Best of
Librarianship

2019

Better with Books: 500 Diverse Books to Ignite Empathy and Encourage Self-Acceptance in Tweens and Teens


Melissa Hart - 2019
      As young people are diagnosed with anxiety and depression in increasing numbers, or dealing with other issues that can isolate them from family and friends–such as bullying, learning disabilities, racism, or homophobia–characters in books can help them feel less alone. And just as important, reading books that feature a diverse range of real-life topics helps generate openness, empathy, and compassion in all kids. Better with Books is a valuable resource for parents, teachers, librarians, therapists, and all caregivers who recognize the power of literature to improve young readers’ lives.   Each chapter explores a particular issue affecting preteens and teens today and includes a list of recommended related books–all published within the last decade. Recommendations are grouped by age: those appropriate for middle-grade readers and those for teens.   Reading lists are organized around: Adoption and foster care Body image Immigration Learning challenges LGBTQIA+ youth Mental health Nature and environmentalism Physical disability Poverty and homelessness Race and ethnicity Religion and spirituality

Freedom Libraries: The Untold Story of Libraries for African Americans in the South


Mike Selby - 2019
    And while some of the bravest people of the 20th century risked their lives for the right to simply order a cheeseburger, ride a bus, or use a clean water fountain, there was another virtually unheard of struggle--this one for the right to read. Although illegal, racial segregation was strictly enforced in a number of American states, and public libraries were not immune. Numerous libraries were desegregated on paper only: there would be no cards given to African-Americans, no books for them read, and no furniture for them to use. It was these exact conditions that helped create Freedom Libraries. Over eighty of these parallel libraries appeared in the Deep South, staffed by civil rights voter registration workers. While the grassroots nature of the libraries meant they varied in size and quality, all of them created the first encounter many African-Americans had with a library. Terror, bombings, and eventually murder would be visited on the Freedom Libraries--with people giving up their lives so others could read a library book. This book delves into how these libraries were the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, and the remarkable courage of the people who used them. They would forever change libraries and librarianship, even as they helped the greater movement change the society these libraries belonged to. Photographs of the libraries bring this little-known part of American history to life.

Move, Play, Learn: Interactive Storytimes with Music, Movement, and More


Alyssa Jewell - 2019
    Research shows that this kind of play stimulates the senses, provides connections to all four lobes of the brain, touches on a variety of intelligences, and heightens social and emotional awareness--all while extending the early literacy practices of Every Child Ready to Read(R) and preparing children for school. And because there are no crafts to cut out, no snacks to pack, no scripts to memorize, and no story kits to make, it's one of the simplest, most cost-effective storytime models to implement. Jewell's complete guide shows the way, offering20 ready-to-use storytime plans tailored to specific age groups, including babies, toddlers, preschool and all-ages programs, a real time-saver for storytime organizers and presenters; advice and best practices gleaned from interviews with professionals who specialize in storytimes, music making with children and families, yoga storytime, and drama education; and lists of recommended resources, from interactive print books to children's music and videos available digitally, with tips on choosing the best materials. Children's librarians and educators will be delighted to learn that anyone can lead a movement and music storytime, regardless of their level of experience with music or movement, with this book in hand.

Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control


Jane Sandberg - 2019
    When creating a personal name authority record, for example, catalogers determine the authorized name by which an individual will be known, then identify a few characteristics of the individual that distinguish them from others, while balancing their judgment with respect for the individual's self-concept and management of their public identity. This is a powerful position, and that power must be exercised ethically.As name authority control moves toward an identity management model, catalogers are taking on new roles, authority data is used in innovative ways, and libraries increasingly interact with non-library datasets and name disambiguation algorithms. During this transition, it is imperative that the library community reflect on the ethical questions that arise from its historical and emerging practices.This collection explores and develops this framework through theoretical and practice-based essays, stories, interviews, taxonomies, content analyses, and other methods. As it explores ethical questions in a variety of settings, this book will deepen readers' understanding of names, identities, and library catalogs. The chapters from this volume are intended to spark conversations among librarians, archivists, library technologists, library administrators, and library and information science students.Jane Sandberg received her MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the Electronic Resources Librarian at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon, where she coordinates library cataloging and systems. Her research interests include linked data approaches to name authority control, queer and trans local histories, open source software in rural communities, and historical dimensions of online transgender activism.

Graphic Design For Everyone: Create Your Own Blog, Logo, Website and Much More


Cath Caldwell - 2019
    Graphic Design for Everyone shows you how to define your brand and your message, then takes you through the basic principles of design. Find out how to create a brand plan, discover how a typeface sets the mood, and learn how to use colour theory for maximum impact. Gain inspiration from real-life examples and exercises that help you to focus on the right solutions for you. Once you've learned the basics, turn to the ten step-by-step projects to help you create your own stunning designs - from business stationery to a sales brochure and online shop. There's also plenty of practical advice on publishing online, dealing with printers, commissioning professionals and more. Whether you're a design newcomer or keen to build on what you know, Graphic Design for Everyone is the only resource you'll ever need.

Whole Person Librarianship: A Social Work Approach to Patron Services


Sara K Zettervall - 2019
    Whole Person Librarianship incorporates practical examples with insights from librarians and social workers. The result is a new vision of library services.The authors provide multiple examples of how public and academic librarians are connecting their patrons with social services. They explore skills and techniques librarians can learn from social workers, such as how to set healthy boundaries and work with patrons experiencing homelessness; they also offer ideas for how librarians can self-educate on these topics.The book additionally provides insights for social work partners on how they can benefit from working with librarians. While librarians and social workers share social justice motivations, their methods are complementary and yet still distinct--librarians do not have to become social workers. Librarian readers will come away with many practical ideas for collaboration as well as the ability to explain why collaboration with social workers is important for the future of librarianship.

Book Club Reboot: 71 Creative Twists


Sarah Ostman - 2019
    This resource published in cooperation with ALA’s Public Programs Office profiles dozens of successful book clubs across the country. Its diverse cross-section of ideas will inspire you to rethink your reading groups and try out new ways to better meet your library’s and community’s needs. Drawn from responses collected through social media, electronic mailing lists, e-newsletters, websites, as well as the authors’ own research, this bookoutlines the main reasons that traditional book clubs can grow stagnant over time and offers concrete advice on how to change things up;shares such real-world initiatives as a “walk and talk” book club, book clubs held in non-library spaces like ferries and bars, a discussion group for presidential history buffs, programming for people with developmental disabilities, a partnership with a health clinic network, and many others;includes programs from a wide range of library types (public, school, academic) and sizes;features short, easily scannable chapters that are convenient for browsing; andprovides a handy list of resources for additional information.You’ll find the keys to creating a book club your community will love among the abundance of ideas offered in this book.

Dear Books to Prisoners: Letters From the Incarcerated


Bo-Won Keum - 2019
    Selected letters from Incarcerated Persons requesting books from Books to Prisoners Seattle, a Prison Book Program.

The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter


Leonard S. Marcus - 2019
    For fourteen months beginning in June 2013, more than half a million visitors to the New York Public Library viewed an exhibition about the role that children’s books play in world culture and in our lives. After the exhibition closed, attendees clamored for a catalog of The ABC of It as well as for children’s literature historian Leonard S. Marcus’s insightful, wry commentary about the objects on display. Now with this book, a collaboration between the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Collection of Children’s Literature and Leonard Marcus, the nostalgia and vision of that exhibit can be experienced anywhere. The story of the origins of children’s literature is a tale with memorable characters and deeds, from Hans Christian Andersen and Lewis Carroll to E. B. White and Madeleine L’Engle, who safeguarded a place for wonder in a world increasingly dominated by mechanistic styles of thought, to artists like Beatrix Potter and Maurice Sendak who devoted their extraordinary talents to revealing to children not only the exhilarating beauty of life but also its bracing intensity. Philosophers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and educators such as Johann Comenius and John Dewey were path-finding interpreters of the phenomenon of childhood, inspiring major strands of bookmaking and storytelling for the young. Librarians devised rigorous standards for evaluating children’s books and effective ways of putting good books into children’s hands, and educators proposed radically different ideas about what those books should include. Eventually, publishers came to embrace juvenile publishing as a core activity, and pioneering collectors of children’s book art, manuscripts, correspondence, and ephemera appeared—the University of Minnesota’s Dr. Irvin Kerlan being a superb example. Without the foresight and persistence of these collectors, much of this story would have been lost forever.  Regarding children’s literature as both a rich repository of collective memory and a powerful engine of cultural change is more important today than ever.

Children's Literature, Briefly


Terrell A. Young - 2019
     This brief introduction to children's literature genres leaves time to actually read children's books. Written on the assumption that the focus of a children's literature course should be on the actual books that children read, the authors first wrote this book in 1996 as a "textbook for people who don't like children's literature textbooks." Today it serves as an overview to shed light on the essentials of children's literature and how to use it effectively with young readers, from PreK to 8th grade. The authors use an enjoyable, conversational style to achieve their goal of providing a practical overview of children's books that offers a framework and background information, while keeping the spotlight on the books themselves.

The Future Academic Librarian's Toolkit: Finding Success on Your Job Hunt and in Your First job


Megan Hodge - 2019
    

Call Numbers: The Not So Quiet Life Of Librarians (Call Numbers, #1)


Syntell Smith - 2019
    It’s 1994 in New York City, and he’s been transferred downtown to the 58th Street Branch Library. Ready to move up the ladder, Robin is excited about the opportunities that await him.But success, personal or professional, is as elusive as a first-edition rare book. Robin struggles with his strange new work environment as this motley crew of employees generates more drama than a runaway bestseller. He doesn’t know who to believe – or who to let in. And as potential romance mingles with devious machinations, there’s no telling where Robin’s story will go. All he knows is that he must see it through to the very last page.Call Numbers is a captivating and multilayered adult drama. Through realistic dialogue and situations, author Syntell Smith has crafted a modern-day classic about the trials and tribulations of adulthood. Because a library is usually the last place you’d expect high drama, but for these characters…it’s long overdue.

Confronting the Democratic Discourse of Librarianship: A Marxist Approach


Sam Popowich - 2019
    It remains dominant despite a long tradition of critical library movements within the profession. In Confronting the Democratic Discourse of Librarianship, Sam Popowich argues that the democratic tradition is part of a larger liberal tradition within librarianship which sees librarianship as neutral, pragmatic, and independent of social, economic, or political concerns. It is this perspective that lends librarianship a “sacred” aura which needs to be dismantled if we truly want to change the profession.Taking a broadly Marxist approach, Confronting the Democratic Discourse of Librarianship traces the connections between library history and the larger history of capitalist development. These connections suggest that the relationship between the library and capitalism is closer and more insidious than the democratic tradition allows. Drawing on theories of ideology and politics, and looking at recent research in critical librarianship, this book makes a case for the structural interconnection of librarianship and capitalist exploitation. As a result, oppression is entrenched within the profession due to the library’s role in the social reproduction of capitalism, while the oppressive structures of society are obscured by the very ideology of democracy that holds sway within the field.

Landing a Library Job


Deloris Jackson Foxworth - 2019
    Landing a Library Job covers the different types of library and non-library jobs available to you and points you towards the resources you need to land those jobs. The book's focus on the resources to secure jobs is what makes it unique. You'll learn where to find library and library-related jobs, how to successfully apply and interview, how to follow up, and how to cultivate your career. This book contains helpful information you can use to: Decide if and where you fit into the significant and growing field of library and information scienceFind and apply for library and information science positionsPrepare for the employment interviewAccept or negotiate job offersFurther develop your skills and knowledge in the library and information science field--Kim Dority, MLIS, Dority & Associates, Author, Rethinking Information Work, 2d Edition, Recipient, SLA Rose L. Vormelker ("The Rosie") Award

The Intimacy of Paper in Early and Nineteenth-Century American Literature


Jonathan Senchyne - 2019
    Making a bold case for the importance of printing and paper technology in the study of early American literature, Jonathan Senchyne presents archival evidence of the effects of this very visible process on American writers, such as Anne Bradstreet, Herman Melville, Lydia Sigourney, William Wells Brown, and other lesser-known figures.The Intimacy of Paper in Early and Nineteenth-Century American Literature reveals that book history and literary studies are mutually constitutive and proposes a new literary periodization based on materiality and paper production. In unpacking this history and connecting it to cultural and literary representations, Senchyne also explores how the textuality of paper has been used to make social and political claims about gender, labor, and race.

Leading from the Library: Help Your School Community Thrive in the Digital Age


Shannon McClintock Miller - 2019
    One essential role librarians play is that of a leader who works collaboratively to build relationships, mold culture and climate, and advocate for the needs of students and the community. In this book, a librarian and an education leader team up to reflect on the librarian's ability to build connections in two ways. First, they discuss the benefits of bringing the outside world into the library through the use of social media, videoconferencing and other tools that allow librarians to partner with others. Then they expand upon these connections by addressing how librarians can lead in the greater educational community by sharing resources and strategies, and partnering with school leaders to tell the story of the school community. Through this book, librarians will discover the influence they can have on the school community as the library becomes the heart of the school, a place where problems are solved, content is explored, connections are made and discovery happens.

Iterate: Ten Lessons in Design and Failure


John Sharp - 2019
    As game designers, John Sharp and Colleen Macklin have grappled with crises of creativity, false starts, and bad outcomes. Their tool for coping with the many varieties of failure: iteration, the cyclical process of conceptualizing, prototyping, testing, and evaluating. Sharp and Macklin have found that failure--often hidden, covered up, a source of embarrassment--is the secret ingredient of iterative creative process. In Iterate, they explain how to fail better.After laying out the four components of creative practice--intention, outcome, process, and evaluation--Sharp and Macklin describe iterative methods from a wide variety of fields. They show, for example, how Radiolab cohosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich experiment with radio as a storytelling medium; how professional skateboarder Amelia Br�dka develops skateboarding tricks through trial and error; and how artistic polymath Miranda July explores human frailty through a variety of media and techniques. Whimsical illustrations tell parallel stories of iteration, as hard-working cartoon figures bake cupcakes, experiment with levitating office chairs, and think outside the box in toothbrush design ("let's add propellers!"). All, in their various ways, use iteration to transform failure into creative outcomes. With Iterate, Sharp and Macklin offer useful lessons for anyone interested in the creative process.Case Studies: Allison Tauziet, winemaker; Matthew Maloney, animator; Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, Radiolab cohosts; Wylie Dufresne, chef; Nathalie Pozzi, architect, and Eric Zimmerman, game designer; Andy Milne, jazz musician; Amelia Br�dka, skateboarder; Baratunde Thurston, comedian; Cas Holman, toy designer; Miranda July, writer and filmmaker

Masked by Trust: Bias in Library Discovery


Matthew Reidsma - 2019
    Because these tools are provided by libraries and search scholarly materials rather than the open web, we often assume they are more "accurate" or "reliable" than their general-purpose peers like Google or Bing. But discovery systems are still software written by people with prejudices and biases, library software vendors are subject to strong commercial pressures that are often hidden behind diffuse collection-development contracts and layers of administration, and they struggle to integrate content from thousands of different vendors and their collective disregard for consistent metadata.Library discovery systems struggle with accuracy, relevance, and human biases, and these shortcomings have the potential to shape the academic research and worldviews of the students and faculty who rely on them. While human bias, commercial interests, and problematic metadata have long affected researchers' access to information, algorithims in library discovery systems increase the scale of the negative effects on users, while libraries continue to promote their "objective" and "neutral" search tools.Matthew Reidsma is the Web Services Librarian at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. He was a co-founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Weave: Journal of Library User Experience, a peer-reviewed, open access journal for Library User Experience professionals. He is the author of Responsive Web Design for Libraries published by ALA TechSource, Customizing Vendor Systems for Better User Experiences from Libraries Unlimited, and the forthcoming Masked by Trust: Bias in library discovery from Library Juice Press. He speaks about design ethics, user experience, and usability around the world. Library Journal named him a "Mover and Shaker" in 2013, which led to many unfortunate dance-related jokes in the Reidsma household.

Teaching Banned Books: 32 Guides For Children And Teens


Pat R. Scales - 2019
    In this best-selling classroom- and library-ready book of discussion guides, thoroughly updated and expanded to include genres such as graphic novels and nonfiction, award-winning champion of children's literature Scales shows that there is a way to teach these books while respecting all views. Also freshened to include only books that are in print, this resourcereprints Judy Blume's stirring introduction from the first edition; aids educators and librarians in stimulating the critical thinking skills of young readers aged 9-18 while also encouraging freedom of thought and expression, in either classroom or book club settings; spotlights titles dealing with sensitive but vital issues such as bullying, racism, bigotry, making tough choices, other cultures, and our uncertain future; offers tips for introducing each book and its associated topics; provides open-ended questions for discussion which explore the book as a whole rather than simply its "controversial" aspects, along with research and writing activities; and includes short summaries of each book, plus a read-alikes section to keep the conversation going. Using this powerful resource, the oft-challenged books featured inside will be jumping-off points for rich and engaging discussion among young readers, their librarians and teachers, and parents.

Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia


Meera E Deo - 2019
    Comparing the professional and personal experiences of women of color professors with white women, white men, and men of color faculty from assistant professor through dean emeritus, Unequal Profession explores how the race and gender of individual legal academics affects not only their individual and collective experience, but also legal education as a whole. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative empirical data, Meera E. Deo reveals how race and gender intersect to create profound implications for women of color law faculty members, presenting unique challenges as well as opportunities to improve educational and professional outcomes in legal education. Deo shares the powerful stories of law faculty who find themselves confronting intersectional discrimination and implicit bias in the form of silencing, mansplaining, and the presumption of incompetence, to name a few. Through hiring, teaching, colleague interaction, and tenure and promotion, Deo brings the experiences of diverse faculty to life and proposes a number of mechanisms to increase diversity within legal academia and to improve the experience of all faculty members.