Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sandy Berman But Were Afraid To Ask

Long before e-mail, Internet, talking computers and jolly jargon, Sandy Berman was out there doing his best to link the world with old-fashioned letters to more friends than the Library of Congress has headings. His hard-hitting polemics, whether they be for political, racial, sexual or ethnic causes, have enforced the idea of librarian as activist. It all adds up to an exhilarating intellectual who has profoundly shaken our ideas of what libraries and librarians are all about--From Bill Katz's Foreword. For nearly four decades Sandy Berman has been the embodiment of the activist librarian, championing the causes of intellectual and personal freedom with a seemingly boundless supply of energy. His work to rid the Library of Congress subject headings of bias is legendary, but it is perhaps his encouragement and prodding of fellow librarians to broaden their vision of the profession that most counts. Here many of his friends and associates (Fay M. Blake, Martha Cornog, Elaine Harger, Zoia Horn, E.J. Josey, Will Manley, Noel Peattie, Norman Stevens and 24 others) reflect on what Sandy has meant to them and the profession.

Professionals in all areas of librarianship will find inspiration in the essays collected here--each of them innovative tips for increasing circulation, enhancing collections, and improving flexibility. With extensive experience in the nation's top libraries and media centers, the 73 contributors describe what really works based on their real-world experiences. Organized by subject, the essays offer succinct and practical guidelines for dozens of tasks. Topics include preparing and delivering distinctive presentations; forming a successful grant proposal; hosting a traveling multimedia exhibition; organizing effective community partnerships; writing blogs; hosting authors; creating cybertorials; preserving local culture--and many others.

Despite the stodgy stereotypes, libraries and librarians themselves can be quite funny. The spectrum of library humor from sources inside and outside the profession ranges from the subtle wit of the New Yorker to the satire of Mad. This examination of American library humor over the past 200 years covers a wide range of topics and spans the continuum between light and dark, from parodies to portrayals of libraries and their staffs as objects of fear. It illuminates different types of librarians--the collector, the organization person, the keeper, the change agent--and explores stereotypes like the shushing little old lady with a bun, the male scholar-librarian, the library superhero, and the anti-stereotype of the sexy librarian. Profiles of the most prominent library humorists round out this lively study.

This essay collection explores the cultural functions the printed book performs in the digital age. It examines how the use of and attitude toward the book form have changed in light of the digital transformation of American media culture. Situated at the crossroads of American studies, literary studies, book studies, and media studies, these essays show that a sustained focus on the medial and material formats of literary communication significantly expands our accustomed ways of doing cultural studies. Addressing the changing roles of authors, publishers, and readers while covering multiple bookish formats such as artists’ books, bestselling novels, experimental fiction, and zines, this interdisciplinary volume introduces readers to current transatlantic conversations on the history and future of the printed book.

Edited by Ursula Gorham, Natalie Greene Taylor, and Paul T. Jaeger, Perspectives on Libraries as Institutions of Human Rights and Social Justice is an edited volume from the Advances in Librarianship book series devoted to the ideals, activities, and programs in libraries that protect human rights and promote social justice.

This work presents the history and impact of the seven most important progressive library organizations worldwide—in Austria, Germany, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom, and two in the United States. Each organization is considered within its national context, and in fact, the English word “organization” does not quite fit the nature of all of the groups. The South African organization, LIWO, was transitional in that it helped bring South African librarianship from apartheid to majority rule and then disbanded. The other organizations or their successors are still working in one form or another. Some of the organizations have had or continue to have vibrant local chapters, though many of the original activists have recently retired or died. The author has interviewed many of them at a time when they were assessing their life work, and handing off to new generations.

A compilation of quotations originally collected for the 'Quotes of the Week' section of Library Juice, an electronic magazine that dealt with philosophical and political dimensions of librarianship.

A revealing and surprising look at how classification systems can shape both worldviews and social interactions. What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification—the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.