- Getting a Library Card: One User's Not-Very-Positive Experience
Posted July 27, 2009
Librarian blogger Jessamyn West has captured what it's like, from the patron's point of view, for a
semi-reluctant elderly person to sign up for a library card. And she's not making this up: the patron is her 80-year-old dad.
Read this and try to remember it next time you're harriedly trying to multi-task at your understaffed service desk,
hoping that your just-trying-to-get-through-it behaviors aren't affecting the quality of your interactions with your patrons.
Wait. Never mind trying to behave more sensitively to new patrons and their bewilderment in an unfamiliar, probably
not-very-welcoming environment. Because, at AFPL, once the patron gets his borrower's card, he's still got to cope (as
Jessamyn's dad does) with the notoriously crappy iBistro, the library's catalog. Jessamyn captures that sorry
experience even more brilliantly in this
follow-up blogpost.
Interesting, isn't it, that public libraries, including AFPL, continue to pay huge bucks to torture their hundreds of
thousands of customers? (And dont' get us started about WorkFlows, SIRSI's staff-torturing device.)
So this is the best our highly-paid public library administrators - including the ones at AFPL and at Jessamyn's dad's library - can do on our behalf? Something is
wrong with this picture, and it's been wrong for a long, long time.
- Popular Atlanta Author E. Lynn Harris Dies at 54
Posted July 25, 2009
Harris died Thursday in Los Angeles while on his latest book tour.
Dozens of obituaries and tributes have
been posted to the Internet, including:
- Burning Tech Question of the Moment: What Does the Library's Website Look Like on a Cell Phone?
Posted July 25, 2009
The steady increase in the ubiquitification of cell phones, coupled with the increasing number of people using them to
access the Internet spells one thing: any library whose web page is cell phone unfriendly is going to lose potential users.
Stephen's Lighthouse has posted some
daunting statistics that show this cell phone/library interface thing to be a huge issue for all types of libraries.
Yet another of dozens of reasons why it's wrong, wrong, wrong that AFPL has no full-time TechnoHoncho on its payroll.
- Janitor Finds Seven People, Two Dogs Sleeping on Roof of Colorado Library
Posted July 25, 2009
The Denver Legal News Examiner has a few details.
Found via LISNews.
- Iowa Library Board Struggling to Implement New State Law Restricting Sex Offenders' Access to Libraries
Posted July 25, 2009
Details at the Iowa City Press-Citizen.
Found via LISNews.
- Controversy about Public Library Book Collection Erupts in Wisconsin Town
Posted July 23, 2009
According to the ALA, there are 500 similar brouhahas per year in the United States. As in this case, the controversies
usually involve objections among some library users about unfettered access to books depicting sex acts, with the objectors
claiming the library should be protecting library users from being able to easily find these items. And also as in this case,
the controversies often involve claims of mental anguish on the part of the (adult) objectors.
CNN.com has some details.
Found via LISNews.
- Dept. of The Big Picture: What is the Internet For? One Librarian's View
Posted July 23, 2009
It was refreshing to read
this May 2009 blogpost by a New Jersey librarian about the so-called "Spirit of the Internet."
We especially liked his insistence on acknowledging how the Internet was born, and his thoughts about conceptualizing the
current and potential "purpose(s)" of the Internet.
- Proposal: Deep Cuts in Dallas Library Hours, Collection Budget in September
Posted July 22, 2009
Details from the Dallas Morning News.
Found via LISNews.
- Author Frank McCourt Dies at 78
Posted July 22, 2009
The Associated Press obiturary.
- Journalist Walter Cronkite Dies at 92
Posted July 22, 2009
The New York Times obituary.
- Atlanta Journalist and Author Paul Hemphill Dies at 73
Posted July 22, 2009
The New York Times obituary.
- Dept. of All-Things-to-All-People Library
Posted July 15, 2009
A public library in Ontario has agreed to lend out fishing rods and tackle to local residents.
Details from the The Sudbury Start.
But why stop there? Any logical reason why the library shouldn't be providing the fishing bait and the fishing boats, as
well as the fishing equipment?
We are mightily weary of library administrators in their desperate, foolhardy pursuit of "community partnerships"
committing the time and energy of library staff to fiddling around with non-library objects, services, and activities.
(Remember a few years ago when some benighted AFPL administrator arranged for the Central Library staff to begin circulating
guitars for teenagers?)
It's bad enough that library staff have to fool with tax forms, park passes, zoo passes and (soon) credit/debit cards.
Whatever happened to the excellent and do-able notion of a lending library for books? We've got our hands full
trying to do a halfway decent job of storing and lending out those things - and, alas, with storing and lending out a
plethora of nonbook cultural-transmission objects. Why must some library administrators constantly be looking into how they
can equip arbitrarily chosen hobbyists as well? The Ontario scrapbookers, beaders, chess players, and quilters (as well as
the hapless library staff) should be up in arms over this ill-conceived "partnership."
Found via LISNews.
- Gwinnett County Cutting Library Staff, Hours, and Services
Posted July 10, 2009
A few details - although nothing about the specific numbers and locations of staff cuts - are embedded in the
announcement posted to GCPL's website earlier this week.
- Library Pioneer E.J. Josey Dies at 85
Posted July 10, 2009
Josey died last week; Library Journal has posted
a summary of Josey's remarkable and distinguished career.
- Some Unheralded Advantages - and Disadvantages - of E-Books
Posted July 10, 2009
The blogospheric documentation of the extent to which the Great Unwashed Public is or isn't embracing electronic books over
The Other Kind is getting to be a bit tedious to follow, but we recently stumbled upon a short list of pros and cons of each
format that we hadn't read before:
Often-overlooked advantages of e-books over printed books:
- The ability to resize text.
- The ability to search the full text.
- The ability (with some e-text readers) to easily look up definitions.
- The ability (with some e-text readers) to record comments about one's reading.
Often overlooked advantages of (purchased) printed books over e-books:
- The ability to re-read the book as many times as you want (whenever you want).
- The ability to possess and store the book as long as you want.
- The ability to lend, sell, or give the book to someone else.
Found via
Library Blog Buzz via Resource Shelf
via Jane Lee's
E-Books: Understanding the Basics
- Internet Access in U.S. Public Libraries: A Statistical Snapshot
Posted July 10, 2009
Findings from an ALA survey that will
not surprise librarians, but findings that library funding agencies should keep in mind as they thrash around looking for
places to slash budgets:
- 71% of libraries report they are the only source of free access to computers and the Internet in their community;
- 80% of libraries report providing as-needed assistance with e-government services;
- 61% of libraries report providing access to government information is one of the most critical Internet services they provide; and
- Public libraries offer a number of training classes and/or as-needed assistance on a range of topics, particularly
Internet use (92.8 percent), general computer skills (91.3 percent) and online Web searching (76.9 percent).
Found via Stephen's Lighthouse via
Library Blog Buzz via
Resource Shelf.
- What Laptop Users Are Going to Be Expecting from Libraries
Posted July 7, 2009
As we predicted and as Stephen's Lighthouse reminds us, "wireless [access] is just the start" of what laptop owners are
going to start demanding from public libraries. Read Stephen's daunting laundry list
of wifi-related features and services and space realignments.
Since all this seems as inevitable as August's annual thunderstorms, we've all got yet another reason to rue the day that the
county's IT Department hijacked the library system's computer team. It's so easy to imagine how much longer it will
take the county to address these library users' expectations than an AFPL-focused team would address them if such a team
exisited.
- Public Library Use Shows Steady Increase Over Past Decade
Posted July 1, 2009
If you feel like you've been working harder lately, you probably have been:
And this data was collected before the recent economic downturn.
Details were recently released by the Institute of Museums and
Library Services; yesterday, Stephen's Lighthouse provided a brief
summary of some of the more significant trends.
The graph we'd like to see: the one showing the increase/decrease in the number of public library staff over the
past ten years, superimposed on the graph shown here.
Continue reading previously-posted LibraryLand Bulletins
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