Instead of relying on your friendly local library (who, let’s be honest, often has a policy of not letting patrons know about overdue books until, well, until they’re overdue), Library Elf is a neat little service that helps you track your due dates, holds and more. You can configure the service to notify you […]

From the PLG listserv.

The Progressive Librarians Guild stands in solidarity with the striking Vancouver Public Library workers of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 391 as they fight for a fair and equitable contract that addresses pay equity, improvements to employee benefits, access to training, fair treatment of part-time and auxiliary library […]

Mayor Miller’s recently defeated proposal for two new municiple taxes didn’t take long to fall onto Toronto Public Library.

Spacing Wire reposts a piece from Eye Magazine on the issue.

The cuts are deep. If this is on some level a device to call attention to a crisis in funding for public […]

This information comes via the Progressive Librarians Guild mailing list, a great resource for activist librarian types.

This particular story about the looming library strike in Vancouver also led me to another useful resource - the Union Librarian blog.

- JH

“In 1994, over 70 percent of total fiction sales were accounted for by a mere five authors.”

Just in time for the biggest book release in the history of the universe, a contrarian view from the Washington Post.

It’s out tonight at midnight but rumours of leaks have been happening for the past few days.

Harry […]

The author of the popular Freakonomics book looks at the question, “If public libraries didn’t exist, could you start one today?”

“But here’s the point I’m (finally) getting to: if there was no such thing today as the public library and someone like Bill Gates proposed to establish them in cities and towns across the […]

Here’s a quick redirect to a Library Juice post with a couple of nice resources.

First is this guide for collecting from diverse sources.
(or: outsourcing, how not to)

Fostering Media Diversity in Libraries: Strategies and Actions.

Second there’s a link to a note on the ALA’s opposition to media concentration in […]

In my daily dose of Spacing Wire this morning, Matthew Blackett articulated similar thoughts I was having yesterday about corporate sponsorship, however his post was in response to a new sponsorship program to add art onto Toronto garbage bins.

Matthew Blackett, Spacing Wire | June 27.07
I believe small projects like the Street […]

In keeping with the topic of the day, here’s a report on internet filtering from the National Coalition Against Censorship which is admittedly, a bit dated, having been produced in 2001. But it gives an excellent overview of many of the issues and problems being discussed in the wake of the LPL debate. […]

“The Prelinger Library is a small privately owned “public library” in San Francisco with the unique philosophy that browsing library stacks can reveal new knowledge, if the books are arranged for browsing. This is counter to most public libraries who rely on computer terminal searching, databases and the Dewey Decimal system to atomize books and […]