TILT #39 the myth of the live-in librarian
Help is needed everywhere
Last week the Vermont Library Association did our first Unconference. NELA is in Vermont this year, so VLA had a small conference instead of a big one. Conference nerds can check out the Session Notes. I made a celebratory slide show which played in the background during the conference. I love looking at all the creative and interesting ideas small libraries have.
My job at the conference was handing out passports. The Passport to Vermont Libraries program is a statewide summer thing encouraging people to visit libraries, get passport stamps, and (maybe) win some prizes. It’s fun. All our materials are free online in case you want to use them. Over half the libraries in the state are participating this year. I did most of the design and logistical work and am very proud of this program.
On my way home from the conference, I stopped in at a library I’ve been meaning to visit — I am trying to take photographs at all 183 of Vermont’s public libraries; it’s slow going. It’s a goal of mine to one day live in a library and also, maybe, work in that same library. There are a few libraries in Vermont with living quarters and one, the Belcher Library, is near me. It’s open ten hours a week, so it’s tough to just drop by. But it was open and I stopped in and the woman working there happened to also be the person who lived there. Which…. hey!
We talked. It turned out she knew about me — “You’re that computer lady aren’t you?” — and I asked about her setup. As you might expect, the reality differs a bit from the fantasy world I had built up. She is a volunteer librarian. She pays rent (only $500) to live in the attached apartment and heat gets expensive in the winter. The historical society somehow has dominion over the entire second floor and won’t let the library use it. The library runs on a budget of $3500 a year, that is not a typo. They have a pump organ that you are allowed to play.
The library is in the village of Gaysville, in the town of Stockbridge, a town that had more people in 1840 than today and was very nearly wiped off the map by the flood of 1927. They’re getting their catalog online. They’re doing okay. It’s easy to show up with a lot of “Hey you know what you should really do with this place?” egghead advice, but I was happy just to get to know them and have them know me. Glad I stopped by. I’m still thinking about that $500 apartment.
Bestseller lists are weird. Alan Sorensen, a management professor, did a study about the actual impact on book sales from placement on the NY Times bestseller list. Upshot: inclusion on these lists is a big deal for unknown authors and barely makes a dent for big name authors. If you’re a writer like John Grisham, being on these lists barely matters.
Meanwhile Amazon — you know that online bookstore that has gotten lukewarm feedback on their IRL bookstore which opened this week — has come out with a new “Charts” feature. The tool attempts to split out “Most Sold” from “Most Read” (an all-digital Kindle data crunching-generated list which ignores bibles and dictionaries).
The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped does more than just make books available to print-disabled patrons, they also publish a ton of resource guides like this one on video gaming accessibility with a bibliography and go-to websites to get information on which video games are or can be made accessible to people with disabilities.
I always love to read articles about Drag Queen Story Hours. Their main website where you can learn more is sponsored by, among others, Brooklyn Public Library, New York Public Library, and Feminist Press.
For librarians in a city dealing with an opioid crisis, getting trained in the use of Narcan is just another part of helping their community.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the opioid crisis — and with Philly on pace for 1,200 overdose deaths this year, a 30 percent jump from last year — it’s that help is needed everywhere.
Two more inclusion links of particular note:
- Able To Include — pushes for making technology more accessible to people with intellectual or developmental disabilities. Not only do they talk about tools and services that might be useful to people with IDD, but they also have the website’s News section available in easy English. I encourage you to follow them on Twitter.
- CADET — The National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH has created this free, downloadable caption-authoring software enabling anyone to produce high-quality captions for visual media.
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.
