“Prisoners’ Right to Read: A New Interpretation to the Library Bill of Rights,” posted on July 12th, 2010 by Nanette Perez
There is also a Prison Law blog (thank you to Tom Mighell and his Inter-Alia newsletter for the lead.)
Sent to me by a favorite lawyer library-patron:
20 Heroic Librarians Who Save the World
There are also flesh and blood librarian heroes, some of whom you can read about in this book – and they are almost as much fun, and as ornery, as the comic books ones:
In the library world, one always meets people who want to learn something new every day. It’s not hard to do, but what if you want to get really serious about acquiring knowledge:
8 Awesome Websites to Take Free College Courses Online, posted by Dave Drager on Sep. 30th, 2010
(Thank you to iLibrarian, which always entertains and informs!)
Justice Bedsworth isn’t the only one having fun on the job, while doing a GREAT JOB. When times are tough, you have to laugh – and keep up the fight:
Librarians and Libraries may look peaceful, but underneath all that quiet and deceptive-calm is a seething mass of email, chat, IM, and other reference Question-Answer activity that keeps us mighty busy.
But the big question, at least for some of us who participate in a lot of Digital Reference service (also called e-Reference), is how to identify oneself, that is, how to answer that dreaded question from utter strangers:
WHAT IS YOUR NAME?
Present and Future Librarians: The most recent OLA Quarterly has some excellent articles well-worth reading including, but not limited to these:
OLA (Oregon Library Association) Quarterly, Fall 2010, Vol. 16, no. 3
1) ‘What “Open to the Public” Really Means,” by Jane Salisbury and Carolee Hirsch
The website, I Write Like, is wonderful, funny, and inventive (and I’m not inquiring into their algorithms, etc. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow, even if they all lead to Corey Doctorow). Give it a spin.
For many of my sample paragraphs I feed to it, I’m also told (as a couple of the 3 Geeks folks were) that “I write like” Cory Doctorow (including this blog post!) with a few paragraphs coming up “like” David Foster Wallace. If that’s not worth a laugh (and a pang for DFW), I’m not sure what is, but if you have to choose your writer-company, it certainly pleases me muchly – such august company – even if it’s all a fantasy.
Thank you (I think) to 3 Geeks and a Law, August 23, 2010, for their hot tip blog post: I Write Like Jonathan Swift – Who Do You Write Like??
Whenever I feel cranky, about my library, my patrons, our dysfunctional wireless service, about Congress, about people who don’t and won’t use libraries but feel free to spout off about their uselessness, about children who have been denied the pleasures of story time or experiencing the library as a “The Third Place” (See James’ Great Good Place and Oldenburg’s Great Good Place), and other sources of crankiness, e.g. librarian listserve participants who don’t actually contribute productively to a conversation, an argument, a discussion, or a teachable moment – or even offer simply a light moment…:
I often turn to Will UnWound (formerly known as Will Manley, fired library journal sex columnist – yeesh – some things you can’t live down – but he does so with style and substance – he also wrote about Guerrilla Librarians).
Will is old-fashioned; Will is cranky. Will is annoying. Will is a librarian, one of “my people.” Will has been for many of us in the public library world, a virtual (and literary) rock and mentor. I’ve survived, with no small degree of grace and dignity, some very tricky library administration situations due, almost solely, to reading and thinking about some of what Will has written over the years (as well as listening to other mentors’ advice). Will and I don’t always agree, but I always learn, from his humor (read his books!) and his practical words of experience, which are seldom off the mark.
Multnomah County Library now has Oregonian Archives:
“PORTLAND, OR – Multnomah County Library now features the only publicly available, complete full-text digitized archive of The Oregonian newspaper. Multnomah County Library cardholders can now access every article, editorial, illustration, photograph and advertisement published in The Oregonian between 1861 and 1972. By the end of this year, the archive will include all editions up to 1987.
Multnomah County Library is the only source for free access to this archive and all associated features. Previously, total access to this vast resource for Oregon history was available only by paying a monthly subscription fee to NewsBank, the service provider….” Oregonian Archives.
Question: WHO uses the Oregon county law libraries and for what purpose(s)?
Answer: Thousands of people use the Oregon county law libraries, because no other publicly accessible library has their specialized legal research resources, including databases, books, and professional law librarians.
More WHO answers: Government attorneys and other employees, metro-area residents, solo and small law firm attorneys who assist clients with limited income, pro se (self-represented) litigants, especially those with family, small estate, debt collection, landlord-tenant, and traffic court questions, middle and high school students, college, law school, and paralegal students, tax professionals, out of state and non-U.S. attorneys and self-represented litigants with legal interests in Oregon, and more all use the public (county) law library.
Oregon Legal Research Blog