The library literature is part of that overall ecosystem, though. 

Resentment toward rather than appreciation of library research is the likely result of these assignments. 

Why ‘Rock Star Librarian’ is an Oxymoron” by Allie Jane Bruce The team of contributors at Reading While White always gets me thinking about a perspective I’ve thus far missed in my own reading and critical evaluation, but this piece particularly resonates—especially as invitations to publisher events at ALA Annual begin to trickle in. 

A common value taught in library school is the importance of the librarian as an objective and neutral professional. 

A good example is Lane Wilkinson, an academic librarian with a Master’s in Philosophy, who asked (and answered) whether librarians were experts in a two-part blog post series over at Sense and Reference. 

A library science degree is a static thing that you get once, but a good professional community is a never ending source of continued learning throughout one’s career. 

A patron looking for information on how to determine whether an article is scholarly doesn’t want to go through a long tutorial about peer review to find the answer.”45 A common theme across the instruction-focused articles on library guides is the need for libraries to unveil systems and processes so that students can engage in research in a way that supports them as creators, explorers, and interlocutors in the research conversation. 

A philosophy of librarianship is a worthwhile pursuit, but so is the pursuit of formal philosophy within librarianship. 

A traditional library is a dead library. 

about us, group post, news Resilience vs. Sustainability: The Future of Libraries Is the United States Training Too Many Librarians or Too Few? 

Above all, it’s important for those of us working in libraries to keep in mind that, like it or not, libraries are a lifeline for those without homes. 

Academic libraries are a rich site of inquiry, as they span public and private sectors, states, institutional sizes, and staff statuses within universities. 

Again, the original libraries were actual monasteries, with small collections of books stuffed in choir lofts, niches, and roofs.9 The carrels still prevalent in many libraries today are direct descendants of these religious places. 

Amy One of the projects I work on at my library is the Civic Lab, a pop-up participatory program initiative centered around facilitating deeper exploration of how our government works, social issues with policy implications, and topics in the news. 

And, in the current sociopolitical climate, much of the discourse surrounding these libraries center them as “safe spaces.” Librarians as Priests and Saviors If libraries are sacred spaces, then it stands to reason that its workers are priests. 

Anon 2018–01–14 at 2:42 am ” If you recognize institutional racism and oppression in librarianship, you must think all white librarians are racists. 

Another bright point that appears early in the story is the public library, about which LeMieux says: The library was another sanctuary for the homeless. 

Another commonality between poets and librarians is the necessity of working in solitude and in collaboration with others. 

As for terrorism, he wasn’t saying that librarians are terrorists who sit around plotting how to terrorize POC. 

As time travels on, these libraries are great educators for people that come after. 

At this point, I hear more and more people questioning whether library school is the best way to train people to become professional librarians (some want new hires to have a Ph.D. in another field, others want new hires to possess more developed technical skills than library schools typically emphasize). 

Based on the mission statement, the Library’s audience is the entire TCNJ community. 

Because librarians are part of the faculty union, they also receive these protections. 

Because of the nature of their work, libraries are those institutions that push copyright to its limit. 

Breaking library rules is something that can and should be addressed, whether it’s on the computer or in the flesh. 

Brett Bonfield 2009–08–17 at 1:07 pm Steve, many of us who think of ourselves as enlightened look at Lucia’s quote and think, “Wouldn’t it be great if every library director were like Joe Lucia? 

By throwing these differences in library form and function into stark contrast, it highlights what aspects of librarianship are artifacts of circumstance, and what represent the underlying and enduring purposes and values of libraries. 

Can librarians and libraries evolve to meet new challenges and expectations, or will these things require  a new generation of managers who will, as a colleague remarked to me in 2010, “turn off the lights?” Librarians are guardians of our profession: we are the stakeholders in our future. 

Cheers Pingback : Are online MLIS degree-holders “less than?” | Information Wants To Be Free Abi Solanke 2015–06–23 at 2:54 pm One of the reasons for terminating my library appointment was “request to attend a wedding.” Of course, I am African-American in a white dominated library and university. 

Choosing a focus for their activities in the library session was a commitment of an hour, not a term. 

Cossette outlined the following: “Librarianship is the art and science of the acquisition, preservation, organization, and retrieval of written and audiovisual records with the aim of assuring a maximum of information access for the human community.” (p. 33). 

Critical Librarianship is the “inflection of critical theory in library and information science” (Garcia, 2015, par. 

David Lee King writes that “the library’s website IS the library,” and the absence of a robust, physical presence will solidify that perception. 

Discussion and Findings A hallmark of the Context Library Series is close collaboration between librarians, disciplinary faculty, and artists to construct evocative, interactive lessons and components around each exhibit. 

Do you feel like using the library catalog was a good enough way for you to do that? 

During their early “Innovative Years,” public libraries were trusted institutions of culture and knowledge at a time when information was scarce. 

Even the solo librarian is part of a professional network, and a larger organization, and must rely upon others and other sources of information in order to do her job. 

External factors challenging consensus decision-making in libraries are those organizational structure imposed on libraries by their governing bodies. 

External factors challenging consensus decision-making in libraries are those organizational structure imposed on libraries by their governing bodies. 

Fear of “missing” out A top critique from librarians is concern over “missing out” on referrals and an opportunity to connect with an undergraduate student. 

First opened in 2015, the ACU Library Maker Lab is an academic makerspace that is open to all areas of the campus as well as to the public. 

First, how to write about it without it becoming a “librarianship is the red-headed step child of professional disciplines,” invoking a long-held inferiority complex, especially between working librarians and the LIS professoriate. 

Following Kim’s article, Char Booth, librarian, blogger, and author, argued that librarians are shapeshifters who can show up opportunistically to be on the periphery of communities and conversations, and I lamented losing my librarian mojo. 

For example, we found three core tenets used to describe library consultants: library consultants are “unbiased” professionals, who bring “expertise” and “fresh ideas” to a library. 

For instance, here are a few highlights from librarians in three different library types: Academic librarian Rudy Leon reflects, “I believe the library is the beating heart of campus, by which I mean that at its most perfect, the library is the nexus of student learning and research, of faculty research for scholarship and teaching.” School librarian Ryn Lewis states, “More than any other facility or program in the school, the library functions as a place to extend student education beyond the required curriculum.” Public Librarian Chris “Six Foot” says, “my professional philosophy…is summed up in two words: intellectual freedom. 

For many, librarianship was a practical approach to a “recession proof” job. 

For students of all ages, the library is a place to get out of the house or dorm room and get work done. 

For these reasons, academic librarians are members of the academy with a markedly more tenuous hold on academic freedom claims. 

From her comment we might extrapolate that what makes a library a library are the things she listed: librarians and staff, a large collection, computers and internet access, study space, and programs of some variety. 

From studies of Hollywood characterizations of the profession (Walker & Lawson, 1993) to Pinterest boards collecting images depicting librarians (for instance, the “Librarian stereotypes” board by Peter Alsbjers Blogg and Ruth Kneale), the librarian stereotype is a concept both prevalent and provocative that inspires extensive debate and commentary. 

Funded by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the California State Library, the Sacramento Public Library is re-inventing library service to their community with an Espresso Book Machine designed to print on demand, a massive online database of printable books (many of them out of print), and an integrated suite of writing workshops to teach writing craft and guide interested patrons through the process of self-publishing. 

Further, exploring the potentially additional stressors of paraprofessional library work is a topic that needs to be investigated more in-depth. 

Garrison speaks to this point by stating, “To call the public image of librarianship a stereotype does not make it an entirely erroneous concept for the popular image of librarians is a by-product of deeper social realities” (1972, p. 152). 

He leaves, convinced that libraries and librarians are a waste of time. 

He writes, “[t]raditionally, libraries were collections of books, manuscripts, journals, and other sources of recorded information…. 

Her first job out of library school was Head of Reference and Electronic Services at a small public library in the Chicago suburbs. 

Hiring consultants to define and measure the library’s value are neoliberal rationales that may not align with the values and code of ethics of library workers. 

However, if the academic library is increasingly becoming a technology organization then many of the academic library’s problems are technological problems, theoretically with technological solutions. 

However, when the rhetoric surrounding librarianship borders on vocational and sacred language rather than acknowledging that librarianship is a profession or a discipline, and as an institution, historically and contemporarily flawed, we do ourselves a disservice. 

Hyde Park corner debate: The Traditional research library is dead [Blog post]. 

I appreciate Scott Bennett’s view of the library’s value in the modern higher educational institution: The library is the only centralized location where new and emerging information technologies can be combined with traditional knowledge resources in a user-focused, service-rich environment that supports today’s social and educational patterns of learning, teaching, and research. 

I assume that the reason workplace wellness hasn’t caught on in libraries is a combination of the following reasons. 

I cannot support a view that Librarians and Librarianship are functionaries. 

I happen to think Andrew Carnegie was right: libraries are a great way to support economies while also furthering democracy. 

I know experiencing these difficulties has helped me better appreciate faculty resistance to “giving up” class time, but also has given me even stronger confidence that librarians are an important part of a course. 

I think there is a shift in culture to view the library (and many other public institutions) in terms of ‘what does it do for me’ instead of ‘what does it do for society?’ We say, ‘I can use and afford computers and broadband and everything is online, so what is the point of a library for me?’ (ignoring those left behind in the digital divide) And the thing is – there will likely always be economic and cultural barriers to certain groups of people and to me, the library is a place we try to break down those barriers, not just a place we give free books to people who could probably actually afford them anyway. 

I’m sure you believe that for books – you would never just assume that a person reading Zane in the public library was a threat or a predator, despite the book’s graphic sexual content. 

I’m wondering if FT positions in libraries are an endangered species. 

If librarians are priests then their primary job duty is to educate and to save. 

If we imagine that a collective fear has come true and libraries are dead, it stands to reason that library workers are ghosts. 

If we imagine that a collective fear has come true and libraries are dead, it stands to reason that library workers are ghosts. 

If you recognize institutional racism and oppression in librarianship, you must think all white librarians are racists. 

In addition, the fact that many archives and libraries are public sector agencies, limits what you can and cannot achieve, as well as what you can and cannot say in these contexts. 

In addition, the sign on the library’s door stated, “During difficult times, the library is a quiet oasis where we can catch our breath, learn, and think about what to do next.” In this way, the library becomes a sanctuary threefold, a place where one can listen to the “still, small, voice,”12 a shelter for displaced populations, and a source of humanitarian aid. 

In fact, intellectual freedom as a significant principle of librarianship is a recently-evolved concept…When our profession set out to formalize its beliefs, it often did so in reaction to particular issues and events” (Chadwell 20). 

In light of this research, the increasing presence of police and security guards in libraries is a part of the broader trend toward the privatization of public space which adversely affects BIPOC. 

In popular culture, the haunted library is a space with books: it is an aesthetic constructed to represent a fantasy. 

In some recent presentations I have been speaking about the concept of library fitness and how a fit library is a future proofed library. 

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is a platform for ideas; Library Pipeline is a platform for projects. 

In the Library with the Lead Pipe, the journal we started in 2008, is a platform for ideas; Library Pipeline is a platform for projects. 

In the popular liberal imagination, libraries are a trusted “knowledge commons” with librarians as tenders or maintainers of that commons. 

In the spirit of coming out of the library, a group of librarians in Boston marched in the Boston Pride Parade, carrying signs saying things like “Librarians are Novel Lovers” and “Can I help with your reference queery?” While marching is arguable as a “librarian skill,” solidarity actions like these help to bring awareness to the profession and connect us with diverse communities. 

In this article from the Mercury News, note the paragraph: Libraries are the very heart of the research university, the center for scholarship. 

In this case no, that study does not ultimately _conclude_ academic libraries are a source of anxiety. 

Indeed, the first Western librarians were members of religious orders,8 serving the dual functions of copying and maintaining book collections. 

It was easy to talk about why the library was a natural partner with different organizations. 

It’s up to me, in every interaction, to reinforce their belief that the work they do to improve the Collingswood Library is energy well spent. 

Just as achieving personal fitness is a goal for a longer life, achieving library fitness is a strategy for organizational sustainability. 

Just as technology is a reflection of the human values of its creators (Noble 2012, Winner 1986), the governance structures of digital library projects are a product of the values of the most influential adopters of these technologies, with explicit and nearly exclusionary value placed on functional code and technological work as an “in kind” contribution to those projects, as seen with Fedora (“Fedora Leadership Group In-Kind Guidelines” 2018) and Islandora (“Islandora and Fedora 4” 2014) as notable examples. 

Katy 2013–08–15 at 11:49 am So is the basic premise here that librarians are hoarders? 

Last, as I began exploring in the previous section, we can see that, yes, libraries are political institutions and, from this section, they are politically liberal institutions (in the classical understanding of liberalism). 

Librarian is a job title which fewer and fewer librarians hold. 

Librarians are experts on testimony. 

Librarians are people whose work benefits library users, and I think of the best librarians as the people whose work provides these users with the greatest benefit.” [↩] See also: my suggestion in the section on voting about knowing one another’s names [↩] See also, “What Happens in the Library…” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Brangelina“ [↩] Edit: Bad timing on my part: the Gates Foundation announced a few hours after I published this article that it will end its Global Libraries program over the next 3-5 years. 

Librarians are teachers and collectors and advocates and searchers and researchers and… Sound familiar? 

Librarians are wonderful people. 

Librarianship is a job, often paid hourly. 

Librarianship is a Multi-faceted Profession Zwadlo was right, we are incredibly confused. 

Librarianship is a noble profession. 

Librarianship is a trinity of acquisition, organization, and dissemination, in which acquisition relates to the selection and accumulation of materials, organization to their preparation for efficient use, and dissemination to the processes of making the contents of graphic records available to the user” (Shera, 1972, p. 193). 

Libraries are dinosaurs. 

Libraries are the lifelines of their communities, schools, and organizations. 

Libraries are the places of my earliest and happiest memories. 

Library acquisitions staff are consumers, though purchasing content for the library and university rather than for themselves. 

Library administrators are university librarians, chief librarians, deans of libraries, associate university librarians, associate deans of libraries, or executive directors of libraries. 

Library Camps are a good example of unconferences which have become ever more numerous over the past couple of years. 

Library employment is another avenue to support students as they work to integrate academic, professional and personal skill sets. 

Library ethics are points upon which we should hold our vendors accountable, not obligations to internalize and carry on our backs. 

Library outreach is the future! 

Library programming is also intended to enliven the atmosphere and signal that the library is a vibrant community gathering space. 

Library science is part humanities, part social science, and, at times in the past, and perhaps in the near future as well, part information science, and even computer science. 

Like Learning from Las Vegas, Sophie Brookover and Elizabeth Burns’s Pop Goes the Library is part textbook and part manifesto. 

Many academic librarians were early adopters of Facebook, but I wonder if we haven’t quite kept up with the latest developments for our libraries. 

Many librarians are at-will employees or have some faculty-like rights but not all. 

Many of the newest and most exciting spaces in libraries are technology-rich spaces such as makerspaces and digital labs, but these are often built out in separate classroom-like spaces. 

Marketing is selling, and I believe that all librarians are ‘salespeople’ to some extent. 

Moreover, this piece shows how the library is part and parcel to curricular development and student experience, thus breaking down institutional walls, as well as creating a museum without walls. 

Most library students are masters students — on the whole, they are more likely than candidates of most other masters programs to have assistantships. 

Moving Toward a Consensus Model Libraries are institutions that have historically been dedicated to the free and open exchange of ideas. 

Moving Toward a Consensus Model Libraries are institutions that have historically been dedicated to the free and open exchange of ideas. 

My view is that a library is a library is a library, as John said, we should focus on the purpose, not the format. 

Nancy 2010–02–20 at 4:54 pm I am the sole library staff at a young and growing university, and the library was part of the Office of Information Services for the first 5 or so years of the university’s history. 

Of course, libraries are special – extraordinary, in fact. 

On a risk-adjusted basis, it is entirely possible that library school is a safer decision. 

One of the themes that has not been talked about much in library research is an intimacy between the job seeker and interviewers and the resulting feelings of rejection afterwards. 

One thing I didn’t anticipate in making the leap to a small library was the isolating effect of moving to a place with a very small staff. 

Organization Metadata created and preserved by libraries is a public resource, as are the standards libraries develop to organize this metadata. 

Partnering with professions outside of librarianship is a logical way forward for much of our work. 

Persistent references to libraries instead of library workers are a manifestation of vocational awe, which Fobazi Ettarh describes as the notion that libraries are inherently good and therefore exempt from critique (2018). 

Pingback : Keeping the end in mind (also: public libraries and cross-country travel) | Chasing Reference Rebecca 2012–09–10 at 1:38 pm Perhaps one of the best discussions I’ve read about the historical purpose/philosophy of librarianship is Todd Honma’s treatment of it in his article “Trippin’ Over the Color Line: The Invisibility of Race in Library and Information Studies.” I see so much of his article that feeds directly in this much-needed conversation about praxis, and I’d recommend reading it – particularly the “Library ontologies and the construction of whiteness” section. 

Plus, libraries are great community spaces, providing a quiet space for reading, learning, research, and stories for the little ones. 

Prior to this time, librarianship was a learned craft, with no one unified curriculum. 

Provisioning: Funding and Supporting Communities Library funding is a loaded subject, and one that is seemingly endlessly beholden to the influence of foundations and grant cycles, taxpayer dollars, and $40,000 per semester tuition. 

Public libraries are nodes in a national system and it is appropriate that our federal tax dollars support it. 

Radford and Radford (1997) provide more insight into these stereotypes’ gendered underpinnings, where “the stereotype of the female librarian can be thought of as a strategy in which this fundamental fear can be managed, defused and disguised… the power of the librarian is the power of the woman: it is recognized as present but is afforded little respect” (1997, p. 261). 

Rather than having titled positions in charge of the various aspects of daily library life, each librarian is a member of at least one cross campus team. 

Rather, libraries are another institution necessary for maintaining a system of intellectual property within a larger context of white supremacy that depends on the inherent enslaveability of Black people. 

Regardless of many people’s feelings about the coherence of individual neutrality, many have taken it as axiomatic that libraries are neutral institutions and that any failure of libraries to be neutral is largely the fault of individuals failing to live up to the ideals or ethics of the profession, rather than understanding the library as institution as fundamentally non-neutral. 

Retrieved from http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html In Brief: Recent content analyses of LIS literature show that, by far, the most popular data collection method employed by librarians and library researchers is the survey. 

Rural librarianship is the long game. 

School librarians are teachers and should be recognized as teaching staff… School librarians are frontline teachers who instruct students everyday on curriculum requirements, such as how to research, locate, evaluate, cite, and use information effectively and ethically… Certified school librarians must hold a master’s degree, pass a graduate level exam on library media functions and supporting school curricula, and have two full years of classroom teaching experience. 

School librarians are teachers and should be recognized as teaching staff… School librarians are frontline teachers who instruct students everyday on curriculum requirements, such as how to research, locate, evaluate, cite, and use information effectively and ethically… Certified school librarians must hold a master’s degree, pass a graduate level exam on library media functions and supporting school curricula, and have two full years of classroom teaching experience. 

Seems to me many of the awards in librarianship are “lifetime achievement” awards and honor skills that are no as relevant as they were 30 years ago. 

Similarly, values statements such as the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom’s Core Values of Librarianship, The Darien Statements, ALA’s Library Bill of Rights, ALA’s Motto: “The best reading, for the largest number, at the least cost,”5 and other ‘why librarians are important’ documents have not been able to make meaning for the public at large of librarians’ purpose and role in society. 

Simply identifying an owning library was a challenge before the introduction of shared computerized catalogs. 

Since librarianship is a ‘discipline of practice’, so to speak, our day-to-day librarian responsibilities are often heavily influenced by online webinars, conference presentations, and even online exchanges via Twitter, blogs, and other social media. 

Since librarianship is a feminized profession, we used the lens of feminist critique to analyze the results of our study when speaking of power. 

Since most libraries are part of an academic institution, county or city government, or some other larger bureaucratic model, wellness initiatives seem to occur at a higher institutional level, and, as such they haven’t become top priorities for many libraries. 

Smaller exhibitions continued in libraries to serve as a teaching tool, simply “organizing materials around a theme as a self-learning experience.”5 Today, most university libraries use displays only to highlight their own materials and special collections; in a survey of the Association of Research Libraries, all but one of the 79 respondents reported they have exhibitions using their collections.6 Library exhibits are an area of untapped potential. 

So far, most of the items in the Open Library collection are either public domain or are unlikely to be challenged by a presumptive copyright holder. 

Some excellent examples of information dashboards that might fit in library contexts are the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) Dashboard (thanks to Adrienne Lai for sharing this site with me) and the Sprint Now Dashboard. 

Some wished that their college library was open later—the libraries at the colleges we visited typically close by 11:00 p.m. during the regular semester, with longer hours during exam weeks. 

Sometimes the extent of copyright education in libraries is the sign by the photocopier asking patrons to respect copyright. 

Steve 2012–08–10 at 10:38 am Cossette’s explanation of librarianship philosophy is pure rhetoric. 

Technology will always be important as a foundation for a strong library, as are the right books and digital content for a strong collection, but what ultimately matters in my vision for future libraries is the relationships that we establish with the members of the user community. 

The 3M Cloud Library is an example of a shared app that uses Vendor ID. 

The company even issued a controversial ad saying that patrons on a first name basis with their librarians are “spending too much time at the library” when they should use Westlaw from their offices instead.57 Through anti-competitive pricing schemes and sales practices, Lexis has similarly demonstrated its decreasing consideration of librarians in its marketing and sales plans.58 Librarians and their needs are getting pushed towards the back of the customer service queue. 

The current federal legislation affecting filtering in public libraries is the Children’s Internet Protection Act, or CIPA. 

The discussion of racial and ethnic diversity in libraries is a subset of the larger discussion of race in the United States. 

The efforts to tie librarian supply to library professional positions is faulty, however, on several levels. 

The evolving mission of the library is a discussion that flows across interdisciplinary lines and Hill encapsulates it nicely. 

The final vision that guided website development was: The St. Edward’s University library website is the go-to resource for academic research for our faculty, staff and students. 

The formula for the every remaining library was Total Annual Expenditure divided by Total Annual Hours divided by Total LSA Population. 

The Idea Box at the Oak Park Public Library is the epitome of a blank-slate makerspace. 

The librarian is an authority in her own right on the subject of research and generally recognized as such. 

The library is a kind of neutral space that can act as a “meeting of the minds.” Academic libraries have convinced engineering departments to share their 3D printers, computer science departments to share their programming computers, and art departments to share their design expertise. 

The Library is a knowledge center where students learn information literacy skills that empower them to navigate a rapidly changing environment. 

The library is the home for the planning, the conversations, and now for the direct feedback on direction using paper “worksheets” and a list of possibilities to be explored. 

The Madison, Wisconsin, Central Library is an example of the conflicts that can arise when a library is so popular with the homeless that other patrons object. 

The New York Public Library is a public research library and a standard for experimentation and delight. 

The OITP Task Force (2013) also notes that “the role libraries play in digital literacy is not always recognized and valued, even within institutions or communities in which libraries are embedded—an issue of invisibility” (p. 20). 

The reason for this, Shirazi argued, is that library work is a form of domestic labor upon which capitalism depends and which it exploits and devalues. 

The responses are organized by the questions asked: Question 1: My library has hired a consultant in the past, had 189 total responses 13 or 62% of administrators indicated yes 5 or 24% of administrators indicated no 3 or 14% of administrators were unsure 108 or 64% of library workers indicated yes 23 or 14% of library workers indicated no 37 or 22% of library workers were unsure Question 11: I was involved in the hiring process had 120 total responses 5 or 38% of administrators indicated yes 8 or 62% of administrators indicated no 14 or 13% of library workers indicated yes 93 or 87% of library workers indicated no Question 12: I participated in the consultation process, had a total of 120 responses 10 or 80% of administrators indicated yes 3 or 20% of administrators indicated no 68 or 64% of library workers indicated yes 39 or 36% of library workers indicated no Question 30: I have worked as a consultant in the past, had a total of 186 responses 6 or 30% of administrators indicated yes 14 or 70% of administrators indicated no 10 or 6% of library workers indicated yes 156 or 94% of library workers indicated no Return to Table 3 caption. 

The result of these segregationist practices in libraries was a massive form of censorship, and this history demonstrates that access to materials is often implicated in larger societal systems of (in)equality. 

The UNLV Library is a great campus partner, and your focus on strengths instead of deficits aligns with my advising philosophy, “I also strive to focus on the students’ strengths as motivating them to find their own path to success (Schreiner & Anderson, 2005). 

The upsurge in use of libraries is good evidence as is the public outcry when a library is threatened with being closed down. 

The USCA ruled that the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to receive information in an institution like the public library; however, the decision also stated libraries were limited public spaces and, as such, the library administration had the right to remove patrons from the library if they were violating a rule outlined in the code of conduct (Barber, 2012). 

The virtual panel for Why Diversity Matters: A Roundtable Discussion on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Librarianship was an article I particularly enjoyed both because of its questions and recommendations for diversity as well as its alternative authorship model. 

There is a difference between “library” and “librarian.” While I could see an argument that libraries are functionaries, I disagree that librarians are mere functionaries in society. 

There is a difference between “library” and “librarian.” While I could see an argument that libraries are functionaries, I disagree that librarians are mere functionaries in society. 

There’s no question that the library industry is a tough nut to crack and it doesn’t give all that much return. 

These days librarians are teachers, even if we present no formal classes. 

These librarians are the eyes and ears of our organization, and yet, they are often powerless to do anything about it except to bemoan the inefficiencies of these systems to their web developers, who don’t seem to understand the community’s needs. 

They studied organizational factors that lead to burnout and found that “the most frequently occurring stressors encountered in the library organization was the workload stressor ‘overload’, the job-control stressors ‘technostress’ and ‘patrons’, the reward stressor ‘poor feedback from management’ and the community stressor ‘isolation’” (p. 203). 

things the Libe does have: books on the origins of hats Ohio State: The walk to the library is the boulevard of broken dreams Cambridge, UK: Oh God, the library is getting spooky. 

This approach to reference services encourages librarians to employ a cooperative learning model, acknowledging that while the librarian is an expert in search strategies and resource evaluation, the student is the master of the research need (Mabry 43). 

This category includes screencasts and tutorials that show users how to search a particular database, the library catalog, or a library website: Mergent Quick Start Video Guide linked with other guides from Hyun-Duck’s Business Plan Research Guide (NCSU Libraries) Z. Smith Reynolds Library Toolkit is a suite of short screencasts teaching users how to use features of article databases, the library catalog, and library website — what a great concept! 

This is not to say that all incompetent library administrators are men, but it does say something that our profession is made up of an estimated 80% women, and yet the women in leadership is in the 50% range. 

This is one of the major reasons why, as they currently exist in Canada and the US, libraries are a tool of oppression, rather than of liberation. 

This type of dialogue requires an open and honest classroom environment in which the librarian is a facilitator and guide for learners as they discover the world of information. 

Time and time again, we ran into legislators who believed librarians were part of the non-instructional staff in K-12 schools, adding to the administrative bloat public schools carry. 

Too often, people respond to critiques of whiteness in American institutions by saying that the author must think all librarians are racists. 

Trapskin suggests that the recent security issues in libraries are the result of a lack of public space in cities more generally and a shift in how library space is used from a quiet study space to a more social space (2008). 

Trouble is, marketing library services is a full-time job, and is probably the thing that falls by the wayside when people get busy with the other aspects of their jobs. 

Unlike our experience with OCLC, sharing our records in Open Library was dead simple: I emailed Aaron Swartz and he replied that receiving our records “was cause for much rejoicing.” (I also emailed Tim Spalding at LibraryThing to see if he might be interested in our records, and I found out he was as well.) 

We can’t complain too much about a digital corps teaching people how to use computers instead of librarians because it is cheaper when libraries are the ones de-professionalizing the profession…even ALA plays with LSSI. 

We have this narrative that the academic library is the heart of the college and librarians are vital to student learning but we have no mechanism for supporting that claim other than my gate counts and instructional stats (as in how many classes/students we teach). 

We should be offering satellite services and, yes, we should all have down pat our 30 second “why the library is important” elevator speech. 

Well, apart from the fact that libraries are a small part of the larger whole that’s affected by power outages, floods, and tornadoes, they’re also part of several other big, complex systems. 

What we have seen in the recent history of libraries is the exact opposite. 

When library vendors are middlemen between library patrons and government surveillance, librarians may be prohibited from critiquing vendor practices in professional organizations’ forums. 

When you sort this data by Median income, Library Science is the 5th lowest median. 

Where are we supposed to study if the libraries are closed [for a snow day]? 

While this does not mean vilifying all police and security and banning them from libraries, to ensure libraries are a safe space for all, library staff will need to consider the effect of police presence on all patrons as well as their own staff. 

Who on your campus outside the library are likely allies, such as contingent faculty or academic technologists? 

Why Individual Research Consultations Academic librarians are unique educators in that they often work outside of the power structures of the traditional student-teacher relationship. 

With this, we are turning the tables on what the other articles have argued, because the librarians are the skilled experts, sharing their knowledge with other groups and professionals. 

Yes, I’m calling librarianship my “maverick bar.” Not literally of course, since our workplaces in no way resemble the bourbon-and-beer scene in the poem, but I have the sense sometimes that librarians are a little bit like those folks in the bar – a little displaced, not quite sure who they are or what they should be doing. 

You see, library filtering is a lot like abortion. 

Your participatory exhibit will be unique to your library community, but the message will be the same: the library is a place where stories matter and individual voices are heard.