a website for the conservative librarian
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Saturday May 8, 2004
I love Donald Rumsfeld
There is a lot to be said for crotchety old guys who
aren't impressed by people with big titles and small resumes.
Thursday May 6, 2004
The O.C. was pretty traumatic last night. Considering
they started last summer it seems more like it will be season 3 in the fall. I'm
looking forward to it. I have no idea what the Enterprise is doing but they'd better
get around to it quick. Last night was just dumb. 100 years to plan and you still
fail? Come on!
They are finally putting a stake in the heart of Friends.
It seems overdue at this point. If they had just cut out the whole Joey-Rachel-Ross
triangle they'd be right where they are supposed to be.
Nothing major on the reading shelf at the moment, just
this and this.
Dortmunder rules even in short stories. I read Robert Parker's
latest over the weekend. Best Spenser one in a long time, it actually
made sense. I was beginning to like the new guy, Jesse Stone, more but Spenser made a
comeback.
Night.
Some feedback in the Feedback Forum (imagine that).
I'm sorry but that's just a bad argument. By that logic only people who serve in
the military should be allowed to vote. It just doesn't work that way. Thanks
for being pleasant though.
AL lists King and King under their Censorship Watch.
Apparently there is a sequel coming out called King & King & Family where they
adopt a child, a girl. No mention of whether she will grow up looking for a
man just like her father, or a girl like her father which would probably even things
out.
If you can get your hands on the latest issue of
American Libraries please do. There is a good debate in it between Nat Hentoff and
John Berry on the issue of Cuba. Here's a taste:
Berry: I'll tell you one thing. As IRC chair, I am writing to [Cuban Foreign Minister]
Felipe Perez Roque to ask that medical attention to those dissidents who are in bad shape
be immediately addressed.
Hentoff: Are you going to mention the forbidden word "librarian"? Amnesty and Human Rights
Watch and everybody who writes about this always list the poets, the journalists,
the human rights workers, and the librarians. Only the ALA Council won't use that
terrible word "librarian." Why? Because they're not credentialed? Come on. Tuesday May 4, 2004
I can't believe I missed G------ G---- last week when it
was such a huge cliff hanger from the week before. Why hotels can't offer a decent
cable package I have no idea.
A thanks to Tomeboy for writing the intro to
Librarians
For Victory. Signup, be heard.
Night
One of the sessions last week was a lecture by Keith
Michael Fiels, executive director of ALA, called the 5 Big Questions. He was a very dynamic speaker though
obviously we didn't agree on much. I got to hang out for a while with him in the bar
that night but there were quite a few of us so I couldn't really ask him any good
questions. Maybe I'll email him an interview and see if he bites. At the very least he
now knows me as 'the conservative guy'. What follows comes from my notes written during
and after his lecture.
His 5 Big Questions Speech consisted of:
1. Can we do anything about Library Funding? Nothing new
here. He made the case that ALA was able to get the word out on a national level on
problems in libraries and when stories went out over the AP that then might encourage
local news to contact local libraries for stories. He was honest about budget problems
being cyclical (about every 10 years) and that we spend the 8-9 years working to get
back what we lost in 1-2. I think by the end of each ten years we are farther ahead then
before the initial bust. I also think there does have to be some kind of cut off point
where growth is no longer practical. The ‘spend or lose’ mentality is simply not
healthy and there needs to be a better approach to budgets.
2. How can we continue to attract the best and brightest?
This was all silliness. The worst part was announcing a new Public Library Administrators
Certificate. That a professional organization cannot rely on a Masters program to
create leaders but feels the need to tack on more training, more education, more cost
is pretty disgusting. He mentioned something called COPE3, which I will have to look up
and see what that was about. He also mentioned something he felt might be controversial
but I thought was reasonable if used appropriately. This was a report card on libraries
that didn’t just talk about all the great ones but identified the bad ones. Now I see
ALA using this as a stick to beat libraries that might filter or hire qualified people
without an MLS but it could be used to identify bad work environments, poor community
support and other serious issues.
3. Can we improve library salaries? Me: Probably not until
we cut the investment costs.
4. What are the most important things we can do to improve
society? This was a high-blood-pressure topic for me. Culture? Race? Disability?
Diversity? How about we do the most important thing we do that does improve society:
offer lots of solid information resources for free. The only catch is disability but it
is very difficult to be able to cover even one or two particular disabilities efficiently.
Something I’m learning from our handicapped station. Considering the disabled are a
small minority in individual communities it would be better to invest in county based
disability centers/libraries where the disabled would be served as a majority and
therefore more effectively.
5. Will We Survive? Tax cuts, Internet, People Who Hate
Libraries = Blatant Scare Talk and Total Horse#$%&.
A note about the whole presentation, not once did he
mention serving the community as a whole.
...Conservativelib, she's still a lively place to hang
so join up if you haven't. ALTMLS is also getting some interesting discussion going.
Life took an unusual turn Sunday night. I got a phone
call from James Miller of Springfield College. He and Emily Alling do a weekly radio
show dealing with library issues. Their blog for it is here. He asked me to be on the
show for about 15 minutes this morning to talk about CIPA from the conservative side.
Unfortunately they had some technical difficulties so its being postponed until
probably next week. The upswing is it gives me a little time to get some tips from the
Conservativelib crew.
It would appear that there is another piece of
information out there
that is being suppressed and kept from the public. This one is of high historic
value. John Kerry is keeping his book "The New Soldier" from being
re-released.
Stand up and be counted.
Sunday May 2, 2004
I spent yesterday and a bit of today writing up a report
for work on the conference. It was definitely worthwhile in terms of non-SHUSH activity.
I'll post some info here and there through the week about what went on.
Friday was the last day and probably the busiest for me
in terms of sessions. First thing in the morning I ran into someone I knew from our
consortium. He surprised me by asking about S*, mainly out of curiosity as opposed to
agreement. He asked if this was a profit venture and I said absolutely not. I'm debating
about listing what investments have gone into this endeavor so far under the About section,
maybe, we'll see. The fact that he asked won him the prize of the day, the
bear, which
was a good example of the nonprofit aspect of this.
The second session of the day was on blogging at it was
a good excuse to hand out a couple fliers when I talked about having my own blog. One
of the people I spoke to was a conservative herself and we had a nice lunch together
exchanging viewpoints and personal history.
I spoke with the Library Commissioner the previous
evening but didn't get to see him again on Friday. I'm hoping this is going to be an
opportunity to get the word out that conservative librarians do in fact exist.
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