DIY Digital: Local Initiatives, Local Support

New York Technical Services Librarians
Spring Meeting & Program
Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Online registration is now open! http://www.nytsl.org/calendar.htm
Space is limited so please register ASAP.
Registration deadline: Friday, May 1, 2009.

TOPIC: DIY Digital: Local Initiatives, Local Support

NYTSL has invited three local experts to discuss their experiences with homegrown, collaborative digitization projects. Issues of concept, funding, managing, and implementing new digital initiatives will be considered. Please join us for this exploration of New York's digital projects landscape.

SPEAKERS:

• Joanna DiPasquale, Columbia University Libraries, Web Developer
• Josh Greenberg, New York Public Library, Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship
• Jason Kucsma, METRO, Emerging Technologies Manager
• Moderated by Angela Sidman, CUNY Graduate Center Library, Catalogue Librarian

WHERE and WHEN:
South Court Auditorium
NYPL Humanities & Social Sciences Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York, N.Y. 10018

Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Refreshments, 5:00-6:00 PM
Meeting & Program, 6:00-8:00 PM

REGISTRATION and PRICING:
NYTSL now offers PayPal as a preferred payment method. Mail-in registration forms are also available on the website.

Program (Members) $15.00
Program + Membership (Non-members and renewals) $20.00
Program only (Non-members) $25.00

For questions about membership status, please contact Lisa Genoese, lgenoese@nyam.org.

Spring Green-Up: Field Trips, Week of Apr. 27

Apologies for the 24-hour delay in regular programming; spring — or maybe summer, but definitely not swine — fever has me firm in its grasp.

• Apr. 28: Urban Librarians Unite meet tonight at the Creek's lovely, urban-pastoral back yard.
  
• Apr. 29: NYPL introduces its newest library, the Grand Central Branch, to an adoring public.
• May 1: Independent Media Arts Preservation presents a day-long symposium at the Guggenheim.
• May 3: This Sunday, embrace spring in earnest with NY Librarian Meetup's cherry blossom-tastic trip to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. The hanami will look like this, only better:

[Photo by: Kilgub via flickr.]

U.S. News Rankings: Failing Grades for Four Out of Five Local Schools

After a three-year hiatus, U.S. News & World Report has published its rankings report for library and information studies programs. UIUC and UNC are again tied for top honors. Our neighbors in New Brunswick, NJ (Rutgers) pulled in at a very respectable 6th and took the number one spot in the School Library Media category. Not one of the four LIS schools in NYC made the rankings. That's right: Queens College, the Palmer School, Pratt Institute, and St. John's all fell below the Mendoza Line.

A Grand Central Opening

NYPL's new Grand Central Branch opens for business on Monday, April 27. The library was conceived as a temporary stopgap during construction of the new Donnell Library. With Donnell's future on hold, perhaps Grand Central is here to stay?

Questions of permanence aside, the new branch will celebrate its opening on Wednesday, April 29 at 4:30 pm. Everyone's invited! Here she is, shelves stocked, neat and tidy before the incoming tide:


UPDATE: Today's City Room includes a report about patrons in uproar over Donnell's uncertain fate, some of whom plan to picket the opening of the Grand Central Branch. The article also notes that City Council members Christine Quinn and Vincent Gentile have "vowed" to do something about the situation...the lack-of-library situation, that is, not the threat-of-protest situation.

Old School Players to New School Fools: Field Trips, Week of Apr. 20

From 15th century Venice to open source software development, this week's got it all.

• Apr. 22: Librarians take Madison Avenue at SLA/NY's Midtown Networking Lunch. And in the evening, Christina Dondi of Oxford will be at Columbia to discuss "The Venetian Book-Trade in the 15th Century: Material Evidence for the Economic and Social History of the Renaissance."
• Apr. 23-24: Free vendor showcases at METRO: LibLime/WALDO and the WALDO Spring Update.
• Apr. 23-25: CUNY Graduate Center, the Center for Book Arts, and the Asian-American Writers' Workshop host the Festival of the Chapbook, three big days of poetry, poetry, and more poetry. Librarians with buying power: bring your institutional "checkbooks" and support small to tiny independent presses at the Chapbook Publishers Fair, Thursday and Friday.
• Apr. 24: Are you amongst the hordes of graduating LIS students in search of work? Don't miss the SLA@Pratt Career Fair.
  

Landmarking Bronx Libraries

On Tuesday, two Carnegie libraries in the Bronx — the Woodstock and Hunts Point branches — were granted landmark status by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission. NYPL's Morrisania and Mott Haven branches earned the same distinction in 1998 and 1969, respectively.

Use It or Lose It

Here's another interesting fact: People always mention libraries in terms of just being sources for reading material or research. But I probably would not be in Chicago were it not for the Manhattan public library, because I was looking for an organizing job and was having great trouble finding a job as a community organizer in New York. The Mid-Manhattan library had these books of lists of organizations, and the librarian helped me find these lists of organizations, and I wrote to every organization. One of them wound up being an organization in Chicago that I got a job with.

-- Barack Obama, interviewed in American Libraries, Aug. 2005, p. 48-52

This quotation has become quite the touchstone. And why not? It's an impromptu, priceless promotion of our cause. So go ahead, City Room, keep writing articles like today's "Job Seekers at the Library, in Obama's Footsteps." Let's hope the City Council and the New York State Legislature are reading.



This image is becoming ubiquitous, but what's not to love?

National Library Week: Field Trips, Week of Apr. 13

It's our week to give ourselves pats on the back and hang ALA posters featuring Jamie Lee Curtis. But to really take National Library Week by the horns, grab your camera and start "captur[ing] the essence of New York librarianship" for the NYLA Snapshot Contest. Post your photos to Flickr, carefully following the contest guidelines. Fame awaits!

• Apr. 14: National Library Workers Day. 2009 mantra: "Libraries Work Because We Do!"
• Apr. 15 & 16: Thinking about getting your MLIS, (or similar acronym)? Palmer and Pratt are hosting open houses this week.
• Apr. 16: There's still time to register for METRO's exciting Digital Dilemmas symposium, as well as a slew of free professional development opportunities at Brooklyn Public Central Library, offered in honor of Library Assistants' Day.
• Apr. 19: Meet, mingle, and chow down with NY Librarians SHARE.
  

"April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go"

April is a popular month for librarian-friendly celebrations, both locally and country-wide. To wit:

• National Poetry Month
• School Library Media Month
• International Children's Books Day (Apr. 2)
  
• National Library Week (Apr. 12-19)
• National Library Workers Day (Apr. 14)
• Support Teen Literature Day (Apr. 16)
• Immigrant Heritage Week (Apr. 17-23)
  
• Earth Day (Apr. 22, aka Earth Week, Apr. 20-27)
  
• Festival of the Chapbook (Apr. 23-25)
  
• Poem in Your Pocket Day (Apr. 30)
• And don't forget Passover, Holy Week, Easter, and my favorite, Arbor Day
  

Here in the city, our public libraries have National Poetry Month covered. Check out NYPL's poetry-themed blog posts and their Poem in Your Pocket Day participatory writing experiment. In Brooklyn, BPL hosts a Poetry Coffeehouse each Wednesday in April at the Dweck Center, as well as other poetry-related events at branch locations (search their calendar). And the Academy of American Poets, founder of National Poetry Month, offer up tips for librarians and a calendar of poetry readings on their New York page.

TOMORROW, Apr. 11: Judson Memorial Church will play host to the 3rd annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair, "a one-day exposition of books, zines, pamphlets, art, film/video, and other cultural and very political productions of the anarchist scene worldwide." The Fair is accompanied by a slew of workshops, skillshares, and other events of an intellectually radical bent.

[Post title quotation by Christopher Morley, from John Mistletoe.]

On Exhibit: Roosevelt, Edith Kermit Carow, 1861-1948--Correspondence

First Lady Edith Kermit Roosevelt, wife of Teddy, was a dear friend and frequent correspondent of Marion King, librarian at the New York Society Library. Their letters are on display from now through the end of the year as part of NYSL's exhibition, "The President's Wife and the Librarian." (Paper Cuts is going.) If you're a first lady aficionado, you'll be pleased to learn that Mrs. Roosesvelt's biographer, Silvia Jukes Morris, will give a lecture on April 30.

Rutgers Drops Library Studies, Gains Stripes

Starting July 1, Rutgers' School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS) will be know as the School of Communication and Information (SCI). Library Journal gives complete coverage to the name-change controversy, which ended this week with the Board of Governors approving the switch.

But the University's major media coup had nothing to do with academic nomenclature. Just witness the glory that is 1,052 Waldos:

Photo by Classic Media, Inc./Gianni Cipriano

In addition to shattering the Guinness World Record for the most Where's Waldo? namesakes in one locale, participants donated over 3,000 books to New Brunswick public schools.