rooms, home libraries are also being reinvented. With book sales steadily improving, architects and designers are looking at similar ways to showcase ever-growing private collections. Heather Reisman, Indigo’s CEO and Chief Booklover, says that the interest in collecting is now extending beyond beautiful art and photography books, which remained in demand during the e-book craze.

“Beautiful books to read, love and display are showing up in all categories,” explains Reisman via e-mail. “We recently created a cloth-bound limited edition of Anna Karenina with the original cover art that promptly sold out in all stores.” For those who haven’t Marie Kondo’d their entire book collection, a home library is something to be proudly displayed (and documented with #shelfie and #bookshelfie hashtags on Instagram).

When it came to renovating his Emeryville, Calif., loft, architect Peter Benoit created an entire concept around a bookshelf. The Wood Box, which houses the book collection compiled by him and his wife, also forms the walls of a bedroom, under-stair storage, and a dressing room above. The project, completed in 2010, was hand-built using inexpensive, straight-from-the-mill unfinished Douglas fir one-by-four boards. Another epic built-in residential project is Bookcase Staircase by Levitate, a London-based architecture firm. Built in 2005 as a space-saving solution for an avid book lover, the straight-out-of-a-fairy tale library staircase is lined with English oak shelving, and the books are brilliantly nestled underneath the stair treads. The library leads to a loft space, with a skylight guiding the way.

Utilizing the staircase for book display is not only an efficient use of space, but it can also make the bookcase the focal point in a home. In 2014, for clients who wanted a generous space to display their collection of precious stones and books, Toronto-based firm The Practice of Everyday Design created an elegant shelving unit, with a ceiling-high bookcase downstairs morphing into a shorter waist-high one upstairs, thus bridging two floors in one continuous line. When looking up from the entrance of a Modernest-designed Toronto home built in 2014, one catches a glimpse of a colourful shelving display in the second-storey hallway, parallel to the stairs. The shelving designed by architect Kyra Clarkson, who co-founded Modernest, is composed of a series of custom modular display boxes, organized in playful manner, with the primary-coloured units jutting out like a Mondrian painting come to life.

And Toronto-based Architect Tamira Sawatzky came up with an economical solution to constructing a bookcase for the live/work home of Public Studio, a collaborative art and architecture practice she runs with artist Elle Flanders. The shelving runs the entire length of the living room and is entirely comprised of Ikea components: A one-inch butcher-block countertop sitting on Ekby Lerberg brackets. The pair catalogued the collection by both subject and colour, creating a beautiful gradation of hues.

Whether in a private or a public realm, paper books inspire a sense of comfort and warmth, perhaps due to a healthy dose of nostalgia. Reisman also attributes the return of print to the need to unplug from a world increasingly dominated by technology: “This resurgence of the physical book directly taps into the desire for individuals to take mindful moments, and they are now displaying their books proudly in their homes, whether on coffee tables or their bookshelves.”

Source: Globe and Mail. See original for photos.

CBC.ca: Canada Reads brings tiny new libraries to P.E.I.

Canada Reads and local community groups help spread a love of reading with tiny libraries

By Maggie Brown
March 3, 2016

The Boys and Girls Club in Montague made sure to leave
 their handprints all over their library — literally.

There will soon be five new tiny lending libraries in communities throughout P.E.I., thanks to a partnership between CBC and local community organizations.

As part of Canada Reads, CBC P.E.I. has partnered with the PEI Public Library Service, Reading Town PEI and the PEI Literacy Alliance to bring five new little libraries to five communities throughout the Island.

'It's wonderful. When the library's not open there can be books accessed.'

— Kelly Cahill, Little Pond Brownie leader

People can take a book or leave one, any time of the day or night, without a library card.

The wooden boxes will go up in Montague, Souris, Tyne Valley and Charlottetown, and are currently being decorated by groups in those communities.

CBC P.E.I. and Canada Reads paid to have them built, and for a set of this year's Canada Reads books for each of the libraries.

The Boys and Girls Club in Montague decided to go with a hand-print theme.

"I think it's great to get the club involved with the community, and to have the public able to have access to free books and bring in some of their own that they don't need anymore to share," said club staff member Angela Davis.

Boys and Girls Club decorate tiny library in Montague.
(To see the video please click here.)

Members of the Girl Guides in the Souris area are decorating their library with flowers and butterflies.

Their members are working on a literacy challenge and decorating the little library was a nice complement, said Little Pond Brownie leader Kelly Cahill.

Girl Guides decorate tiny library for Souris.
(To see the video, please click here.)

"It's wonderful. When the library's not open there can be books accessed. And let the girls see the importance of books and the availability of them," she said.

The Fox Club Society in Charlottetown is in the process of planning their little library design.

The society is a place where adults can learn new skills such as archery, food preserving or rock climbing.

"I've seen them around town and it's just a really cute little idea to be able to have, just when you're going for a walk you see them," said society member Ashley LeFort.

"Next time you bring a book with you, take one, leave one. It's also a way for us, again, to continue to get out in the community."

Fox Club Society decorates Charlottetown tiny library
(To see the video, please click here.)

The 4-H in Tyne Valley is taking on a little library too.

CBC is still looking for a group to decorate the library in Summerside.

An evening with Anita Rau Badami

Island Morning host Matt Rainnie will host an evening with Canada Reads author Anita Rau Badami at the Confederation Centre Library in Charlottetown at 7 p.m. on March 10.

Badami will read from her second novel, The Hero's Walk, an intimate look at a troubled family. The book follows an Indian man who loses his daughter and her husband in a car crash, then takes in a seven-year-old Canadian granddaughter he has never met.

The audience at the event, which is free to the public, will also get to check out some of the little libraries.

Source: CBC.ca

New York Times: In San Jose, Poor Find Doors to Library Closed

March 30, 2016
By Carol Pogashmarch

In San Jose, Poor Find Doors to Library Closed

SAN JOSE, Calif. — When Damaris Triana, then 8, lost several “Little Critter” books that she had borrowed for her sister, the library here fined her $101 — including $40 in processing fees — a bill that was eventually turned over to an agency to collect from her parents.

The $101 is a small part of a whopping $6.8 million in unpaid fines at the San Jose Public Library, an amount that exceeds unpaid fees at some larger cities around the country. It also exceeds other Bay Area cities like Oakland, which has $3 million in outstanding fines, and San Francisco, which has $4.6 million. In San Jose, when the late fee hits $50, the library refers the debt to a collection agency.

As the total of overdue fines has increased, so has the number of cardholders who owe $10 or more and are prohibited from borrowing materials or using the library’s computers. Damaris, now 10, relies on her cousin’s card or uses her school’s library, where there are no fines for late or lost books.

The concept of free public libraries gained support in the 1830s and was popularized by the industrialist Andrew Carnegie , who helped build 1,689 libraries around the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s on the notion that all people should have an opportunity to improve themselves. But public libraries like San Jose’s are struggling to find money to pay for books and services.

In San Jose, libraries began charging 50 cents a day for an overdue book, and what Jill Bourne, who become director of libraries in 2013, called “an exorbitant processing fee” of $20 for lost materials. Those high fines have come at a cost.

In impoverished neighborhoods, where few residents have broadband connections or computers, nearly a third of cardholders are barred from borrowing or using library computers. Half of the children and teenagers with library cards in the city owe fines. Around 187,000 accounts, or 39 percent of all cardholders, owe the library money, Ms. Bourne said.

Outsiders might think that “everyone in Silicon Valley is affluent and hyperconnected,” said Mayor Samuel T. Liccardo. He represents San Jose’s one million residents, 40 percent of whom are immigrants. “We still have a digital divide.”

“The kids who are barred from the door of the library are the ones we most desperately want to reach,” he said.

In some immigrant neighborhoods, Ms. Bourne said, “there is a fear of government interaction. As soon as people hear there is the potential for being penalized by the government, they want to stay away from that service.”

In February, Ms. Bourne appealed to the San Jose City Council to consider offering amnesty to borrowers saddled with fines and lowering the daily penalty for late books for children to 25 cents. She said in an interview that she also wanted “to revisit” the use of a collection agency. In a memorandum, she wrote, “Library policies are not intended to prevent or restrict any individual’s ability to access library resources and services,” but she added, “this may be the unintended consequence.” Her proposal has been heard by a council committee. Next month, the entire City Council is expected to consider the proposal.

Last year, the library collected $877,948 in fees. Ms. Bourne says she considers the fee revenue to be “an artificial sum,” dependent on people not returning items. “I want to make it easier for people to keep their accounts active and not rack up debt as they have in the past,” she said. She hopes that “if more people are using the library, it’s possible we will still recoup a similar amount annually.” The library’s budget this year was $58.9 million.

Adriana Leon, a mother of three, owes $30 for 15 books that she said she dropped off late on a Friday. She said the library incorrectly charged her for being three days late. Now, she no longer borrows books and is teaching her daughter not to borrow, either. “I try to explain to her: ‘Don’t take books out. It’s so expensive,’ ” she said.

Source: New York Times

Ottawa Community News: Libraries Take to Twitter to Talk Fair Ebook Pricing

March 30, 2016
By Jennifer McIntosh

Libraries take to Twitter to talk fair ebook pricing

The Ottawa Public Library is part of a nationwide charge for fairer ebook pricing, said library board chair and Beacon Hill-Cyrville Coun. Tim Tierney.

Tierney presented a resolution at a Federation of Canadian Municipalities meeting in early March calling on Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly to look at legislation that will deal with what he calls an unfair markup on ebook pricing for libraries.

Libraries can pay as much as three times to purchase the same ebook that the general public purchases.

Tierney said he’s pleased that the federation, which represents 2,000 member municipalities across the country, passed the resolution.

“I think it’s a clear message that some action needs to be taken,” he said.

Unfortunately, it’s not something the general public is aware of, said Tierney.

Raising awareness is why a consortium of public libraries across the country called Canadian Public Libraries for Fair Ebook Pricing are hosting a Twitter chat on March 31.

Tierney said the Ottawa, Edmonton and Toronto libraries have taken the lead on the Twitter campaign.

Vickery Bowles, a Toronto librarian, Tierney and Sharon Karr, a manager with collection access at the Edmonton library will host the chat.

The chat will be an hour long and run from 12:30 to 1:30.

Using the hashtag #fairebookprices, Tierney will be speaking on behalf of the Ottawa library.

“We aren’t looking for anything free,” Tierney said. “We just want fair pricing.”

“We are paying upwards of $125 in some cases, and that’s not for unlimited uses,” Tierney said, adding that in some cases the purchase only includes a finite number of leases.

“It’s not like you can check out multiple copies of the ebooks either,” Tierney said. “It has to be returned before another user checks it out.”

The campaign is aimed at five major multinational publishers: Harper Collins, MacMillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, and Simon and Schuster.

Tierney said the cost of ebooks is prohibitive since the price of one electronic copy is more than nearly 10 paperbacks.

“Ottawa has been fortunate that we have the budget to expand our electronic selection, but it has hit smaller municipalities really hard,” he said.


Source: Ottawa Community News

Canadian Press: Librarians Fight Spread of Precarious Work into White Collar Jobs

March 27, 2016
by Aleksandra Sagan

Librarians fight spread of precarious work into white collar jobs

They’re part-time employees without health benefits or pensions who work split shifts at a number of different locations each week. From one paycheque to the next, their income fluctuates, as do their hours.

These aren’t workers hustling behind fast-food counters or holding down other McJobs. They’re aspiring librarians, often with at least one master’s degree.

A university degree is not a get-out-of-jail-free card from the perils of insecure employment. Precarious work, often associated with service-sector jobs, is spreading to jobs that were once considered realms of stable employment with benefits and pensions to boot.

“This type of employment has increasingly become the norm,” said Wayne Lewchuk, a McMaster University economics and labour studies professor, who co-authored a recent report on the impact of precarious work.

More than 40 per cent of people employed in the knowledge or creative sectors are in precarious or vulnerable work, according to the report. More than one quarter of precarious jobs require a university degree.

Aspiring librarians, for one, have felt the erosion of permanent employment for positions demanding a high education level.

“They’re basically trapped in entry-level jobs,” said Maureen O’Reilly, a librarian and president of the Toronto Public Library Workers Union. “They’re still waiting many, many, many, many, many years to get a full-time job.”

The average wait time for someone to be hired as a full-time librarian with the Toronto Public Library is a decade – and that’s for applicants who already have a foot in the door working other jobs at the library.

Eunice Rodrigues, who holds two university degrees, works part-time as a page. She anticipates it will be another three or four years before she snags an elusive full-time librarian job, Rodrigues says in a video commissioned by the union to highlight their workers’ employment issues.

It took Jorge Guevara 11 years to work his way up to a part-time library assistant position, he says in the video. He’s also hoping to move up to a full-time librarian gig.

Like Rodrigues and Guevara, more than half of the Toronto Public Library Workers Union members are precariously employed, said O’Reilly, adding the situation is similar in libraries across much of Canada.

Earlier this month, the Toronto union voted in favour of strike action, if necessary. The union is currently embroiled in contract negotiations with the library board, hoping to secure a wage increase and address this increasing precarity.

Libraries are not the only impacted workplace.

Newly certified teachers have been struggling to get a foothold into school boards for years in Toronto, said Sachin Maharaj, a teacher working towards his PhD in educational policy at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

In 2012, Ontario introduced legislation requiring public school boards to fill vacancies based on teacher seniority. New teachers must usually complete some supply and contract work before applying for full-time positions.

Coupled with teachers’ colleges churning out more graduates than teachers needed and declining school enrolment, “it’s just a really bad picture for teachers,” Maharaj said.

When Maharaj graduated with a teaching degree some eight springs ago, he started a full-time teaching job the following fall. Now, that would never happen, he said.

A 2015 Ontario College of Teachers survey on transitions to teaching shows some of the employment pressures easing, but overall a teachers’ college graduate’s job prospects appear grim.

Many teachers starting their careers still experience months or years of under-employment, according to the report. More than half of first-year teachers in the province supplement their teaching income with other jobs like tutoring or retail work.

Universities, media organizations, hospitals and governments have also increasingly moved toward more precarious contract employment, Lewchuk said.

This new normal is hurting the businesses and employees alike, he said.

Corporations that don’t commit to their employees can expect similar loyalty from their workforce, he said, resulting in higher labour turnover.

In the long run, the company is likely to have less skilled workers since firms don’t tend to provide substantial training to short-term employees, said Lewchuk. Eventually, that will make positions higher on the corporate ladder difficult to fill.

Employees without stable jobs and consistent income, on the other hand, he said, can be anxious and delay life’s milestones, like marriage, home ownership or starting a family.


Source: iPolitics