libraries Archives - Page 4 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

That reminded me of

I worked in that library as a page for seven months in 1969.

I saw on my friend Lynne Jackson’s Facebook page on the Saturday morning of Albany’s annual tradition, the Tulip Festival, that there would be a booth where one could “Ask A Muslim” a question.

When the family finally got there, the family got to meet Nafisa and Fazana (pictured with that hatted Lynne). They were gracious and intelligent and wonderfully open. It was a wonderful idea, though I told them I thought it was quite brave.

Fazana wrote on her Facebook page “I talked to a non-Muslim gentleman who had just finished reading the English translation of the Quran and was pleased to report that nowhere in it did it say that Muslims should kill Christians. Needless to say, I wanted to recruit him to talk to others on behalf of Muslims because we are constantly trying to convince others to believe this fact!”

That reminded me of:

When my sister Leslie and I went to High school in Binghamton, NY, we were asked by the music teacher at suburban Vestal Junior High School, Mr. Fitzroy Stewart, on the one black teacher in the district, to talk with his all-white students about being a black teenager.

Words

A terrestrial friend wrote about teaching:

It was an undergrad… who made the following observation about the linguistic style of the novel Home Boy by Naqvi and its immigrant/migrant characters.

“Why does this character always use such big words? I mean, ‘heterodox pedagogy’? ‘epistemological dead end’? Give me a break. It’s almost like he NEEDS to do that to prove he’s smart to American readers, because he’s an immigrant.”
And I looked at her with these anime-style star-struck eyes.

TRUTH.

If you’ve been casually “taught” the meaning of a vocabulary word from a Dr. Seuss book by someone you can’t possibly get mad at because you know how well-meaning they are, you too might find yourself in need of pursuing some heterodox pedagogy of the epistemological dead-end of big fat multi-syllabic words.

That reminded me of:

Living in Charlotte, NC, in the flea market, for only 4 months back in 1977, I became acutely aware of using multi-syllabic, but very common words, such as “acutely”. It seemed to them that I was putting on airs, but it was just the way I always spoke!

Stalking?

Arthur wrote about following a guy following a woman he felt was a bit creepy. I’d admitted to having done so a few times myself, usually in the evening.

That reminded me of:

Participating in the recent CROP walk against hunger on May 1. I hadn’t actually signed up but The Wife and the Daughter, and her Young Friend – daughter of a friend of ours, and a Classmate of The Daughter’s all had registered. I was on my bike, trying to keep up with the girls. Over time though, The Daughter and the Young Friend got separated from The Classmate. I’d slow down when I could see both sets, but speed up when I could not see the pair.

Some guy on the route asked me if I were with the walkers, and I explained the situation. He was checking ME out, directly. And that was OK by me.

Binghamton (NY) Public Library

One of the local Binghamton media outlets received a tour of Binghamton’s Carnegie library, built in 1904, but abandoned for a decade and a half. The local community college has plans to turn it into “a culinary and events planning center.”

That reminded me of:

I worked in that library as a page for seven months in 1969, retrieving old magazines from the closed stacks, reshelving books, and assisting people with the microfilm machines. Becccye Fawcett was perhaps the first black librarian in the city, and we attended the same church, Trinity AME Zion at Oak and Lydia Streets.

Borrowing a cup of sugar, and other November excitement

Was this some sociological experiment, a sorority hazing, or some reality show prank?

It was a REALLY busy month in November. Besides church on Sunday and daughter’s rehearsal on Monday nights for a production at church in March, and choir rehearsal on Thursday nights (except on Thanksgiving):

6th – The church choir sang, for First Friday, VESPERAE DE DOMINICA by Mozart, with a dress rehearsal on the 4th.
Earlier that day, I went to the urgent care place. Four days earlier, I had a standard #2 pencil in a pair of pants poke through my pants pocket, and I managed to jab my left index finger enough that it drew blood. I didn’t know until later that a piece of the point embedded in my fingertip. So the doctor “froze” my finger, and removed the piece of graphite.
7th – Albany Symphony Orchestra concert. Actually, I ended up not going, and The Wife went with a friend because we couldn’t get a ~~babysitter~~ child watcher for The Daughter.

8th – After church, I recorded a piece for possible inclusion on the church’s YouTube channel. It sounded OK, but there was too much light, and I ended up rerecording it the following Sunday.
9th – Saw my doctor for a follow-up visit after hernia surgery. Said I was good to go, but in a more poetic form that I wish I could replicate.
11th – I spent my Veterans Day working on some items for the Friends of the Albany Public Library. That evening, a group of dads from the church got together.
13th – Polina.
14th – In the morning, a meeting of Friends of various Friends of Library groups. Not incidentally, I’ve been asked to write an article about Friends groups for the New York Library Association journal, due at the end of the month; as of this date, I have written precisely nothing, in part because the Wife had this presentation at a conference which involved not only her use of the computer but extra watching of the Daughter.
I got a very necessary, actually overdue haircut, mostly for the beard, which I don’t get shaved clean because of the discoloration from the vitiligo on my lower face. That evening, the Albany Public Library Foundation gala.

15th – One of our choir members, Alex Rosa , is a senior at the College of Saint Rose, and he gave his senior recital, which was quite good. Afterward, his parents, who are lovely people, put out a nice spread of food to eat.
17th – The Laurie Anderson movie at the Spectrum.
18th – At work, I gave a talk to a Chinese delegation from one of the larger provinces. They primarily wanted me to talk about intellectual property – copyright, patent and trademark – but they were most attentive during the brief section about credit scores. Afterward, as is their custom, they gave me a gift, which looks like this:

Yes, it’s a wooden comb.
21st – We saw the Capitol Steps, an American political satire group that “put the MOCK in democracy” at The Egg, a performance venue at the Empire State Plaza. The group, which initially included Congressional staffers from both parties, “has been performing since 1981, and has released over forty albums consisting primarily of song parodies.” The Wife and I saw them several years ago at Proctor’s in Schenectady.

Among other things in their rapid-fire presentation, they addressed the Greek financial crisis with songs from the musical Grease. It ends with one male cast member reciting a talk in which he reverses some consonants regularly; Borge W. Gush, e.g. it’s not only funny, it’s difficult to do.

22nd – We traversed over an hour to some school in an out-of-the-way location in western Massachusetts to see the premiere performance for the season of the Albany Berkshire Ballet presentation of The Nutcracker. The Daughter had done this production thrice, always as an angel, but her friend and former classmate “Elsie” has been, over eight years, a clown, a party child, and finally, Clara. She was really good, always staying in character.

Then Elsie’s family, our family, and some other friends went out to a Friendly’s restaurant in East Greenbush, NY; all the Friendly’s in Albany County closed many months ago.

Our family told the story about how, shortly after the Wife had come home after dropping off the child sitter the previous night, some young woman rang our doorbell, after 10 pm. We’ve had such a rotation of students as neighbors that we didn’t recognize this one. She had some yellow makeup, or something, caked on her face. She wanted to borrow a cup of sugar for baking, which we gave her, after putting our watchcat in the basement.

The discussion at Friendly’s centered on whether this was some sociological experiment, a sorority hazing, or some reality show prank. Collectively, we thought the idea of “borrowing” a cup of sugar, from a stranger, a couple of hours before midnight, was bizarre, with the 24-hour Price Chopper only three blocks away.

Elsie’s older sister allowed that, when she was living in an apartment in New York City, she went to neighbors’ apartments, including ones she didn’t know, looking for a ladle for a punch bowl, because, as I said, pouring punch from a mere cup would have been SO declasse. If you had been there, this would have been a hilarious exchange.

26th – Movie (reviewed eventually)
27th – Travel to Oneonta, about 75 minutes away, for Thanksgiving, returning the next day.
28th – Movie (reviewed soon)
30th – Take off day to work on many items, including agenda for Friends of the APL meeting that night. That paper that hung over my head like Damocles’ sword was finished; whether it is any good remains to be seen.

Uncharacteristically, December should be less busy, after this week, with only a wedding and the usual Christmas church events on the agenda. I might even participate in Trouble with Comics again.

The religion of literate librarians

As part of the Ask Roger Anything process, Arthur is hankering for me to write about religion:

What’s one thing you just don’t “get” about non-believers?

The need, at least for some of them, to ascribe all the problems in of the world at the feet of religion. Taking the issue of same-sex marriage, in the US, you see that a majority of white mainline Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and especially Jews are supportive.

Surely, horrific things have happened, and continue to take place, in the purported name of God/Allah. It’s just as certain that awful things happened in no deity’s name, and that decent, even wonderful, things take place through the works of people following their religious beliefs.

A corollary, I suppose, is the easy willingness to point to some group of purported Christians, and INSIST that they represent Christianity as a whole. The Ku Klux Klan claim to be Christian; it does not follow that the KKK represents Christianity. Nor do those folks out of Kansas, the Westboro Baptist Church represent my understanding of living a Christ-centered life.

I think it makes me irritable for the same reason that one black person’s flaws seem to be attributed to the whole race.

Just recently, through Daily Kos, I came across Faithful America, which says it “is the largest and fastest-growing online community of Christians putting faith into action for social justice. Our members are sick of sitting by quietly while Jesus’ message of good news is hijacked by the religious right to serve a hateful political agenda. We’re organizing the faithful to challenge such extremism and renew the church’s prophetic role in building a more free and just society.”

What’s one thing you wish non-believers understood about your faith position (and what’s a better word for that—I’m drawing a blank…)?

I don’t know what term you’re looking for. My theology? My belief system? Fred? I’m not humorless about my faith; I really liked Monty Python’s Life of Brian, BTW.

There is a degree of uncertainty not only for me but in lots of thinking people.

Listening to the families of the victims in Charleston, many said that their faith required them to forgive the presumed killer, but it wasn’t easy. Some folks were practically apologetic about not being at that point yet. It was a very relatable struggle.

For most of us, faith is a process. Most of the mainline churches have evolved on issues of race fairness, gender equality, gay rights, et al. If the source material hasn’t changed, it must be the Holy Spirit working in us.

An example: from 1939 to 1968, the Methodist Church, prior to becoming the United Methodist Church, had something called the Central Jurisdiction, which “formally established segregation as official church policy.” It would be unthinkable today.
***
SamuraiFrog is curious to know:

What’s a misconception people tend to have about librarians?

That we’re humorless, that we all have buns in our hair, that all we do at work is read all day. (And when I worked at a comic book store, I didn’t read comics all day, either.)

One of the things I’ve noticed as president of the Friends of the Albany Public Library is that so much of the work involves providing Internet connections for those without them, assisting people who are seeking employment, and being a locale that provides a hub for the community.

The struggle for libraries nationally is that people who don’t use them seem to think they’re passe because “everyone” has e-readers. Well, most libraries have e-books.

What book have you owned the longest?

Play the Game: the Book of Sport, edited by Mitchell V. Charnley (1931). This was an anthology of sports stories from American Boy magazine from 1923 to 1931, stories which I read over and over. I have no idea how I got it, but I feel like I’ve always had it. The cover, BTW, is green.

This isn’t the oldest book I own though. That honor probably goes to a Methodist hymnal with an 1849 copyright date. In the mid-1980s, my girlfriend at the time bought it for me for the handsome sum of $2.50. It has a LOT of hymns by Charles Wesley, many more than in subsequent iterations, starting with O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing on the first page, and including Hark! the Herald Angels Sing and Christ, the Lord, is Risen Today, plus a whole bunch with which I am not familiar.

Do you re-read books? Which ones?

Not so much this century. I’ve read the Bible all the way through, different iterations, in 1977-78, sometime in the 1980s, and 1996-97, but not since. I used to reread Matt Groening’s Life in Hell books, certain books about the Beatles. Now, I feel there are SO many books that I OWN that I haven’t read the FIRST time that rereading seems like a luxury.

This may be true: the only books I’ve reread that I wasn’t going to review are children’s books: Dr. Seuss, Sue Boynton. And not necessarily for the Daughter’s consumption, but for my own.
***
New York Erratic muses:

Do you find different communication platforms cause you to think differently? For example, reading Facebook vs. talking a lot on the phone.

Here’s the difference between someone’s Facebook and someone’s blog: I’m more likely to read the latter. Of the 710 friends I have on Facebook, last I checked, there are fewer than ten for which I get notifications every time they post, and I’m related to most of them. So when they later say, “I wrote about that already on Facebook,” I shrug, because I didn’t probably see it. If I DID follow everyone closely, I’d have no life.

I HATE reading lengthy pieces on FB. This is probably a function of the font, which I’m told I can alter but haven’t had the inclination to figure it out. But it’s also true that I associate FB with short comments or links to other items. I tend not to link satire (except The Onion) on FB, because too many people think it’s true.

I much prefer email to texting because there’s less an expectation that I’ll reply instantly.

Here’s a bit of my library process: I’ve mentioned that I’m more likely than my fellow librarians, all of whom are at least a decade younger, to pick up the phone and call an agency, an association, etc. What I believe is that they all put up websites and seem to think that all the information that users will need is there. This is incorrect, as I’ve gotten plenty of useful info by actually finding, and speaking to, the right person. Sometimes, it’s just connecting our client with that appropriate contact that solves the issue.

American Library Association and civil rights

My friend Judy I’ve known since the autumn of 1977 before she was a librarian. She was one of the people who dragged me off to library school, kicking and screaming. She asked another person and me: “Do you know what the American Library Association (ALA) policy was on civil rights?” I didn’t, but I imagine that it was probably complicated, like these things always are.

I came across this article from the July 2004 issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association. The introduction notes that “the racial segregation of libraries, the nonexistence or inadequacy of library collections and services for minorities, and inequities for librarians were often beneath the surface—undiscussed or unrecognized. Efforts to move librarianship toward integration and civil rights were painfully slow, sometimes reflecting changes in society as a whole and, at other times, at their own pace.”

This is not surprising. There was a woman in my church in Binghamton, NY when I was growing up named Beccye Fawcett, married to Claude. She was the first black librarian in Broome County, and though I never asked her about it directly, I heard she had a difficult time early on. I found several references to her in the Broome County Oral History Project, “oral history interviews obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program.” I’ve not heard the tapes, but “discrimination” is one of the topic headings.

The JMLA article reads:

The ALA conference in Richmond, Virginia, brought visibility to the subject in 1936. ALA was “anxious to have Negro librarians attend in large numbers. Because of the traditional position of the South in respect to mixed meetings,” ALA felt it advisable to send a “semi-official” letter from a local librarian to African American members informing them of the conditions they should expect. Although ALA had arranged with the host hotels that all delegates could use the same entrance, hotel rooms and meals were forbidden to black delegates by Virginia laws. Meetings that were part of meals were not open to black delegates, although they could attend sessions followed by meals, if they did not participate in the meals.

As you can see, the association was blasted in a library journal.

In response to the situation, ALA created a Committee on Racial Discrimination, approving its report in December 1936. It resolved that the association would stipulate in advance the provisions under which it would accept hospitality “with proper regard for its own self respect and that of its members.” Although it was opposed to eliminating any geographical part of the country from consideration for the annual conference, selection of future meeting places would be conditional upon the admission of all members to rooms and halls on terms of full equality.

In the follow-up JMLA article from July 2005:

Librarians looked to ALA for leadership on the issue. In 1954, ALA had banned states from having more than one chapter to eliminate separate white and African American chapters, causing two states to lose ALA affiliation. In 1961, it adopted an addition to the Library Bill of Rights: “The rights of an individual to the use of a library should not be denied or abridged because of his race, religion, national origins or political views.” However, it refused to go further in regulating the affairs of chapters or the operation of libraries.

I’m sure there’s a lot more on this topic that I hope my friend Judy will discover in her research, and I trust will share with me.
***
The graphic is from a 1948 Virginia newspaper, noting that the separate but hardly equal black branch of the library was closing, and being integrated into the main branch.

Can you defend public libraries and oppose file sharing?

Falkvinge doesn’t seem to understand how libraries work.

The always entertaining Alan David Doane wrote on Facebook this month: “I’m curious what my favourite librarian, Roger Green, makes of this argument.” Rick Falkvinge stated that one cannot defend public libraries and oppose file-sharing because “they are one and the same phenomenon. One is just vastly more efficient.”

I’ll have a caveat that I shared this with several librarians, and none of them were 100% sure exactly what he meant by file sharing. I’m assuming he’s talking bit torrent. The exact model of what this theoretically might look like in a library setting is a little fuzzy to me.

Still, if I am understanding the argument correctly, the real problem is that he’s wrong, in three specific ways, one of philosophy, and two on the facts.

Overrated

Falkvinge’s implication through the piece is that “efficiency” is an incontrovertible good; this is incorrect. Generally, checks and balances have an important place in processes, especially when it comes to government. The argument in favor of the renewal of aspects of the USA PATRIOT Act stems largely on the fact that it would be more “efficient” to have all that phone metadata, for which the government can select those presumed terrorists, rather than doing this process more on a case-by-case basis. I’m rooting for inefficiency, thank you.

I’m a Presbyterian, and they are, most likely, some of the most inefficient people on the planet. When they make a decision, it’s been hashed out within an inch of its life. But all sides know their voices have been heard.

Purchase

More to the point, though, Falkvinge doesn’t seem to understand how libraries work. Libraries BUY books – one of their primary expenditures – and then LOAN them to other people, exposing them to people who might not have been aware of them. Moreover, authors receive MONEY because libraries purchase works, and an individual copy is generally read, one person at a time (SO inefficient!), by many people.

Not incidentally, in the main, it costs librarians more money to have digital copies of books than print copies. Indeed, in many of the contracts that libraries have with electronic publishers, the library doesn’t even OWN the book. So it can’t sell it, like it can for a book it no longer needs. The library is essentially leasing e-books until a certain date, or until a couple dozen readers check it out.

Thievery

File sharing is essentially a manufacturing process, reproducing products that NO ONE is purchasing. NO money is going into the pockets of the creators. Borrowing from my friend Steve Bissette, file sharing “is thievery and impoverishes creators/authors by reproducing work sans payment. There is no ‘loan’ in file sharing: it is a transfer of property, in a material form (here, place this file on YOUR computer). It proliferates [and, I would add, encourages] copying sans payment – VERY different from public libraries.”

As for the panicked 1850s book publishers Falkvinge mentioned: one can take almost ANY technology or innovation, and there will be arguments that the old way was going to be supplanted by the new. Still, showing movies on television did not eliminate movie theaters in the 1950s. It made movie makers more likely to make films that could not be experienced at home. I used to make mixed tapes, recording an assemblage of songs on cassette tape, and the music industry swore it’d ruin them, but it didn’t. (You can argue amongst yourselves what DID wreck the music industry, and threaten theatrical movies, but it wasn’t your local library.)

Libraries are good

Moreover, the article seems to suggest that the ONLY thing libraries DO is loan books and other material. The library is so much more. The staff answer reference questions, provide guidance for computer users, assist with Internet access to those who do not have it – oh, just read this article. There are plenty of reasons to support your public library.

Librarians are, by training and practice, sensitive to issues of copyright and fair use. Such restraint does not seem to be in the DNA of file sharers, who seem to believe more is always better.

It’s likely that your local library is on the front lines against government surveillance. I cannot speak to whether file sharers are in the fight or not.

I think the argument that file sharing is anything like what libraries do is BOGUS.