TILT #64 — Librarians are the real wizards, or was it superheroes?
Above image from Cockroaches: here, there, and everywhere, an adorable bug book from 1971.
I stopped by my library this Saturday, during the three hours it was open. I had a book on hold, a book to return, and I wanted to get one more book to read. I ran into a few neighbor friends, and a young couple who were new in town who were showing their parents around. I’d met the couple because we both have blogs and they had a librarian friend who said, “Oh you’re in Randolph, look up Jessamyn” and they did. I said hi to their parents and wished them a good visit and walked on home with three books in my backpack feeling moderately better about everything. I want libraries to be that way for everyone.
I am a DuckDuckGo convert for nearly everything. I use it for searching, I’ve added it to all my browsers, I tout it in my privacy classes. One thing I can’t use it for, however, is image search for my newsletter. I need to find rights-cleared images that I can freely share and DDG doesn’t have this feature…. yet.
In the meantime I’ve used a script to put a custom image behind my Google searching to remind me what’s important. Nice (if stodgy), don’t you think?
I’ve been on a tear with scripts lately and I wrote one to make New Gmail suck less. You are welcome to try it. No warranty expressed or implied.
So much going on lately! Library Card Sign Up Month and Banned Books Week both seemed like busy occasions that I mostly followed via social media. I’ve always been a fan of the Snoopy images from Sign Up Month 2016, particularly this one where Charlie Brown reads to Snoopy. I was a little surprised at the somewhat threatening sounding letter that accompanied it, however.
Remember Kobo ereaders? Many don’t. However, they’ve gotten a new lease on life and are now sold in Walmart and work seamlessly with Overdrive. Michael Tamblyn, the Kobo CEO, explains why this move made sense for them.
CRS Reports, the Congressional Research Service reports that are created for Congress and only erratically available to citizens are now becoming 100% available and searchable, thanks to the Library of Congress. Not everyone’s happy with scope of the currently available collection. EveryCRSReport.com and CRSReports.com can fill in the blanks.
The amount of control many prisons wield over inmates’ reading is concerning. This is especially true for for-profit prisons. Two news items which I hope PaLA is aware of:
- Pennsylvania to end prison book donations, forcing inmates onto pricey eBook platform — prisoners must buy bad tablets and then purchase books for them which they can only get from a state-contracted vendor. This is nothing more than a profit grab in the name of security and it sucks.
- Philly kids collected new books for immigrant children at Berks detention center. No thanks, officials told them — an older report about groups organizing to give Spanish-language books to kids in detention centers (which I have done via ULU) only to have them rejected
Susan Orlean has a new book about her love of libraries coming out this month. She wrote a teaser article about how much she loved growing up with library access, from The New Yorker.
Another good book coming up partially about libraries is Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. I love this “day in the life” set of photos of the Seward Park Library on the Lower East Side of Manhattan highlighting what librarian Andrew Fairweather and his staff do all day. The library has fish.
Contrast these views of libraries with this “day in the life” look at where many people get their books, Amazon. James Bloodworth talks about the working conditions in Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low Wage Britain and they are… not good.
Odds and ends:
- Dangerous books behind lock and key: Exploring Australia’s hidden library collections — from a few years ago but I hadn’t seen it
- NDIA’s Discount Internet Guidebook can help US librarians help their patrons find low-cost internet options
- I have resigned as the WordPress accessibility team lead. Here is why. — Accessibility work can be really tough, this article outlines the challenges faced by Rian Rietveld trying to do this work
A new feature, such as it is, a few books I’ve recently finished reading. You can always read my capsule reviews on my website but these are just some covers, inspired by the Kobo guy! All of these were very good books.
Just to make sure I am giving cats equal time, click on this kitteh for a great cat+library comic from Breaking Cat News.
Today in Librarian Tabs is written irregularly by Jessamyn West who also maintains librarian.net. It’s available in more-accessible format your inbox via TinyLetter. Thanks for reading.
