“In order to be really good as a librarian, everything counts towards your work, every play you go see, every concert you hear, every trip you take, everything you read, everything you know.” – Allen Smith, PhD
Lubuto means knowledge, enlightenment and light in the Bemba language, and this is exactly what the Lubuto Library Project is proving vulnerable children throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
The project is a non-profit based in Washington DC which has been providing library services since 2005. Their aim is to help provide information, a space for socialization, and a positive physical environment for children throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The project began after seeing the success a makeshift library at the Fountain of Hope Center which provided help for street children, victims of the AIDS crisis.
Each Lubuto Library has starts out with a collection of 5,000 items, primarily non-fiction, and covering a wide range of subjects. The initial collection has only English language books, but material in local languages is added once the library is established.
Interestingly, this project helps children in the USA as well. The project aims to educate children in the USA about the impact of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, while helping create the collections, organizing them, and helping out with other aspects of the project, as well as learning about the children these libraries will impact.
The above video shows the libraries, the children they service, as well as the children in the USA who organize book drives and help keep the project going in a number of other ways.
You can learn more about this project by visiting their website.
In any case, the date was proposed to the UNESCO’s International Union of Editor as a day to promote culture and raise awareness around intellectual property rights. Final approval came on November 15, 1995.
Current festivities include a rotating title of World Book Capital. This began in 2001 with Madrid, last year it was Bogotá, and this year the world’s book capital is Amsterdam, next year it will be Beirut.
Click here for UNESCO’s page on World Book and Copyright Day.
At random, here are a few links to how a handful of libraries around the world are celebrating.
Medellin’s neighborhood of Santo Domingo Savio is changing its face thanks to a new library that was inaugurated back in August 2007. The library includes a computer room, daycare center, art gallery and an auditorium. The library also offers training for adults, workshops for personal expression and story time for children.
In the past this area of the city was made famous (or infamous) though its depiction as one of the most violent places in the country at the hight of the country’s drug war. The city and its people have been included in books and movie that exhorted only its high levels of violence. Novels such as Fernando Vallejo’s “La Virgen de los Sicarios”, and Jorge Franco’s “Rosario Tijeras”, as well as the documentary “La Sierra” have shown the brutality of life in the region. Yet today things are turning around; today Medellin is a much safer and quieter city where residents are once again able to enjoy the city. This new renaissance is also being felt in the poorest areas of the city such as Santo Domingo Savio.
The new library has gained a significant amount of attention because of its unusual architecture, but hopefully soon news will come out as to how the collection is impacting the community. The library resembles three large borders siting precariously on the edge of a steep incline that overlooks Medellin. You can read -in Spanish- a detailed explanation of the architecture, including photographs here). The library fits into the overall renovation the city has been undergoing which aims at creating more public spaces that encourage people to come out, enjoy the city, and meet their neighbors.
This library is also part of an ongoing initiative to promote libraries in Colombia. In February of this year Japan donated enough money to build 13 new libraries (read the article -in Spanish- here), to be build in various cities through the country. There is also a heavy emphasis on promoting public libraries, something that certainly wasn’t the case when I lived there. You can access Senderos, the web portal -in Spanish- for Colombia’s public libraries here.
The video above -in Spanish- show the inauguration of the library and describes how the community has been changing in recent years.
During the same Hot Topics Discussion mentioned below I also heard a presentation about the implementation and use of LibraryThing at a public library by Kate Sheehan, Coordinator of Library Automation at the Danbury Public Library. Sheehan described how the library has integrated LibraryThing, a site which allows users to create bibliographies, plus rate and reviews books. The idea is that this added content will provide library users with more context when it comes to deciding what to check out next.
Similar to the recommendations on Amazon.com, LibraryThing allows users to see what other users have been reading, and if they liked it or no. The advantage of this system is that actual human beings (as opposed to algorithms) are providing the context and making connections. If you ever bought something on Amazon.com for a friend on a subject that does not interest you, the site will forever continue suggesting things on this subject. By contrast users of LibraryThing can actually help you choose related material that might interest you.
Sheehan also described this partnership as an addition that can make the OPAC “fun.” She found that she and others at the library could know be found “browsing” the catalog and spending long periods of time doing so. One interesting review can open up hundreds of possibilities and before long your list of “to read books” could make you wish you had more time to read.
In terms of implementations Sheehan said its been amazingly easy and the process was completed in a very short amount of time. Once up an running, each month the library provides LibraryThing with a list of all new additions by ISBN, which LibraryThing will then provide information for. Once a year the library gathers information on weeded books and LibraryThing is again notified of these changes.
The library’s catalog has not become part of LibraryThing, instead it gathers information available at the site. When opening the record of a particular book, in addition to the expected information you will also find suggestions for similar books, and a tag cloud of related subjects. Clicking on one of these tags will take you to more suggestions of material tagged with this category, as well as related categories. Here is an example of one of these records.
One issues that particularly caught my attention is that the Danbury library patrons are not necessarily the ones providing the rating and reviews (unless they happen to have an account with LibraryThing). I wonder how different these reviews and tag clouds might turn out if it were only the patrons providing input.
The Boston Public Library (BPL) has joined forces with PublicResource.org and the Internet Archive in order to begin digitizing the library’s large collection of government documents. This project has first envisioned by Mr. Carl Malamud and Mr. Brewster Kahle, the founders of these two collaborating organizations. Mr. Malamud hopes to eventually digitize the entire USA government document collection, which holds around 100 millions pages. The project is expected to take two years, at a cost of $6 million.
This project also hopes to gather a number of other digital collections which are already accessible online, but at a cost. The intent is to buy access to these collections and make their content freely available to everyone. The BPL wants to begin this project by digitizing their holdings relating to the Committee on Un-American Activities hearings from the 1950s, as well as a substantial collection of Congressional Hearings recently donated by Harvard.
In the future the BPL wishes to begins their own digital archive for holdings relating to local Boston and Massachusetts documents.
Here’s to hoping that initiatives such as these continue to prosper, and to make government more accessible and transparent.
You can read more about this from an article in the NYT here.
Akito Yoshikane recently wrote the article titled “Public Libraries for Profit” commenting on a developing trend to privatize public libraries around the country. Yoshikane explain that a number of counties around the country have been unsuccessful at finding funding sources to continue keeping public libraries open to the public. When town officials are faced with the option of offering no library services or privatizing them, some are optioned for the latter.
Library Systems & Services (LSSI) is the private company that is usually hired to privatize libraries. The Maryland based company which has been in business since 1981, offers services ranging from taking charge of a particular project to managing both staff and all daily activities. They work in libraries offering services to local communities, schools, colleges, corporations and even the federal government.
LSSI is also involved in helping the library and information science field by creating a couple of scholarships and awards. LSSI has established two scholarships, one aimed at part time students in the information science field at the University of Maryland, College Park, the second scholarship aim to encourage people who are interested in promoting automation in the library field. They have also established an award which recognizes innovative practices in library management in libraries who are par to of the Urban Library Council.
LSSI’s present in libraries has not always been welcome. Libraries tend to reflect the community they serve and private, for-profit, companies which buy material in bulk may not always be able to reflect this diversity. There is also a concern that public libraries which were previously under city government and who’s labor force was unionized, are now loosing this benefit because of privatization. The lost of unionization usually also comes with the loss of state pension benefits, and reductions in medical benefits. Some communities have also seen significant reduction in the hours the library is open to the public.
Some of the formally public libraries that are now under private management by LSSI include libraries in Dallas TX, Riverside CA, Finney County KS, and most recently the libraries in Jackson Country, OR.
Just a couple of days ago Boston.com ran an article about a woman in Maine who has decided that certain books are not adequate for the library and has taken it upon her herself to remove them. JoAn Karkos has checked out two copies of “Perfectly Normal: Changing bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health,” claiming that she was horrified by the illustrations, and “the sexually graphic, amoral abnormal content,” and refuses to return them. The book contains cartoon-like illustrations of naked people.
Oddly, Mrs. Karkos did send a check to the library for the cost of replacing the book, but library personal explain that if she wanted the books removed from the shelf she needed to follow standard procedures. The Library has since returned her money, and has ordered additional copies to meet increased interest in this title.
Earlier this week there was a similar story reported in American Libraries told about a young girl in Brookwood, AL, who borrowed Sandpiper, by Ellen Wittinger, for a school assignment and now refuses to return it on grounds that it teaches students about sex, when school policy is to promote “abstinence-only.”
“Perfectly Normal” is no stranger to controversy. It was the ALA’s most challenged book in 2005, toping a list that includes authors such as J.D. Salinger, Toni Morrison, and Judy Blume.
You can read the full article from Boston.com here, and the article from American Libraries, here.
01.05.08 - Initially Karkos tried to get the police to remove the book on grounds of obscenity, but the police refused to pursue the complains. In the end this case actually ended up going to court, where Karkos plead not guilty to civil charges that were subsequently filed against her. It was determined that the book does not violate city ordinance. You can read more about this at American Libraries.
In April, Ireland came up with a very creative way of helping author collect royalties for their world, while simultaneously making their work available to the largest group of people. The Department of Trade and Employment set up a system by which authors gather royalties each time their works are checked out at the library, better yet, this set up doesn’t cost the patron a cent. Some countries have extended this system to include CDs, audio-visual material and works of art.
This set up is formally know as the Public Lending Right (PLR), and its intent is to compensate authors for potential sale losses when their work is made available through public libraries. Currently about 30 countries have Public Lending Rights, including Canada, the UK, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Israel, Australia, New Zealand and all the Scandinavian countries. There is some discussion of expending Public Lending Rights to cover all of the EU. PLR was first implemented in Denmark in 1946, and was followed shortly after by Norway in 1947, then the UK in 1979.
How Public Lending Rights are implemented tends to vary from country to country. The main division seems to be between countries that consider PLR part of copyright law, and those nations which wish to support culture, with a particular emphasis on local authors. Other differences include, whether foreign residing authors are excluded or not, payments often varies, with some countries making payment for each time a book is loaned, while others base the decision solely on whether the library owns the book.
The initiative is not without detractors. Some of the discontent in the EU circles around the issue of whether or not a country is conforming with EU Directives of Lending and Rental Rights while implementing PLR. These directives establish a framework that gives author and other right holders exclusive rights to license or prohibit lending. Along these lines, the PLR International has set up a website with advice for countries with existing PLR, and to council others considering the change.
Here is a paper presented at IFLA in 2002 about the issue, mainly as it concerns the EU.
Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the USA – Canadian border between Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont. This library was built in 1904 by the American Carlos Haskell and his wife, Canadian, Martha Stewart Haskell to over services to both communities. And while the library has a life marking the border along with floor, patrons are free to freely cross the border within its walls.
Librarians available to assist patrons can be either USA or Canadian citizens, or both, and most are bilingual.
At the same lecture that I attended earlier this week I learned about the Cook Memorial Library in Tamworth, NH. This small public library has done away with their old static website and have replaced it with a WPopac. A WPopac is something created by Casey Bisson by tweaking WordPress to become an OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog). We got to see the insides of this library’s website and it looks exactly like the insides of this very blog you are reading.
The fascinating concept here is what can be created for free with the Opensource tools that are already available to us. Currently the Cook Memorial Library’s site provides you with just one search box that gives you relevant returns from all of their site, not just the OPAC. The fact that the search box cover the entire site means that if you search for local poet Marnie Cobbs, you will find out not only that the library carries her book titled “The Quiet Rage”, but also that she will be appearing at the library on May 8th. This set up also allows content on the web to be accessible through Google searches and the like.
Like any blog, the site allows collaboration by anyone who wants to contribute their two cents towards what is happening with the library. In relation to this, we heard the story of a man who is home-bound and therefore could not access the library, but now with this interactive site, he is able to participate by posting comments and starting discussions. In this sense the library is no longer just serving their immediate neighbors, but virtually anyone using the web.
You can learn more about this project and how it came about at maisonbisson. Bisson is also behind the Beyond Brown Paper project which is also based on WordPress.
11.14.07 - The Plymouth State University Lamson Library’s OPAC runs on WPopac, now known as Scriblio. You can access the site here.
