The African Activist Archive Project

The African Activist Archive Project is building an online archive of primary materials – documents, photographs, artifacts, and written and oral memories – of 50 years of activist organizing in the United States in solidarity with African struggles against colonialism, apartheid, and injustice.

This movement offers important lessons about popular organizing for social justice: The anti-apartheid movement of the 1970s-1994, in particular, was unprecedented. Campaigns by community activists, students, faculty, churches, unions, and city, county, and state legislators led to divestment from U.S. companies doing business in South Africa and culminated in passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 that changed U.S. foreign policy over President Reagan’s veto.

Organizations in the African solidarity movement created newsletters, pamphlets, leaflets, policy and strategy papers, meeting minutes, correspondence, and graphic, audio and visual material such as posters, buttons, T-shirts, photos, slideshows, radio interviews, and videos. Many groups and coalitions no longer exist, but individuals associated with them have preserved many vital records.

–From http://africanactivist.msu.edu/aboutus.php

Button: Chase Manhattan - Partner in Apartheid SDS

The African Activist Archive Project is cosponsored by the African Studies Center and MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters and Social Sciences Online at Michigan State University, which have cooperated on projects about Africa for the past decade.

Celeste West “FESTSCHRIFT” Book Project

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO A CELESTE WEST “FESTSCHRIFT” BOOK PROJECT

Co-editors Toni Samek and KR Roberto are seeking articles, stories, poems, photographs, letters, thought pieces and other individual and collective memories of Celeste West, lesbian, feminist librarian, publisher, and activist, for a festschrift to be published by Library Juice Press in 2009. Celeste passed away in San Francisco on January 3, 2008 at the age of 65. She was a pioneering progressive librarian and one of the founders of the Bay Area Reference Center (BARC), Booklegger Press, Synergy [Magazine], and Booklegger Magazine. She was also co-editor of the now classic title Revolting Librarians.

From 1989 until 2006, Celeste worked as the library director at the San Francisco Zen Center. She was a radical library worker whose practice challenged established library traditions by encouraging librarians to speak up about the need for systematic change. West initiated questions and challenged assumptions (such as library neutrality) that continue to be central issues examined in critical librarianship today. However, while Celeste released a lot of work to the world as author and editor, not much was ever shared about her as subject.

For an historical snapshot of some of Celeste´s key contributions via Booklegger Press, please see: Toni Samek. 2006. “Unbossed and Unbought: Booklegger Press the First Women-Owned American Library Publisher” in Women In Print: Essays on the Print Culture of American Women from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Edited by James P. Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand. Foreword by Elizabeth Long. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press in collaboration with the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Pages 126-155. Available in print and as an online book.

For a more contemporary introduction to Celeste´s way of thinking, see: Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out by K.R. Roberto and Jessamyn West.

Please direct your ideas and queries to the FESTSCHRIFT Editorial Assistant and Project Manager Moyra Lang (moyra @ ualberta.ca). The final deadline for all contributions has been extended to Monday February 2, 2009!

Rally for School Libraries

Grassroots Advocacy: More than 100 people gathered earlier this year (February) at the state capitol steps in Olympia, Washington to rally for school libraries. The rally, as well as an all-day summit, was the culmination of the work of a group of concerned Spokane mothers troubled at the cuts to school library media programs.

Library Fitness

Albeit several years old, the Fit For Life initiative serves as an amazing example of the potential of library services (specifically public library services) in partnership with local organizations, agencies and schools. In 2004, MetLife Foundation awarded a grant to to pilot Get Real, Get Fit!, a program designed to provide library systems with training, resources and support to promote health literacy and wellness in their communities, with a specific focus on populations in urban areas with limited access to reliable health information. LFF selected 40 libraries in 15 states to bring together teens and their parents for discussions and activities focused on fitness and nutrition and to help develop these libraries as centers for health information.

Community Health Connections: Emerging Models of Health Information Services in Public Libraries, an LFF publication, can be downloaded here.

Library Activism & How to Effect Change (Salon Title by Jenna Freedman)

slow and/or unresponsive administration?
monolithic or bureaucratic organization?
lengthy vetting process?
being a new employee?
staffing limitations?
lack of follow-through from administration?
unhealthy, unsupported work environment?

Last September I attended a salon on effecting change in librarianship presented by Jenna Freedman of Radical Reference NYC. Since then, I have seen postings for repetitions of this salon, posing questions such as “How do you launch an alternative press collection, develop a radical films series, organize a union, start a group (like Radical Reference), etc?” The salon environment provided a great space to hear how others have achieved their pet projects and brainstorm new ideas and ways of implementing them. I was thrilled to discover today that a wiki-page has been developed for ongoing conversations around the topics addressed at September’s salon. To view the wiki, click here.

For information on future salons email info@radicalreference.info. All library workers, LIS students, and LIS faculty are welcome. Occasionally welcomed are those who merely love libraries and library workers!!

The Brilliance of “Food for Fines” Drives

Put your library fines to work for the community?

“Food for Fines” means helping out neighbors in need by bringing non-perishable food items to your library’s circulation desk. The idea is that for each item of food donated, $1.00 (or other amount to be determined by libraries individually) will be subtracted off a patron’s fine.

So, What Do We [Libraries] Get Out of It?
(An excerpt from ‘Food for Fines’ Drives: Positive PR That Works! by Amy Ford)

We benefit by getting back some late and lost books. Plus we get our delinquent patrons to come back. Many of them feel bad about owing money to the library that they can’t pay back—others are stubborn and refuse to pay fines above a certain amount. Whatever their reason, they do come back, and they feel good about doing something meaningful for their community in the process. We also gain respect from other community entities, which are continually amazed at the countless ways that the library contributes to the public good. Our local nonprofits and charities are very grateful for the help they receive from us. Staff morale improves, and now circulation staff receive far fewer complaints about fines.

Finally, the positive public relations response that the library receives far exceeds the small amount of money and staff time that the program requires. And the program reinforces the image of the library as a learning place that reaches out to all of the members of its community, regardless of income.

ACT FOR LIBRARIES

ACT FOR LIBRARIES (“a website designed to help all library advocates, from teens to trustees to town officials, strengthen their libraries and their communities”) has recently identified ten strategies for responding to the complexities of today’s political and funding environments. Best used in combinations depending upon each library’s particular advocacy goals, type and size of community, and needs and advocacy capacities, these strategies provide a framework for action that encompass nearly all forms of advocacy. Examples of these and additional strategies in action can be found online.