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So, Christie Hefner, whom the American Library Association (ALA) describes as "a passionate advocate of freedom of expression, social justice, equal rights and opportunities for women," will be Opening Session speaker at the 2009 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. (The session will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on July 11 at McCormick Place West.)

Surely Hefner is, as ALA says, an "ardent defender  of First Amendment rights" responsible for the creation, in 1979, of the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards. And surely she's made significant efforts to increase opportunities for women in both the political and corporate r...Read More

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There are some good arguments for library consolidation--why can't you take out books from all systems with one card?--among the three systems serving New York City, and there are some arguments against it. 

A recent piece on WNYC, the local National Public Radio station, did a decent job airing the debate, but missed one key element: the role of private fundraising.

Former New York Public Library (NYPL) union head Ray...Read More

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From our June 15 issue, check out "Working the Social: Twitter and FriendFeed" by social media mavens Colleen Harris and Laura Carscaddon for tips on making the best use of these social networking services come conference time.

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It's time to soup up the library courier truck. The Johnson County Library, Shawnee Mission, KS, now has four specially decorated, literary-themed trucks: Captain Ahab’s Fine Seafood, Benjamin Button’s Diaper Service, Kafka’s Pest Kontrol, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s Pharmacy. Credit the Barkley Advertising Agency in Kansas City, MO, for the message and the photos.

Said County Librarian Donna Lauffer, "Often we promote all the services and resources the library has... We tend to overlook why most people come to the library:...Read More

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I'd be eating up the funny, insightful, and plain-old true thread on Publib "You know you're a rural librarian if...." (and its Kansas cousin)--but then, I'm not one, and I'm still loving it.

From requests to ID a live snake to getting library deliveries at your home on the days the library is closed (or your personal ones at the library when its open) to efforts to barter farm goods for fines, and on and on, these descriptions of life in small libraries give a taste of the surprises awaiting at most public libraries.

Seeing these posts also urges me to remind all the great librarians in all the great small libraries out there to think ahead to this year's Best Small Lib...Read More

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Anaheim, CA, librarian Scott Douglas, author of the "humor memoir" Quiet, Please (LJ Q&A) and contributor of "Dispatches from a Public Librarian" to McSweeney's, has another sardonic dispatch out, titled, The Librarian: A Twitter Story.

If you're wondering whether the oddities of library life/work can be boiled down to Twitter length, well, Douglas has definitely mastered the form. My two favorite lines:

When people ask what I do at work, I can tell them I help mentally challenged people stalk celebrities. How can I not like this job? 

Man says computer turned off and he didn't do anything. Late...Read More

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A 6/8 article in LJ sister publication Tradeshow Week highlights new ALA conference programs born out of increased usage in libraries and notes the healthy number of conference registrants at this stage, quoting show director Paul Graller as saying that “registration [for the ALA conference] is currently running ahead of the last two years.” More from Tradeshow Week

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Click here for more ALA 2009 Conference News coverage from Library Journal and School Library Journal.

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Just today there's an article about vandals mangling rare books at the University of Kansas's library, so it was opportune to get a couple of library-themed poems from Robin Rose Yuran, co-director of the Norfolk Library, CT.

Yuran's first book was the self-published The Shelf Life of a Mouse and Other Tales; most of the content appeared in the library newsletter. Her new book, from which the poem below is taken, is Tales Told by an Idiot. Both are lim...Read More

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Move over, Cherry Garcia. Here comes... Rocky Read. Or Gooey Decimal System. So suggests the "People for a library-themed Ben & Jerry's flavor Facebook group launched by Andy Woodworth, a librarian at the Burlington County Library System, NJ. 

The logic is simple: "1) Libraries are awesome; (2) Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream is tasty; therefore: (3) A library-themed Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream would be tasty awesome." Or, as noted more thoughtfully by Woodworth on LIS News (and also on the Facebook page), libraries need a boost, and Ben & Jerry's has a history of advocacy for socially responsible causes.

The group now has 300 members. You c...Read More

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Bette Midler. Ellen Burstyn. Nora Ephron. Mario Batali. Amy Tan. Malcolm Gladwell. And that's just in the first minute of the "Shout It Out for Your Library!" video posted on the New York Public Library web site and on YouTube. The goal: raise awareness about--and reverse--potentially devastating budget cuts.

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Sarah Houghton-Jan (aka The Librarian in Black), a 2009 LJ Mover & Shaker for her technology savvy, has produced a thoughtful, moving, don't-pity-me post about living with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, an extremely rare genetic disorder that affects the body’s production of collagen, leading to fragile skin and unstable joints.

Houghton-Jan wrote both "to raise awareness and to help explain my own erratic activity and involvement in library-land." Like a good librarian, she tr...Read More

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As seen on Reporter News, students at Abilene Christian University (ACU) are taking up the work done at the District of Columbia Public Library (DCPL) to create a mobile library catalog app, extending it to serve their own university's libary population:

Jacob Poulette presented a group project tied in to the city's Abilene Library Consortium, based on a open-source project started by the District of Columbia's public library.

"They created an app to allow users to search their catalog and reserve books," he said. "We're taking, adding on it and expanding on it to make it useful for the Abilene area."

Poulette said he hopes the project will be done by fall, meaning students and tho

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