Modern City, Modern Library

This 1978 slide/tape presentation was originally produced by Ross Stephen of the UW-Oshkosh Library, with photos taken in late 1977. Our staff, particularly AV Librarian Colleen Rortvedt, converted the slides to video and Children's Librarian Ellen Jepson re-recorded the narrative -- nice work!

Viewing this makes you appreciate that though we have space needs and concerns now, things are not as desperate as they were then.

The coolest thing you can't see

A story in BBC News highlights the launch of a multimedia digital online library for Europe. A joint effort of more than 1,000 organizations including the British Library and the Louvre, the new Europeana will include "more than two million books, maps, recordings, photographs, archive documents, paintings and films." The site will be presented in 23 languages.

Unfortunately, this is such a great idea that the site was overwhelmed by users: 10 million hits per hour. The site is now down for a few weeks being re-tooled for higher capacity.

And I thought our library had bandwidth issues.

Library, thank goodness, will not be shushed

An editorial in the Oshkosh Northwestern lifts up the planned remodeling of the Oshkosh Library, fourteen years after a major expansion. The paper notes:

The Oshkosh Public Library's overseers have a vision and action plan that not only combats the loss of patrons to the latte-brewing retail bookstores of the world in the good times, it also will strengthen 106 Washington Ave's standing as thee community crossroads in this city amid the bad.

The next piece of the physical and philosophical transformation begins on Dec. 15, and it's a great move for Oshkosh. Libraries are easily bullied if not shushed in tough economic times. "Just not as essential – we're in a recession," bloviate the most shortsighted of critics. But tough times call for reinvention in our public institutions. Stagnancy is exactly the wrong thing to prescribe.

Among the features planned for the current remodeling are moving periodicals, comfy furniture and social areas to the first floor and moving books to the second floor to create quiet study space. This will pave the way for planned future improvements including:

• first floor as digital nerve center
• more self-checkout stations (freeing up staff to help patrons)
• tech center
• small-group computer lab
• café
  

Great plans, and not unlike what our community study this year told us we'd need. But we also need more space to work with and Oshkosh had already dealt with many of their space, security and meeting room problems in their last remodel.

I'll look forward to visiting the reconfigured library. Congratulations to our neighbors for taking this step!

Gaiman on free speech, freedom to read

One of my favorite writers is Neil Gaiman, British ex-patriate author of Sandman, American Gods, Stardust, Coraline, and many other magical works. On his blog today, he publishes an impassioned defense of free expression in a thought-provoking essay "Why defend freedom of icky speech?" For many years, Gaiman has worked to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and has called freedom of speech "the most precious, magical, and wonderful thing that anyone ever came up with."

Gaiman posts a lengthy and well-reasoned examination of the need to protect even speech we may find distasteful. Recommended reading. Excerpts:

I loved coming to the US in 1992, mostly because I loved the idea that freedom of speech was paramount. I still do. With all its faults, the US has Freedom of Speech. You can't be arrested for saying things the government doesn't like. You can say what you like, write what you like, and know that the remedy to someone saying or writing or showing something that offends you is not to read it, or to speak out against it. I loved that I could read and make my own mind up about something. ...

Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you're going to have to stand up for stuff you don't believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don't, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person's obscenity is another person's art.

Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.

... that's what makes the kind of work you don't like, or don't read, or work that you do not feel has artistic worth or redeeming features worth defending. It's because the same laws cover the stuff you like and the stuff you find icky, wherever your icky line happens to be: the law is a big blunt instrument that makes no fine distinctions, and because you only realise how wonderful absolute freedom of speech is the day you lose it.

Some nations imprison people for self-expression, like the Burmese blogger recently sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for lampooning the military. We can be thankful for freedom of speech as one of our American national cornerstones, but can't take it for granted.

King Corn - film discussion

You are what you eat, and we need to talk. Next Thursday, Dec 4 at 6:30PM, we'll have a screening of the documentary film King Corn, and discussion led by Dr. Dubear Kroening, Associate Professor of Biology at UW-Fox Valley.

From the PBS blurb:

Behind America’s dollar hamburgers and 72-ounce sodas is a key ingredient that quietly fuels our fast-food nation: corn. In KING CORN , recent college graduates Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis leave the east coast for rural Iowa, where they decide to grow an acre of the nation’s most powerful crop.

Alarmed by signs of America’s bulging waistlines, the filmmakers arrive in the Midwest enthusiastic about their new endeavor. ... Ian and Curt are increasingly troubled by how the abundance of corn is helping to make fast food cheap and consumers sick, driving animals into confinement and farmers off the land. Animal nutritionists confirm that corn feeding can make cows sick and beef fatty, but it also lets consumers have fast food at low prices. As feedlot operator Bob Bledsoe says in KING CORN, “America wants and demands cheap food.”

Here's the trailer for the film:

Marketing Your Library Final 1

Here's a SlideShare presentation developed as a grad school class group presentation, and published online by Michael Stephens. Although it's developed for a fictional community and has some idealized academic aspects, it would be a good springboard for real world discussions, particularly with regard to electronic marketing.

Happy Thanksgiving

I finished baking the corn muffins, so ... a few seconds for reflection. Beyond the immense gifts of food on my plate, a roof over my head, friends and family, I'm thankful for:

• having a job
• the opportunity to do meaningful work, and the many joys of public libraries
• a society that values the freedom to speak & read
  
• having excellent co-workers -- staff & volunteers
• people that support the library
• people that use the library
• people that offer constructive criticism
• a day off
  

Hope everyone has a great holiday!

I Love a (Christmas) Parade

Kids, staff, family, Board members, even a dog and an Alderman. Thanks to the Boldt company for the truck and the help from staff and volunteers, thousands of people saw our float as we rode and marched in the Appleton Downtown Christmas Parade. It's great to hear kids yelling "yay, library!"

Book sale - recycling the collection & donations

Good things about the Friends' fall book sale:

1. it recycles used materials for fresh users
2. it raises money to support library services
3. it makes books available cheaply
   
4. it's a community event
5. it's done with the hard work of dedicated volunteers
   

Greening the library

Library Journal had a provocative article in the Nov. 1 issue, "Global warming's library challenge", calling for immediate plans and actions. Our library has several times partnered with a local sustainability group to offer programs and discussions. But talk and programs are not enough. We've made substantial strides to recycle and conserve energy, but that's not enough.

We need to be intentional; at the very least, an awareness of sustainability concerns should inform our purchasing and planning. Writing in the September issue of Shambhala Sun, Thich Nhat Hanh noted:

If we continue to live as we have been living, consuming without a thought to the future, destroying our forests and emitting greenhouse gases, then devastating climate change is inevitable. ...

The Chinese, the Indians, and the Vietnamese are still dreaming the “American dream,” as if that dream were the ultimate goal of mankind—everyone has to have a car of their own, a bank account, a cell phone, a television set. In twenty-five years the population of China will be 1.5 billion people, and if each of them wants to drive their own private car, China will need 99 million barrels of oil every day. But world production today is only 84 million barrels per day, so the American dream is not possible for the Chinese, nor the Indians or the Vietnamese. The American dream is no longer possible for the Americans. We cannot continue to live like this. It is not a sustainable economy.

Potential areas for "green library" discussion, planning and action:

• energy use in current operations
• building & construction plans
• library supplies & products used
  
• service implications
• disaster planning
• cost savings
  
• program planning
• recycling
• collection development

All kinds of libraries need to step up and engage the issues; there are many resources listed in the LJ article. Maybe we're not going to put solar panels and wind turbines on our roof, but we still need to get staff at our library talking and working.