Week 12- the role of libraries

“The Library As Place” was a very practical article and offered good tips on how to plan and build new academic libraries. On page 2, he article talks about how at one point people thought libraries would die out with the advent of the internet and other technologies. Instead, students are using their libraries more than ever, and as freeman states on pages 2 and 4, this is in part due to the library’s ability to foster community building. As stated, the internet can have an isolating effect on people, but those effects are at least somewhat mitigated by being in a library. Personally, I usually feel more productive doing my work in a library on campus than in my apartment. It’s comforting for me to have the low conversations and sounds of keys clacking on the keyboards in the background. I do get puzzled by the people who seem to listen to their iPods while reading; that would be total overstimulation for me. But overall, being in a public place forces me to concentrate a little more. I guess I relate to the student who said that the library was a place to “get serious” (2).
Regarding some of the practical pointers Freeman offers, I wonder how many academic libraries are able to be open from 11 pm- 4 am (4). On our campus, only College Library is open 24 hours/day, and three other libraries are open until midnight or 1 am. Most of our libraries do not open until 7:30 or 8 am. I’m sure staffing libraries overnight is not easy, and can be a strain on the budget (an ever-present issue in the world of libraries). I liked how they talked about the importance of group study rooms in academic libraries; those have always been helpful for me.
I volunteered for the College Library House Party this year, and that was really fun. It was a good way to get students in to the library and possibly in to areas they wouldn’t have visited otherwise, as a way to let them know what’s available. It also created an atmosphere of joviality and merriment that I hope made students want to come to the library more often, even on non-house party nights.
“The Public Place of Central Libraries” describes libraries as attempting to be “successful public places” (331). Two qualities attributed to successful public places are “neutrality” and “equality” (332). This brings to mind our class discussion from the beginning of the semester about racial neutrality- if there is such a thing. It’s nice to have these ideals, and hopefully as both citizens and librarians we can continue to evaluate how well we are doing on living up to them as much as possible.
I was somewhat surprised by how infrequent problems associated with homeless individuals was reported in both of these large libraries (350). I actually used to live in British Columbia and visited Vancouver a few times. I did not visit the library the article is using for its research, but I do know that Vancouver has its share of societal problems. It was nice to hear that these problems don’t seem to be taking over these libraries to the point where non-homeless patrons don’t want to visit, as has been happening in some public libraries in the US, such as San Francisco.
I think the community aspect of libraries was apparent in this article too. I liked the comment from the elderly gentleman who can’t understand why more retirees and seniors don’t frequent their local library, even if it’s just to have the chance to get out of their isolated homes (349).
The article also touched on how libraries are being used as more than a place to read. Many patrons were there to study English or apply for jobs (354). This article pointed out the many uses libraries have, including information seeking, reading, the benefits of browsing, and so on. I thought that overall this article did an excellent job making the case for funding central libraries. Also, I found photos of the two libraries studied in this article, and they are quite striking looking!

Week 11- the Government in our lives

I enjoyed the article “The Nerves of the Government”. It made me reflect a little more on how the Government communicates to me in my daily life. One example I came up with occurred at my job as a city employee at the public library. I was rather surprised when a poster of Jennifer Hudson was posted, complete with print about the benefits of weight loss was hung up on a bulletin board in our staff room. I am aware that the government is getting more on board about Americans eating healthier and exercising more, but I think Jennifer Hudson is an odd choice. She was never that big. It’s nice for her if she wanted to lose the weight, but she wasn’t morbidly obese. I was sad to see her as a weight-loss spokeswoman, because she looked fine before, and many women in America look like the old Jennifer Hudson, and there’s no problem with it. The poster made me feel self-conscious, and I thought it related back to when the article is talking about ‘”centrally desired aspiration”’ (14). Just by having this poster prominently displayed, coupled with all the images we are already subjected to everyday of thin people, I think most average people buy into the belief that they need to lose weight too. I’m not saying that we don’t have some major problems with obesity and lack of nutrition in this country. But to have our Government be putting up posters in their workplaces of a girl who wasn’t even fat made me uncomfortable.
I like the point on pages 16-17 about how Government employees are more widespread than one might initially think, for example mail deliverers, school teachers, and of course public librarians! I assume that is part of the reason this article was chosen, for many librarians (but by no means all) will be government employees. In addition, we will be acquiring, locating and in some cases, translating, information for the general public. That’s a big job- and articles like this are good reminders that our awareness needs to be raised about who’s spreading (or withholding information) and why.
Another thing the article brought up for me related to my work with the ACCESS website (where people can find out if they’re eligible for and apply for the government benefits of FoodShare, Medicaid, Family Planning Waiver, and Child Care). I have a lot of frustrations with this website, because it is not user friendly for many of the people needing to interact with it. Supposedly the language is at a fifth grade reading level, but even so, navigating it is no easy task, especially for the people who most need the most help. In a previous job I used another website run by the government, where people can apply for SSI and SSDI disability benefits, and this one was also very onerous to work with. The difficulty of accessing government services via the web makes me question if our government really cares or is even aware of different underprivileged populations. My idea would be to have those people who write the laws have to do the type of job I have, where I assist people one-one-one with these applications, so they could get a firsthand look at how frustrating this can be for all.
Also, I have met many people who told me they had no idea how to apply for government benefits. A quick Google search does turn up the website one needs to use, but many are unfamiliar with search engines, and it does require some reading comprehension to even get to the right page. I won’t speculate on if it’s deliberate or not, but it seems to me our government does not make information about where to get help very easily accessible. I hope that as librarians, we can all strive to have at least some awareness of where people can get assistance. I don’t think many public librarians would deny that more and more patrons come in to their libraries seeking help with basic needs, and we need to be prepared for that.

Week 9- Literacy in American Lives

As I have blogged about before, I assist people from a wide variety of backgrounds, and some people I help have extremely limited literacy or are completely illiterate. Often, when I have told friends or family I helped someone who couldn’t read or write, they are quite surprised, and express dismay that there are “still people” who don’t have these basic skills. To me, this is not surprising, because I see what these people are up against on a daily basis. What I liked about the book is that it shows how larger issues impact our level of literacy. Factors like economics, segregation and racism, sexism and geography all play a role in our relationships to reading and writing. Actually, I think this book really speaks to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. As human beings, we must have some basic needs met before we can get in to other areas. If someone is hungry, cold or frightened, their capacity for learning to read or write is greatly diminished.
The most interesting aspect of the book was the concept of literacy “sponsors”. Growing up middle-class in Madison with two college-educated parents, I guess my literacy sponsors were first my mom and dad, who read to me a lot and also read themselves. My schools were also literacy sponsors, as they emphasized the importance of reading and writing and I had to practice it quite often. I liked learning about other types of sponsorship, such as the church’s role in the chapter “The Power of it” about African Americans and literacy. That made me think about other ways literacy came in to my life. The only TV I really watched growing up was “Sesame Street”, “Mr. Rogers” and “Reading Rainbow” (what’s up Lavar!), and these programs emphasized reading and writing quite a lot.
Overall, I wasn’t quite as enthralled with Literacy in American lives as I thought I would be. I was never drawn in to it the way I was with “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and the way I am with “The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown”. I really liked the idea of showing how bigger issues affect our relationships with reading and writing, but, somewhat ironically, Brandt’s writing never really pulled me in too much.
As current and future librarians, I hope we can keep in mind the different starting points everyone has. We don’t all start out equal, nor do we become equal down the line. When we are building collections and designing library programs, I hope we can remember that everyone has different skill levels and interests, and that we can continually push ourselves to have libraries be a good literacy sponsor in the lives of our community members.

report from WLA

I wanted to share a little bit about WLA, which I had the privilege of attending and presenting at last week. I was a presenter on the panel “Outreach in the Libraries: A win-win for Staff and Patrons”. This was a presentation about FoodShare outreach in the public libraries, which is what I do for one of my jobs. We had a great turn-out, probably about 50 attendees (including Cindy, thank you for coming!) I was really excited about the high level of participation from the librarians. During the presentation, I asked them what types of questions they were getting about basic needs from their patrons. They told me they get questions about how to feed their children, get transportation to work, get help for domestic violence, and much more. Most were very eager to find out how to better answer these myriad of questions. Although my specific job at this point is to just help people sign up for government benefits (food stamps, health care and child care), I do many referrals to other programs and services. I would love to see more libraries have lists compiled on these programs in their area, I hope to compile one for Dane County libraries in the near future. Most librarians seemed to have no resentment for their additional role of being a social worker, and they had great questions about how to provide specific help. I felt like a lot of good, solid information was exchanged, and I think the end result will be that we can help more people who come in to the libraries.
I also attended a panel on teaching basic computer and job-searching skills to patrons. The panelists had similar experiences as myself- they often work with people who have rarely used a computer and have to be taught how to use the mouse and the keyboard before they can even think about setting up email or creating an online resume. There are many things that I can take for granted that other people don’t have- I am not the best typist nor am I the most tech-savvy person, but I do know the basics, and just with that, I am already way ahead of some of the population. I liked how we talked about this at WLA because I think it’s important to raise awareness about this population group. I am very concerned that they are falling behind and there won’t be good opportunities for them. One panelist also teaches her computer classes in Spanish. This reminded me that learning Spanish really needs to get bumped-up on my to-do list. At least once every couple weeks at work I really wished I knew Spanish, but I currently only know a few words (mostly: no hablo Espanol. Lo siento!”) So sometime in-between work, school and family/friends commitments, I need to learn Spanish!
Anyway, it was fun to be at WLA and I hope to spend more time there in the future. I will be presenting again at the Wisconsin Association of Public Libraries May, so if anyone wants to come or has questions about it, let me know. It’s in the Bahamas this year…just kidding, it’s actually in Madison. See you in class!

Week 10- Copyrighting and more

I actually had a personal experience with copyright issues in this class, with my first blog post. My posting was about how Tupac’s song “Dear Mama” had been added to the Library of Congress, and I wanted a picture to go with the posting…so I googled “Tupac photos” and scrolled through many pages until I found one I liked. Then I copied it and pasted it in to my post. Then…. Professor Rubel asked me if it was copyrighted. I looked closely and sure enough- it was. Together, we tried to find one that wasn’t copyrighted, but it seemed the only ones available were pictures drawn by the people who posted them. That wasn’t at all what I wanted, so in the end Professor Rubel said I could just keep the copyrighted one posted, but if any charges were pressed, I should leave him out of it (I officially absolve him of any wrongdoing)… It definitely got me thinking though…
Another personal experience I had with copyright issues is music checked out from the library. I used to borrow CDs, burn them to my iTunes, and listen to them on my iPod or burn CDs of my own. It seemed like a lot of people I knew did this, so I figured it was ok. But last year, I made a friend of mine a mixed CD from music I had burned. She said thank you but then she gave it back, saying she couldn’t accept stolen goods. Stolen?! I was highly offended, and told her I worked in the library where the music was from, so didn’t she think I had a right to use it how I wanted? She said “actually no, that music is copyrighted, and you’re basically stealing from the artists you claim to like so much.” I thought about this a lot and I have been erasing my stolen music ever since and replacing it with music I purchased for myself. As the article for this week talk about, it’s harder for us to see that we’re stealing when its situations like that, making copies, or even just with ideas. I mean, I would know immediately if I walked in to Macy’s and left with a bunch of clothes I didn’t pay for…but music I burned? It took me awhile to see this in the same light. In fact, it still doesn’t seem as bad to me, and I think that mindset I have is a problem.
I found the article “Who Owns Native Culture?” to be a most interesting read. I was glad to hear that the Girl Scouts were never formally charged for their campfire sing-a-alongs (58). I participated in those often as a little girl though, so that may explain my later deviant behavior in copyright infringement and music.
I had not thought of copyrights as a way “to increase public knowledge” (59), rather I had seen them as a way for artists/authors/etc to earn a living and to have a say in what of their work is distributed and how. As you can see from my personal experiences above, my conscious interactions with the concept of copyright led me to believe that copyright was all about the artist or whoever keeping control of their work… I didn’t know that basically anything you write down is automatically copyrighted (58). I don’t feel like this article did a great job explaining how copyrighting makes things more available for public access, maybe we will talk about that more in class.
I am alos not sure what to make of the issues of intellectual property, copyright and Native People’s issues after reading this article. I like the point that many Native expressions may not be in a form that can be copyrighted, for example, there is more oral story-telling or dance with some Native peoples than writing or drawing. As the author points out at the end, copyright can offer natives some “modest protection” but it definitely is not enough to usurp the structure of society…. When I think about this in terms of working in a library, I think about how as a librarian or whatever my job is in the library, I can do my small part to help the patrons with what they need. I probably won’t reorganize America’s belief system single-handedly, but I do hope to do the best job possible in each interaction. I like the concept of the ripple effect: every interaction we have is a little ripple in the universe…it’s ok to not create waves all the time, small but consistent ripples are good too!