TILT #28 — A Year of Books and Libraries. Keeping hoping machine running.
Read lots good books. Stay glad. Wake up & fight.
Subtitle today is from Woody Guthrie’s New Years Rulin’s from 1943. A classic that feels more urgent this year.
Like many librarians, I am a collector and a quantifier. I like to see the data and I like to see my data — notice trends, look for patterns. I tend to spend the last few days of a year tabulating and writing wrap-ups Here are my lists:
- I read 71 books in 2016 and split up the list a few ways. Anyone who can suggest a mystery or thriller series written by a person of color, please email me.
- I visited 45 libraries in 2016. I love to visit libraries.
- I stayed in in 29 places in 2016 and provided links to AirBnBs you might be interested in, or not.
- Where my money came from in 2016. This diagram is getting murkier as the years go on.
If you like wrap-ups, you might also like Publishers Weekly’s Top Ten Library Stories from 2016. No major surprises, but a good summary of some big stories.
Peru started doing better economically in 2012 and lost their low-cost access to major science journals via Elsevier. In 2017 the Peruvian government decided to not pay the high subscription costs. This article from Nature outlines the ongoing headaches of trying to negotiate with the 800 pound gorilla that is Elsevier.
In the meantime, “everyone uses Sci-Hub,” one biologist says.
Operation 451 put together by Sarah Houghton and Andy Woodworth: an “affirmation of our librarian values of knowledge, service of others, and free expression of ideas. It stands in direct opposition to the forces of intolerance and ignorance that seek to divide neighbors, communities, and the country.” Sign on, spread the word. January 20th is their consciousness-raising event.
I’ve been spending some of my new free time working on making Wikipedia better. Do you need help with Wikipedia? Email me!
When the sitcom you’re watching has eight cast members, only six of whom have Wikipedia pages, and those other two just happen to be a person of color and a woman from Massachusetts, it’s a good time to step in. I added an author photo for Ben H. Winters after reading Underground Airlines (so good).
I also noticed that the subject of a Wikipedia page I’d added last January — I guess I get into a Wikipedia dither this time every year — has died. RIP Marilyn Sachs, librarian, author, and activist, who had some very interesting things to say about libraries.
“Small, skinny and a crybaby, I was an easy prey for the local bullies,” she wrote on her website. “If you are a coward, you will probably spend more time at the library than you would ordinarily, and if you tell lies, it just shows that you have an imagination, even if others don’t always appreciate it. Crybabies tend to be sensitive, which is also a plus for writers.”
She also discusses how the books she wrote for young adults broke the existing mold.
“I took a part-time job in the San Francisco Public Library. One day a letter came telling me that a children’s book I had written ten years earlier would be published. I had written it in the 1950s when children’s books were pretty much about white, middle-class people who lived in the suburbs and had happy lives. Nobody died, nobody’s parents divorced, and there were no loose ends…. Amy Moves In is a pretty mild book by today’s standards since it is about a poor Jewish family with two sisters whose mother had been in an accident and did not return at the end of the story.”
Amy Moves In is still in print in 2017.
#1lib1ref starts in ten days. Add a single citation and help make Wikipedia better! You can use this simple tool.
I’ll mention two other library Tinyletters of note. Please send more suggestions my way.
- Read for Later by ALA’s Center for the Future of Libraries has pointers to lots of stuff to read about wide-ranging trends that affect library topics.
- 3 to 5 by VM Brasseur is a curated list of a few good longreads.
Speaking of winter and diverse books for kids, I was pleased to note that images from Ezra Jack Keats’ book A Snowy Day will grace postage stamps in 2017. Lovely.
New little divider symbol is yet another public domain glyph from a type specimen book. Did you know that no published works from the US entered the public domain this year? True. And troublesome.
Today in Librarian Tabs is written irregularly by Jessamyn West who also maintains librarian.net. It’s also available in your inbox via TinyLetter. Thanks for reading.
