Category: Uncategorized

  • Thank you all for your help in reaching mid-career.

    1950s — Children’s Librarian Hazel Keedle with Reading Club birthday cake, at OLD Ann Arbor Public Library on East Huron Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. flickr photo by In Memoriam: Wystan shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license A couple of weeks ago over lunch with a colleague, I decided it was really time to call…

  • Can You Calculate the ROI of Academic Freedom and The Public Good?

    On Monday UC-AFT Unit 17 Librarians ratified a tentative agreement on a new contract with UC. I’ve talked about the contract campaign a lot on here, social media, and the local media. Also on Monday, UC issued a proposed new policy on academic freedom for non-faculty academic appointees – librarians, researchers, clinicians, and more. This…

  • Many names means many access points.

    A personal anecdote before we get to the meat of this post – At home we’re teaching the kid about names and how you can call people different things and all of them are correct. Like I am Kendra and mommy. Or they are Eddie or Edmund (despite their fierce protests). It’s a hard concept…

  • Helping the next generation stand your shoulders: Pay it forward for the profession

    Tor197, Cragside School, Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1969 flickr photo by Newcastle Libraries shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) I’ve been feeling old lately. I have a kid. Things from my youth are cool again, but in an ironic nostalgia kind of way. I find myself listening to jazz…

  • Acknowledging the wear of uncertainty.

    This week’s midterm elections were a rollercoaster for the US. There was a ballot proposition in California that was was really close to home for my library: Proposition 6, which if pass would have repealed the recently enacted gas tax (SB1). The $5.1 billion raised from the the higher gas tax will go to repair…