Contributors Michael Stephens

Via Kyle: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/03/library-celebrates-b.html Adrienne sez, “We’ve created a ‘live’ Banned Book Display at our library [Twin Hickory Public Library, Glen Allen, VA]. We have volunteer readers who sit in the display and read (silently) banned and challenged books. So far it’s gotten a lot of attention – we hear a lot of ‘Mom, what are those people doing in there?’ The best part has been hearing parents explain to their kids what the display is all about which is exactly what we wanted to happen!” Twin Hickory Public Library, Glen Allen, VA (Thanks, Adrienne!)

Helene Blowers presents “Ten Tips for 23 Things” in the new SLJ: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6600689.html I especially appreciate this one: 9. Enable transparency and practice radical trust. Transparency and radical trust are two of the cornerstones of the whole 2.0 movement, and these elements are no less important to the learning environment. In creating this effort to fully engage and empower the staff, my library had to assume an unprecedented trust in our employees and practice transparency when it came to communicating with them. Allowing staff members to blog openly and anonymously implies a great deal of faith and is not something […]

Take a look: http://www.thetechstatic.com/ The Tech Static’s creator, Rachel Singer Gordon, wrote Library Journal’s “Computer Media” review column from 2002 until it was retired in October 2008. She launched The Tech Static in November 2008 to fill the resulting gap in the library literature; few library-oriented publications currently review computer books. The Tech Static is focused on technology-related collection development in libraries. To this end, it contains: Reviews of current computer books Reviews of technology-related titles targeted at librarians Collection development articles (weeding, “must-haves,” balancing a computer book collection) Prepublication alerts Publisher press releases DVD and ebook reviews … and more! Contact Rachel with questions […]

Columbus Metropolitan Library, originally uploaded by mstephens7. Congrats to everyone at CML! Via LIS News: The Columbus Metropolitan Library has been rated the best library system in the nation as ranked by the Hennen’s American Public Library Rating. It is the 3rd time since 1999 that they have been ranked #1 and they have been ranked in the top 4 every year since 1999. NOTE: American Libraries reported an error in the rankings this year: American Libraries has discovered an unfortunate error that invalidates the results of Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings published in the October 2008 issue of the […]

Karl Fisch blogs: http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2008/09/no-more-librarians.html Dan Maas, my district’s CIO, has a new post titled Sunset for the Librarian: So what’s in a name? Well, everything. A name conjures an image, a shared understanding and it is from these understandings that we begin to do the work at hand. The term library is rooted in the latin word libriwhich means paper or books. The very terms library and librarian are obstacles to the future of this critical school service because the business is no longer based in the media of paper and the book. In fact, I don’t even like the term media center because […]