My apologies to Bruce Willis. No wonder your latest movie is set in Russia. Of course the librarian's favorite action hero would be drawn to the country with the most public libraries.
Yes, you read that correctly. Russia is number one for public libraries in the world, with over 33,000. I was shocked, flabbergasted, my jaw was literally dragging on the floor when I discovered this. On the one hand, it makes sense, given the country's Communist history. The philosophy that decrees the abolition of private ownership in this case would read: no one owns the books, everyone owns the books. Apparently, the United Kingdom is second on the list with well over 23,000 public libraries and Germany takes a close third with over 20,000. I know what you're asking in a jingoistic fever: okay, where's the good old US of A, that bastion of democracy and education for all? Well, we are fourth, but a very distant fourth, considering the size and population of our nation. According to the latest statistics from the American Library Association, there are just under 9,000 public libraries in the U.S. We are not very far ahead of the Czech Republic and Romania. National tradition apparently plays a large role in determining the ratio of libraries to population. In Japan, borrowing a book is not a commonplace thing to do and hence, the country has just a smidge over 1,000 public libraries. However, in Finland, book swapping must help pass the long winter nights that last into day (and the long summer days that extend into night) because, although Finland has a population just a bit over 4% of Japan's, it has over 900 libraries.
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Can't be pushed...must be found...can be guided...by the right hand, a librarian's hand, of course! Actor Alec Baldwin as Santa? No, I'm not talking about his voiceover in the recently released kids' flick, Rise of the Guardians, in which he portrays North (alias Santa), an inked-up hulk with a Russian-tinged accent that perhaps reflects a childhood fascination with Rocky and Bullwinkle’s Boris Badenov. The Hunt for Red December? (courtesy tumblr) No, I'm talking about a monetary gift he made recently to the Adams Memorial Library in Central Falls, Rhode Island. The library, which was closed for several months in 2011 in the wake of the town's bankruptcy, received an unexpected check for the sum of $5,000 from Baldwin, his second donation in 12 months. “A year ago, Alec’s donation [of $10,000] helped us keep the doors open,” said board President Bruce Kaplan. “This year he’s helping us expand hours of operation and community programming.” The library, which is staffed mainly by volunteers, serves an impoverished community where the median household income is just over $22,000. Per capita income for the city was $10,825. Nearly 26% of families were below the poverty line, including 40% of those under age 18 and 30% of those age 65 or over. In 2010, Central Falls made the national news when the entire faculty and administrative staff of Central Falls High School was fired after the teachers' union refused to accept one of the "No Child Left Behind" options for restructuring failing schools. Baldwin, who in the past has garnered as much publicity for his cranky personality, public (and private) rants and tangles with the paparazzi as for his acting roles, has no personal connection to the town or the library.
Benevolence is definitely sexy. So the challenge is on to determine the librarian's favorite pin-up for 2013 (now that we have definitively proven that the world is not ending, at least not yet.) Mr. Gosling, the ball is in your court. The first Honorary Scrooge of the Month Award goes to Sony/ATV Music for blocking a parody of Michael Jackson's 1983 hit "Beat It" from appearing on YouTube. Local high school students who frequent Lansdowne Public Library (in Pennsylvania) and serve on its Teen Advisory Board wrote and produced “Read It,” a delightful take-off aimed at inspiring other teens and tweens to just pick up a book or e-reader and take the reading plunge. However, on November 19, just three days after the video made its debut during the dedication of the library’s Ronnie Hawkins Resource Room, they discovered that the performance had been blocked on YouTube by Sony, which administers the copyrights for Jackson's music. As you can imagine, the teens were crushed that all their hard work was going to go unseen. Heroic librarian Abbe Klebanoff After a week of intense lobbying of Sony executives and the executor of Michael Jackson's estate by the video’s editor, Abbe Klebanoff, head of public services for the library, the corporation finally relented and acknowledged the video's parody/educational purposes under the Fair Use Act. The video has been restored to YouTube. Who knows, perhaps the fat cat corporate types were visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past and woke up remembering what it was like to young and excited about creating something... or maybe the ghost of the king of pop himself paid them a call. Below you can see what all the fuss was about. Disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has traded his job in the kitchen at the federal prison in suburban Denver for a gig in the joint's library. Blago, who is serving a 14-year sentence for felony corruption conviction was apparently bored out of his mind as a scullery maid washing pots and pans. According to his former lawyer, Blago has also been trying to stave off boredom by reading biographies of former presidents. Perhaps dreaming of what might have been...
It's that time of year again... when ridiculousness runs rampant among children and adults. Especially adults, who love to dress up as vampires, pirates, French maids and superheroes of either gender and consume mass quantities of liquor on a weeknight. And writers of all kinds feel the need to expound on the some aspect of Halloween: its origins, its contemporary manifestations, the co-opting of a child's holiday by adults, yada-yada-yada. Well, why should I fight against the current? So I herewith present the obligatory Halloween blog post. Topic? What else? Haunted libraries of the Midwest... Peru, IL: Washington School. Located in downstate Illinois, Washington School serves students in fifth through eight grade and apparently has a library with paranormal activity. The story goes that a disturbed school librarian (!!!) killed three students and herself April 12, 1956, in the library. Since then, students have reported hearing screams and seeing an apparition. Apparently the standard "shush" wasn't working for her. Peoria, IL: Peoria Public Library. According to legend (as usual), the library was built on ground that was cursed by its previous owner. In 1830, Mary Stevenson Gray, a matriarch of the city, lived in a house on Monroe Avenue. After her brother died, she took over the care and feeding of his ne'er-do-well son, who was something of a hooligan. After one run-in with the local constabulary, he had to hire a lawyer, who took out a mortgage on Mrs. Gray’s home as security against the strong possibility of nonpayment for billable hours. When the deadbeat couldn't pay up, the lawyer sued to foreclose on the home and collect his fee. Mrs. Gray was furious (and understandably so). She kicked her worthless nephew to the curb. (Not long afterwards, his corpse was found floating in the Illinois river.) Mrs. Gray promptly cursed the property and all its future owners. In 1894, Peoria purchased the property and built a library. And even though the library was built next to Mrs. Gray’s home, not over it, the first three library directors promptly died under unusual circumstances. The first, E. S. Willcox, was killed in a streetcar accident in 1915; the second, Samuel Patterson Prowse, died from a heart attack suffered at a library board meeting in 1921. The third, Dr. Edwin Wiley, committed suicide by swallowing arsenic. Ghosts and paranormal activity ensued. The original library was torn down in 1966 and a new one built in its place, but the ghosts apparently have no intention of leaving the building. Employees have reportedly heard their names being called while alone in the stacks, felt cold drafts, and even claimed to have seen the face of Prowse in the basement doorway. There's always a cold draft in my library, but that's just because they can't seem to regulate the temperature in any public building in which I've ever set foot... Evansville, IN: Willard Public Library. A “lady in gray” supposedly haunts this 1885 Victorian Gothic building. (How appropos!) The spook apparently doffs a spritz of her favorite perfume before undertaking her spectral wanderings because a whiff of it is often sensed near the elevator, near the rest rooms, or in the children’s room. (Apparently every woman alive and dead loves Chanel No. 5!) Occasionally staff will walk into cold spots. (See above.) Former Director William Goodrich said the lady appeared once on a security monitor placed near the rest rooms. One theory is that the ghost is Louise Carpenter, the daughter of the library’s founder. Louise sued the library’s trustees, claiming that her father was “of unsound mind and was unduly influenced in establishing [Willard] Library.” She lost. (But this begs the question: if you don't like libraries, why would you want to spend eternity in one?) The library enjoys its notoriety: it was once featured on an episode of SyFy's Ghost Hunters show. You can check out the library's ghostcams here. Detroit, MI: Detroit Public Library, Skillman Branch. This library is apparently located on the site of a former jail where executions took place in the early 19th century. Patrons and employees claim that the library stacks sometimes reverberate with moans, rumblings, and other strange noises. (Hmmm, no comment other than librarians are very familiar with the variation of the "Mile High Club" that some people occasionally try to achieve in the stacks.) Cornell, WI: Cornell Public Library. Apparently, people get the heebie-jeebies in the basement where the restrooms are located and report feeling "overwhelmingly uncomfortable." (Uhmmm, I think I will just take a pass on this one.) No pix of house, but Hinckley is famous for buzzards Hinckley, Ohio: Old Stouffer House. Once a private home, the building was re-purposed as a library in 1975. Not long after, paranormal activities began in earnest. The librarians, those co-ordinators of information, began to keep a file on the occurrences. They found that books left out the night before would sometimes be reshelved, while others (particularly the novels of Anne Rice) would be flung to the floor. (Everyone's a critic! Even dead people!) Patrons and staff members report feeling an "odd" presence in the second story rooms and, upon occasion, paper clips have been known to sail through the air. A tradesman in the building to repair the furnace once saw a spectral figure on the basement stairs. The ghosts are believed to be those of Orlando Wilcox and his daughter Rebecca, who during the early to mid 1800's lived in a cabin on the site before the house was constructed. In 2003, the weight of the books and mold inside the walls forced the library to move to new quarters. Broken Bow, OK: Broken Bow Public Library. This building, built in 1998, stands on the site of a former high school. Sometimes at closing, staff members report a cold spot and argumentative voices in the southeastern corner of the library. (Well, perhaps the ghosts are arguing over the relative merit of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles versus Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Or maybe they think both are crap...) News from the ALA (American Library Association): "An effort on the part of the Baldwin Public Library in Birmingham, Michigan, to ban people from bringing guns into public library buildings is likely going nowhere. At its July 16 meeting, the board voted to send a letter to state legislators, asking them to consider a bill that would add libraries to the list of places that are exempt from the open-carry law. The letter was written after a pro-gun rally spilled into the library, with armed people and a film crew parading around the building. But legislators seem tepid about changing firearm regulations".... Read more in the Birmingham Observer/Eccentric
You can't shake your booty at Wikipedia! In 1954, Darrell Huff published a witty, informative exposé of the use of statistics by advertisers, the government and the media to mislead their audiences, called How to Lie With Statistics. Over the course of an entertaining 142 pages, Huff explained how the statistically challenged reader can see through the smoke and mirrors to get to the real meaning, if any, of what is being presented. I happened to stumble across a tattered copy of this book as an impressionable ten-year-old and remember enjoying it primarily for its cartoon illustrations. However, I like to think that it also started me down the path of being a keen observer of charts, graphs, and numbers, especially when they are being used to try to convince me of something. The original cover! So it was with some amusement that I read an e-article that came over the transom. It's a reposting of a blog by fellow librarian Joyce Valenza which deconstructed an argument that Wikipedia was superseding libraries in the public's endless quest for information. Deconstructed? Nay! She sliced and diced the argument to shreds with the critical thinking skills of a true teacher-librarian born to the profession. The article's focus was an infographic that Open Site, the self-proclaimed "free Internet Encyclopedia" (wait, I though that was Wikipedia--- never mind) posted, which stated that Wikipedia had forced the print-version of Encyclopedia Britannica out of business. Here it is, for your amusement: I know what you are saying: "Whoa, those are a lot of statistics!" And I am replying: "Oh yes, a lot of unsupported and distorted statistics." And you are saying: "But look at all those sources!" And I am replying: "Oh yes, but remember, in the immortal words of Darrell Huff, that 'the secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse and oversimplify.'" Cooking up the "big lie?" As Ms. Valenza notes, comparing library visits to Wikipedia visits, as the infographic purports to do, is a bit of an apples vs. oranges comparison, since one is achieved with the click of a mouse and one person can click repeatedly throughout the day (or night, if that person is an insomniac). Ms. Valenza goes on to ask some very pertinent questions about the research methods of the infographic creators, the types of questions that teacher-librarians need to instruct their students to ask, the types of questions that Darrell Huff was writing about in 1954: Which libraries are these people measuring? What students? And students are generally required to use multiple sources, so which do they consult after Wikipedia? How does YouTube factor into the equation? And where did they get the figure that books have declined by 12%? And after the Great Recession hit, library use increased! As Ms. Valenza notes, the authors of this infographic seem to need a lesson in improving their own research skills. And are we supposed to be impressed that there's an increase in students who are plagiarizing Wikipedia? Or more impressed that teachers are becoming more savvy in catching it? Eeeesh! But don't take my rehash as the final word. Check out the original blog post by Ms. Valenza at School Library Journal: the Never Ending Search. Kudos, Joyce! But I did learn that Wikipedia is looking for female editors...maybe I'll apply! So let's celebrate with studly men extolling the virtues of... the written word and libraries! The actual Old Spice dude: And a parody: |
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