Leonard Kniffel responds to Brian Kenney’s editorial I blogged about here.
“What Have You Done for Me Lately?”
The first thing I did after reading Kenney’s article was to look at the March 2007 issue with these objections in mind. March was the issue, after all, that made some school librarians go ballistic because there were no school-librarian bloggers interviewed for the cover feature. In the ALA news section, there were: “Target to Sponsor El Dia de los Ninos,” “School Libraries Count! Survey Begins,” “Army Librarian Creates Story Time Program,” and a piece about children’s author Ilene Cooper winning the Prairie State Award. Of the 14 stories in the section, most were library-type neutral—an article about ALA member libraries receiving the Oprah books, a list of the petition candidates for ALA Council (which included a number of school librarians BTW), etc. etc.
In the March U.S and international news section, there were 18 stories. One was about a high school band at a program at the county public library. Another was about middle school students celebrating Martin Luther King Day. Another was about a school library refusing to remove Lovely Bones from its shelves. And still another was about county schools and public libraries keeping Harry Potter on the shelves. The remaining news stories involved a range of libraries—government, national, academic, and public.