There’s a brief story in the current issue of The Progressive titled, “Vet Prosecuted for Opposing Recruitment in the Library. It doesn’t go into great detail and is essentially an … Read more Military recruitment in the library, and how you can get busted for interfering with it
Arch Conservative Bush advisor Grover Norquist has been pushing the “Starve the Beast” strategy for a long time. This is the strategy that says run up a huge budget debt … Read more Savanna River Ecology Laboratory closing, thanks to Bush Administration small-esse
Bernadine Abbott Hoduski shared this information with ALA Council today… The ALA Washington Office and ALA Council’s Committee on Legislation have started a wiki on federal libraries. The wiki says: … Read more Federal Libraries Wiki
Sherry Turkle, whose 1995 book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet was much talked about when I was in library school, has an article in … Read more Sherry Turkle on alienation in our technological society
Just an observation of interest to librarians, about Web 2.0 types of websites. Two examples of rich Web 2.0 sites are Last.fm and LibraryThing. We often think of Web 2.0 … Read more Why Web 2.0 is leading back to full cataloging
Steven Bell has an article in the current Inside Higher Ed, entitled, “Good at Reviewing Books But Not Each Other,” about the major disfunctionality in LIS discourse: our excessive “niceness” … Read more Steven Bell tough on LIS discourse in Inside Higher Ed
Marin County’s free weekly paper, The Pacific Sun, published a feature article in its last issue about the Marin County Free Library and the broader Marin County consortium of libraries, … Read more Now that’s Library PR
In the area of education research and accreditation standards for primary and secondary education, there is presently a big controversy that parallels SRRT’s fight for social responsibilities in libraries. NCATE, … Read more SRRT’s counterparts in education – current controversy
Hameeda Al-Bassam is an Iraqi librarian, a woman who is physically disabled as a result of the violence in Iraq. She operates a small, private library in service to intellectuals … Read more Hameeda Al-Bassam
The following is a brief email correspondence that I found amusing. I’m withholding the name and email address of the person who contacted me at Library Juice Press…. I recently … Read more Amusing correspondence
Paul Catherall of Information for Social Change has created a Google-based web search that searches websites from the international library left. Try the Radical and Progressive Library and Information Site … Read more Radical and Progressive Library and Information Site Search
Continuing in a self-congratulatory mode, I am proud to announce that I have joined the editorial board of Information for Social Change, the UK-based collective and semi-annual journal. ISC is … Read more Rory Litwin joins ISC editorial board
Another example of the Bush Administration’s information evil. Marjorie Heins has some commentary on the Free Expression Policy Project’s website about Guantanamo prisoners’ recantations of abuse charges in exchange for … Read more Guantanamo secrecy through plea-bargains
I am very proud to report that all four books presently in print from Library Juice Press are on sale at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, and through the Powells.com … Read more LJP books at Powell’s
There is unavoidably a moral dimension to business decisions. To make decisions that work from a practical standpoint we constantly make compromises with humanistic and environmental ideals. It is difficult … Read more Reed Elsevier and arms trade
Media critic and theorist Robert McChesney is spearheading the campaign against the postal rate hike, which has Time Warner and other major magazine publishers’ money behind it. This is from … Read more Postal Rate Hike would hurt independent publishers
From Al Kagan: One of my colleagues here has encouraged me to distribute this letter more widely, so here it is. It appears in the latest issue of the IFLA … Read more Al Kagan, letter to IFLA Journal on Freedom of the Press, Social Responsibility and the Danish Cartoons
For several years I hosted Joel Kahn’s “Frankentoons,” a fun fair-use protest site, on Libr.org, and took it down due to a change in my hosting situation. I just received … Read more Frankentoons back online
Kathleen de la Peña McCook has just received the Florida Library Association Lifetime Achievement Award. This award is presented to a librarian whose distinguished record of professional achievements and accomplishments … Read more Kathleen de la Peña McCook wins Florida Library Association Lifetime Achievement Award
Anti-intellectualism must be at its peak. Nerdy glasses are in fashion; I hope they promise a recovery of intellectual values in the post-Bush years. Regarding the thinking of anti-intellectuals… They … Read more Brief observation about anti-intellectualism