The Urban Librarian’s Conference focuses specifically on the issues of the working librarian in the city. This conference will target skills and techniques for people on the front line of information services.
The Urban Librarian’s Conference will differ from other library conferences in numerous ways. Instead of being based on ALA Divisions or on geographic location this conference will focus on serving populations in a type of community (the city). Working urban librarians often find themselves saying “well that is great but it will never work in MY library”. This conference will only offer ideas that would work in an urban library. Practice will be paired with the practical, the ideas and concepts discussed will be tied to practical courses of action that working information professionals can use for the benefit of their patrons and institutions.
Urban Librarians Unite is a small not for profit organization based out of New York City. Its mandate is to promote urban libraries and librarianship, to support advances in Library Science in urban areas, and to defend any library at risk. ULU was founded with this kind of scholarship and conversations in mind. The organization plans on making the Urban Librarian’s Conference an annual event with luminaries in urban librarianship coming together to swap ideas and develop new resources for our colleagues and patrons.
In December 2012, the board of trustees at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum (VT) laid off 11 library staff and invited them to reapply for 3.25 positions. Rural Librarians Unite organized a rally in response. Here is some footage. More information is available on the Rural Librarians Unite website: rurallibrariansunite.org
Language learning system, Mango Languages, is now offering a free online course for librarians. Yay! OK, so you don’t have to be a librarian to do this, but how many of my non-librarian friends want to learn how to say “Let’s get you started with a library card” or other such circ/reference desk-related vocabulary? What, all of you? Why am I not surprised?
More Info: All of your hard work led to an 83 million dollar budget restoration – so come out and celebrate with us! We’ll be ceremonially burning our pink slips. You can bring your own pink slip, or if yours was more theoretical, one can be provided for you. Actual burning of the pink slips will commence at approximately 8:30pm.
*Before you say it, we are aware of fire safety issues and have both permission from the venue and a multitude of fire extinguishers.
It is time to get started. Library advocacy season is upon us again and it is time to tool up. It is going to be a tough year. The budget looks worse than ever. The numbers are still in flux but right now we are looking at massive cuts across the board at all three public libraries in New York City. There will be hundreds of layoffs EACH at Brooklyn, New York, and Queens Public Libraries if the projected budget goes through. There may be over a thousand jobs on the chopping block in the city libraries this year [which means dramatically reduced library hours].
To get started RIGHT NOW we are getting another postcard campaign going to our good friend and supporter City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer. His office will be collecting postcards from all over the city (the country? the world?). He will present them to the City Council to support his case that libraries are an important public resource in our fair city.
Grab a postcard (any postcard will do), write a couple of words (seriously two words is enough), and drop it in the mail to Jimmy’s office. If you get your friends and family to write a card (each), put them all in an envelope and drop it in the mail. Keep a few in your pocket for when you are at a church, or a bar, or a library, or anywhere people care about free education and resources for everyone.
Here is the address:
Jimmy Van Bramer
47-01 Queens Boulevard
Suite 205
Sunnyside, New York 11104
Between the lines: a reader at the British Museum library in 1952 Photograph: Bert Hardy/Getty
As local authority budgets are reduced by the government’s cuts in Britain, up to 500 libraries around the country will have to close. With the axe about to fall, Bella Bathurst reveals just what is about to be lost. Books not antidepressants, the erotic charge of bookmobiles, and a resident book-eater are discussed.
The libraries’ most powerful asset is the conversation they provide – between books and readers, between children and parents, between individuals and the collective world. Take them away and those voices turn inwards or vanish. Turns out that libraries have nothing at all to do with silence.
We are told that we live in the ‘digital revolution’ era and that we can communicate across the globe as we never could before, yet restrictive copyright laws still act as a serious barrier to sharing and learning from each other. Copyright and intellectual property protection impinges, in different ways, on the practices of librarians as individual professionals, on libraries as institutions of various kinds (public, commercial, and academic), on the professional organizations of library workers, and to some extent on ‘librarianship’ as an idealised amalgamation of all of the above.
The CopySouth Research Group (CSRG) has sought to research the inner workings of the global copyright system and its largely negative effects on the global South. The recently published papers presented at the 2010 ”3rd CopySouth Workshop: International Conference on Copyright Issues” take up copyright from a political economy perspective and can now be accessed here. Also see the CopySouth Dossier which explores issues including copyright and cultural domination by the North, traditional/indigenous knowledge and copyright, and calculating copyright-related capital flows from the global periphery to the centre.
Rallies were held across the country Saturday to support thousands holding steady at the Wisconsin Capitol in their fight against Republican-backed legislation aimed at weakening unions. Union supporters organized from New York to Los Angeles in a show of solidarity as the protest in Madison entered its 12th straight day and attracted its largest crowd yet: more than 70,000 people.
Republican Gov. Scott Walker has introduced a bill that includes stripping almost all public workers, from librarians to snow plow drivers, of their right to collectively bargain on benefits and work conditions. Walker has said the bill would help close a projected $3.6 billion deficit in the 2011-13 budget. He also argues that freeing local governments from collective bargaining would give them flexibility amid deep budget cuts.
ALA president Roberta Stevens on proposed collective bargaining legislation: “The ALA supports library employees in seeking equitable compensation and recognizes the principle of collective bargaining as an important element of successful labor-management relations. We affirm the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively with their employers, without fear of reprisal. These are basic workers’ rights that we defend for thousands of academic, public and school library professionals.”
Firefighters, sanitation workers, librarians; who needs them? Apparently, Mayor Bloomberg feels NYC can do without them. In an effort to reduce the city’s $3.3 billion budget deficit, NYC Mayor Micheal Bloomberg announced today that the city’s workforce will be reduced by about 2,000 people by the end of the year. A wide range of city-funded departments will take cuts, including the New York City Police Department, the New York City Fire Department, the Department of Sanitation, youth services, senior services and libraries; you know, only the services/programs that keep the blood pumping through the vessels of this city. To keep the bodily function metaphors going here, I have this to say in conclusion: smooth move, Bloomberg, smooth move.
And now, see Bloomberg’s evil empire exposed and defeated. With cake.
A blog highlighting activism around (and general advocacy for) libraries, library workers, and library/information science education in New York City and beyond.
Libraries exist to help people find information that solve problems, answer questions, or otherwise address important individual and community interests and needs. This blog was created to highlight some of the issues and work, pertaining to and carried out by, librarians, library science students, library patrons and general supporters in order to inspire further support of, and investment in libraries.
Something About The Blogger:
Caitlin is a queer, a Jew, and a librarian (sometimes even a queer Jewish librarian) living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She wears different clothes and uses props while dutifully playing her role as each. Sometimes she forgets to change costumes which can be confusing for both herself and others.
