Month: April 2015

The professional challenges of being a librarian

EVERYTHING I have read suggests that books, paper books are generally preferable.

Librarian_black_grandeNear-twin Gordon, whose birthday is the day before mine, only a few decades later, says:

OK, here’s a question:
Working in the librarian/information field, what do you see are your key professional challenges?

On March 14, 2015, I attended this workshop primarily of the board of the Albany Public Library. I was invited as the president of the Friends of the APL. One of the issues was that very subject.

One of the challenges is that some people associate the library with only books, not realizing that libraries do so much more than lend tomes. Almost every librarian I know have asked whether the library will be defunct in X number of years, AND that, because of Google, there will be no need for librarians.

Frankly, it used to irritate me, but now I laugh, LAUGH, I do. Because one of my primary responses is that a lot of the things found on Google is, to put it mildly, CRAP. Part of our job is not to find the first answer that shows up on an online search but to discern what is the USEFUL and USABLE information.

Statistics show that about 90% of all people in the US are in support of libraries, conceptually, but most people don’t quite know what they DO. This is both a challenge and an opportunity.

The Albany Public Library, specifically, engages in online database use, has developed local history expertise, lends eBooks and audiobooks, has a 3D printer and other skill tools.

The library is often the only free Internet some folks have, which people use to look for and apply for jobs. There’s this myth that young people magically understand the newer technology, but that’s only true if they have ACCESS to it. Lots of kids use the computer rooms at APL, and undoubtedly, most libraries.

For me, as a business librarian, the wonder that is the Internet means two specific challenges.

1) People see information out there that comes from some expensive research consortium and want that research.
2) People see information out there that is bogus and want us to verify it, or find out more about it.

Information has gotten expensive. We have access to some databases, and that helps our counselors assist their clients. One of the great advantages of using some resources, whether they be free or fee, is that you understand the nuances of what’s available.

I use freely available Census data a lot because most people can’t figure out how to use it. Heck, sometimes, I need help from people with greater expertise.

One of the things that is true of the vast majority of librarians is that they display collegiality by nature, rather than competitiveness. I noticed that even back at library school in the 1990s, a refreshing change from my failed attempt at getting a Master’s in Public Administration a decade earlier.

Fillyjonk reflects:

Riffing on Gordon’s question: What do you see as the future of libraries?

I think the answer depends on how well the supports for libraries tell the story. If they allow the narrative to be “libraries were useful once upon a time, but they’re so 20th century,” and this is not challenged, then libraries will suffer.

The New York State Library took some massive cuts in years past, which meant a reduction in public hours, and a slashing of staff. I knew people who worked there. Librarians, by their very nature, want to find the answer, but if you limit their ability to do so, it is very discouraging. I think the NYSL took a hit that it’s only starting to recover from.

Libraries nationally have suffered. The number of library workers is clearly down. Friends’ groups and others have to advocate for libraries, ESPECIALLY when politicians act inanely.

I participated in my very first Library Advocacy Day at the state legislature in February 2015. Staff can share their own narrative, but taxpayers think that they are just worried about their own jobs. USERS who tell the tale are much more powerful ambassadors for libraries.

What do you think about the college (can’t remember if it was a 2-year or 4-year) that decided to go 100% digital with its library?

I assume you are referring to this San Antonio library, which came up in our meeting. It’s a branch of a larger library/ Per public demand, it’s needed to be at least a drop-off and pickup point for actual books.

Follow up question: are those of us who prefer paper books going to be like dragons with hoards of inky treasure?

EVERYTHING I have read suggests that books, paper books are generally preferable. Better absorption of the information, less interference with sleep patterns, reduces stress.

This is not to say that books WILL win out. There are plenty of examples where the lesser technology (VCR over Betamax, e.g.) won out. But I have hope. Children, in particular, need books, which require the tactile adventure that electronics simply cannot provide.

Pictured T-shirt is available HERE.

Lincoln’s assassination, and the end of the American Civil War

As we mark the sesquicentennial of these important events, notice how many articles one gets when Googling “still fighting the civil war”.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, ending the Civil War.
Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House

Four years ago, I started to dread what I feared would be a media rehash of the American Civil War 150 years ago, battle by bloody battle. It might have happened, for all I know, but I managed to keep myself out of the loop. Surely I mentioned it rarely here.

This week, though, was quite significant. Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia, though fighting continued elsewhere for another couple of months.

President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, shot on April 14, and dead by the next morning; read about the funeral train. Given his prominence in American history, I’m nevertheless still fascinated that there have been at least 15,000 books about the 16th President. His death left that great unanswerable “What if?”

Had Lincoln lived, how would Reconstruction have been handled? Would slaves have received their 40 acres and a mule, and if so, how would that have been reflected in black people’s wealth in the United States today? What would have been the terms of the Southern states re-entering the Union?

Would Lincoln have died early from Marfan syndrome? He was only 56 when he was killed.

And after four years of reminiscing, we’re still at odds about what to call the conflict. The War of Northern Aggression is particularly popular in parts of the South. The Confederate battle flag is a sign of either regional pride or treason, as it appears on several state license plates and flags to this day.

As we mark the sesquicentennial of these important events, notice how many articles one gets when Googling “still fighting the civil war”. While several are from 25 or 50 months ago, for instance, from CNN and The Atlantic and Daily Kos, the latter citing a piece in the Washington Post, it appears that the conditions mentioned then are no more clarified now, and in fact have even hardened.

The New Republic published an article this week, Make the Confederacy’s Defeat a National Holiday, with a controversial recommendation: “The federal government should… commit to disavowing or renaming monuments to the Confederacy, and its leaders, that receive direct federal support.” Brian Beutler also said, “Those who would caution that a more accurate reckoning with the Confederacy would inflame racial tensions are merely restating the implication that the country is too weak to be introspective.” That, I would suggest, is, at best, an open question.
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Could the South Have Won the War?

M is for Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil

Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame occurred during the 50th year of their personal and professional collaboration.

mann-weil2In the hit Broadway show Beautiful: the Carole King Musical, the characters portraying songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil express having a complicated relationship with competing songwriters King and her then-husband, the late Gerry Goffin, back in the 1960s.

From a February 2015 CBS Sunday Morning interview: “That was absolute truth,” replied Weil. “It was the most conflicting relationship I think we’ve ever had with anybody. Because we loved them, we hated them, we were competitive with them, we cheered for them, we cheered for ourselves.”

You may never have heard of Barry Mann (b. February 9, 1939, in Brooklyn, New York City) and Cynthia Weil (b. October 18, 1940, in New York City), but it is most likely that you have listened to their many songs, most of which are linked HERE, and many of which charted.

“Blame It on the Bossa Nova” – Eydie Gorme
“Don’t Know Much” – Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt (written with Tom Snow)
“He’s Sure the Boy I Love” – The Crystals
“Hungry” – Paul Revere & the Raiders
“Kicks” – Paul Revere & The Raiders
“Make Your Own Kind of Music” – “Mama” Cass Elliot
“On Broadway” – The Drifters; George Benson (written with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller)
“Only in America” – The Drifters (unreleased); Jay and the Americans
“Somewhere Out There” – Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram
“The Shape of Things to Come” – Max Frost and the Troopers
“Walking in the Rain” – The Ronettes; The Walker Brothers
“We Gotta Get out of This Place” – The Animals
“Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp) – Barry Mann (written with Gerry Goffin)
“(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration” – The Righteous Brothers; Donny and Marie Osmond
“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” – The Righteous Brothers; Dionne Warwick; Hall & Oates; Roberta Flack-Donny Hathaway (written with Phil Spector)

In 1987, they were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. Their bio notes:

They’re… one of the longest-running teams in the music business, having been collaborators since 1960. Their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame occurred during the 50th year of their personal and professional collaboration.

In addition to longevity, they’ve exhibited great stylistic range in their work, from epic ballads… to outright rockers… They are also among pop’s most prolific songwriters as well; Mann has nearly 800 and Weil nearly 600 works registered with Broadcast Music, Inc. It’s estimated that Mann and Weil’s songs are responsible for the sale of 200 million records.

They have been married since 1961.

Mann’s other movie work includes the scores for I Never Sang for My Father and Muppet Treasure Island, and songs for National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Oliver and Company. He is an occasional recorded singer and active photographer.

“In 2004, Mann and Weil’s They Wrote That?, a musical revue based on their songs, opened in New York. In it, Mann sang and Weil related stories about the songs and their personal history.”

ABC Wednesday – Round 16

The struggle is long, and its path uneven

Kentucky is arguing a philosophy that was struck down by SCOTUS nearly 50 years ago.

no.you
A friend of mine posted something on Facebook about some local bit of bigotry; there are so many, I can’t keep track. At some level, I become a tad inured, which I reckon is not a good thing. Still, these news stories caught my attention.

ITEM: Tom Cotton Says Critics Of Indiana Should Get ‘Perspective,’ Be Thankful State Doesn’t Execute Gays. It’s amazing! Before he organized that letter that was signed by 47 Republican senators that was sent to Iran during the US government’s negotiations with that country, I didn’t even know who he was.

Now I do recognize the name and face of the freshman senator from Arkansas, but not for any good or noble reasons.

BTW, that so-called Religious Freedom Indiana law was well explained on FOX News. Seriously

ITEM: Lawyers for the state of Kentucky actually put this in legal papers:
“Kentucky’s marriage laws are not facially discriminatory to gays and lesbians based upon their sexual orientation. Kentucky’s marriage laws treat homosexuals and heterosexuals the same and are facially neutral. Men and women, whether heterosexual or homosexual, are free to marry persons of the opposite sex under Kentucky law, and men and women, whether heterosexual or homosexual, cannot marry persons of the same sex under Kentucky law.”

Seriously, I laughed out loud. It was because they were using the exact same structure of an argument as was used by courts in the mid-1960s when trying to uphold rules against mixed-race marriage. “Because its miscegenation statutes punish equally both the white and the Negro participants in an interracial marriage, these statutes, despite their reliance on racial classifications, do not constitute an invidious discrimination based upon race.”

On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in Loving v. Virginia, that the anti-miscegenation laws of Virginia and 15 other states were unconstitutional. Kentucky is arguing a philosophy that was struck down by SCOTUS nearly 50 years ago. This is not just bigoted thinking, it’s bad lawyering.

ITEM: There is a strong relationship between having higher income inequality in a community and the life expectancy of the people who live there. Moreover, that income inequality in the United States is far greater than most people realize.

And one of the WORST places is the Albany, NY metro, which ranked last in US for black children’s healthy development, according to a front-page story in the Times Union on April 2.

ITEM: Two school districts in Kansas announced that the academic year would end early because they lack sufficient funding to keep the schools open.

“The school closures are just the latest in a series of drastic measures that Kansas public services have been forced to take in recent years, as [Governor Sam ] Brownback’s radical tax cuts have drained state coffers of much-needed revenue.” AND he was re-elected in 2014 by four percentage points.

ITEM: If You Don’t Have a Smart Phone, You Don’t Exist – At Least, Not According to Hollywood. Subtitle: “In TV and film, the idea that only bad guys have flip phones is making the tech divide even wider.”

As my friend Alan noted, “When only poor people and villains are depicted as having non-smartphones, it’s sending a message that I think is probably harmful in the long term. I noticed Reddington [the amoral lead character played by James Spader] was using a burner flip phone last night on The Blacklist. Would not have noticed if I hadn’t read the article.”

ITEM: Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaire Koch Brothers. This is not a particular surprise to me. “In 2002, the Kochs and tobacco-backed CSE designed and made public the first Tea Party Movement website under the web address www.usteaparty.com;” THAT I did not know.

ITEM: Noam Chomsky on the Roots of American Racism.
“It’s easy to rattle off the usual answers: education, exploring and addressing the sources of the malady, joining together in common enterprises — labor struggles have been an important case — and so on. The answers are right and have achieved a lot. Racism is far from eradicated, but it is not what it was not very long ago, thanks to such efforts. It’s a long, hard road. No magic wand, as far as I know.”

The church’s one foundation?

How does the church, supposedly the Church Universal, an entity with presumably some core beliefs, find its COMMONALITY to real issues?

adherentsTheoretically, all the churches in Christendom are on a celebratory mode this week (Yes, I know Orthodox Easter is NEXT Sunday). The idea is that death lost out. So Christians are presumably on the same page, except, of course, they (we) are not.

Some friend of a friend named Roderick wrote: “I’d like to see a pie chart that showed how US Christians divided up: Just plain folks from Iowa who live a good life, Lunatic homeschoolers who don’t believe in dinosaurs, gun-totin’ Kill-a-Commie-for-Jesus grade school dropouts, timid white folk who will pay money every Sunday to make sure they don’t go to Hell, Holy Rollers (unspecified), cheerleaders praying they didn’t get knocked up last night, car salesman who need to be seen as honest, and so on.” Snarky, but not entirely incorrect.

The sharp divisions in Christianity are how you get, in the same month, a majority of Presbyterian Church (USA) presbyteries voting in favor of changing the denomination’s definition of marriage “so that same-sex weddings may be conducted by PCUSA pastors and in PCUSA churches” AND Indiana’s governor signing “a controversial ‘religious freedom’ law that critics say could allow discrimination against gays and lesbians.

I was thinking about this because there’s a narrative that saw discrimination, e.g., in the Indiana law, and complains, “Why aren’t mainstream Christians speaking out on this?” Yet, the bill that is apparently rectified the law came after an outpouring of protest. And a LOT of that protest came from church people.

Much of the mainstream church DOES fight what it considers injustice and inequality, often and vigorously. It may not receive the same level of press because it doesn’t fit into a canned narrative of the “Christian view.”

In fact, early this century, watching ABC News regularly, in particular, somehow Christianity and evangelical Christianity became the same thing. How will “Christians respond to candidate X?”

Christianity is not a monolith, certainly not since the Reformation. Heck, early in the letters from St. Paul to the various churches in the first century of the Christian era, he was writing about different interpretations of the faith.

Still, I’m asking here: How does the church, supposedly the Church Universal, an entity with presumably some core beliefs, find its COMMONALITY to address real issues in the world? Can it?

You might find the story of Dr. Foster, a white-haired missionary surgeon who has lived in Angola for 37 years — “much of that in a period when the Angolan regime was Marxist and hostile to Christians” – an inspiring tale.
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This made me laugh, especially the dialogue.

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