Blogs

I sent this out to the Progressive Librarians Guild list, but thought it belonged in the blogosphere, as well.

Julie Bartel, founder of the Salt Lake City Public Library Zine Collection and author of the first and only book on zines in libraries (From A to Zine: Building a Winning Zine Collection in Your Library) is to have nothing more to do with the collection. A creative and passionate YA librarian, Julie was transferred to A/V collection development some time ago, but only very recently was banned from the collection she invented. The collection is still being tended by Julie's long-time collaborator, the extremely well-qualified Brooke Young, but neither is sure even that will continue. It should also be noted that while Brooke has also been with the collection since the beginning (1997), she is currently in library school. SLCPL is not dedicating librarian time to this high profile and much beloved project that serves a diverse constituency ranging from homeless teens to international scholars.

Taking it to the Streets: Passion, Librarians, and Radical Reference
by Eli Edwards

"...Radical Reference (RadRef) began as a project to provide information services to political activists and independent media reporters during the 2004 Republic National Convention in New York City. According to co-founder Jenna Freedman, a librarian at Barnard College in New York City, “We thought [the protestors] would need reliable sources of information in a time when all hell was expected to break loose and rumors would probably be flying around everywhere. Our job in the street was to be calm and knowledgeable and to have good resources available to us in the RR kits or at the other end of a phone.

On Friday, February 17 the NYC Radical Reference collective held a benefit to raise money for the Library Education Forum coming up on March 11, 2006.

Articles here and here.

University of Western Ontario

From www.docuticker.com

http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/chr/docs/62chr/

Reverend Billy blogged about radical reference, calling us cooler than ice cream. Amen brother! And for anyone in the NYC area this evening, stop on over to ABC No Rio for a night of zine reading to benefit "politicized ronin researchers".

Are you a librarian zinester? Do you make a zine about your life as a
librarian, about your library or about what you do when you are not
busy daydreaming about Dewey?

I am in the process of creating a fully cataloged zine collection at

Some one sent this tome on propaganda media to a listserv I'm on the other day. I'm passing it on mostly because it's somewhat entertaining to read from a librarian/organizer of information point of view.

This article is very troubling. The FBI swoops in to a public library, demands the seizure of 30 computers without a warrant. I think the director of the library, Kathy Glick-Weil, acted very reasonably by demanding a warrant while continuing to cooperate in a potentially dangerous situation. What's troubling is that a) the FBI spokesperson insisted the FBI acted within its authority to ask for the computers without a warrant because of a supposedly imminent threat; b) talk-show hosts and newspaper columnists in Boston (and conservative bloggers) lambasted Glick-Weil and other officials (like this one, "Time for some budget trimming, libraries are luxuries." posted at Free Republic.

http://www.resourceshelf.com
Resource shelf is a blog about electronic resources.

More importatntly for our work, check out the DocuTicker, which is an affiliated blog with links to the kind of studies, statistics, and analyses we have often been asked to find by our patrons. The search function was down when I tried. I hope it functions ok.