The American Library Association has announced the winners for their many youth categories:

Literary Award Winners

There are more categ0ries than I remember… scanning through the lists reveals many interesting titles.

The Ohio Library Council has announced that they are canceling their annual conference due to low expectations of attendance.  The organization surveyed library directors throughout Ohio and determined that most libraries simply don’t have the funds to participate.

Is this the beginning of a slew of cancellations, or will it be limited to areas where funding is being drastically cut?  ALA 2009 apparently did well, but will smaller, regional conferences survive?

Watch for conferences to scale down, or even combine with other events, over the next couple of years in order to provide more “bang for the buck”.  If you are a speaker/presenter, look at how you might be able to benefit conferences in your area… they might need all the help they can get.

found via Save Ohio Libraries and The Limnal Librarian

From the entry form:

Walden Media wants to send YOU to the American Library Association’s Annual Conference! Enter below for a chance to win a trip for YOU and one GUEST including:

• Roundtrip Airfare to Chicago
• Ground Transportation
• Six nights at a Conference Hotel
• Conference Fees
• $200 Cash

found via LISNews

Many people have a memory of the moment they realized that Barack Obama was likely to become president.  For some, the moment came during the primaries, perhaps when they heard the speech he gave after the New Hampshire primary.

Others, and I know several who were present, will point to his announcement in Springfield, Illinois that he was running for the presidency.

There are others who will go back even further and point to his Keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

My moment was a bit more obscure, but it had to do with libraries.  I recall becoming convinced that he would run for president, and would likely win.  I expected it in 2012 or 2016 (he was early in his first-term as a U.S. senator, remember), but the past two years has been eerily like what I anticipated that day.

In June 2005, Barack Obama spoke at the American Library Association conference in Chicago, Illinois.  I can’t find a video of the speech, but the transcript is here.  I did find a discussion of his favorite book, however.

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), passed by Congress last August and due to be enforced beginning February 10th, is designed to protect children from exposure to products containing unsafe levels of lead or phthalate.  All well and good.  There has been some controversy regarding the application of the law to resale shops and such, but there now seems to be the potential for this to impact libraries in a big way.

Apparently the General Counsel of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has ruled that the law applies to public, school, academic, and museum libraries.  This means that all products designed for children under 12 years of age (think children’s books) would need to be tested or removed, or children under the age of 12 would need to be barred from visiting the library.

The American Library Association’s district office in Washington D.C. has issued a District Dispatch summarizing the issue, and they have also released a letter sent to congressional members last month requesting an exemption from the law, including a link to research done by the publishing community on the potential for exposure to these chemicals through books (which was rejected by the CPSC General Counsel).

thanks to Sia Stewart for her Facebook posting of the dispatch!

—- 10 minutes later —-

The CPSC posted a clarification yesterday that suggests that libraries might not qualify… they don’t mention libraries, and their General Counsel previously said that it does apply, but what they state does suggest an exemption.

(didn’t see this until after posting)

There is now a READ Mini Poster creation tool on the American Library Association web site which lets you upload a photo into one of four templates.  This is a neat offering, with a couple of caveats:

1. The positioning tool for the picture is very limited.  I was only able to use my facebook profile picture in two of the templates, and each still didn’t look quite right.  I have been spoiled by Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook’s Pieces of Flair (note that there is a piece of Libology flair, if you are feeling desperate for library-related buttons) and expect such niceties as mouse-controlled positioning.
2. In addition, there are no terms of use listed for these creations.  Knowing that ALA limits the use of other versions of the Read posters, I assume that they would make a specific statement regarding this on the creation page.  I wasn’t even able to load their copyright statement page, so I feel forced to go with default copyright.

These reasons are why I don’t have my newly-minted READ Mini Poster shown here.  This is a great promotional idea, if they can work out how to let us use it effectively.

thanks to Karen R. Schneiderman for posting a link to the Lex Scripta blog on Facebook!

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Update: Jenny Levine, Internet Development Specialist & Strategy Guide for the ALA (and also known as The Shifted Librarian) wrote an e-mail assuring me that “these images can be used by the person generating them for use on personal or library blogs, personal profiles, or other social networking sites.”  When the ALA updates their site next week, this will be clearly spelled out, she says.

I suspect that criticism can easily sound snarky in this medium, so I will re-iterate the dominant point from above:  this is a great promotional idea for the ALA, libraries, social media, and readers.  Check it out!

The first segment of “ALA In Focus”, an online video detailing the inner workings of various areas of the American Library Association, features Gwendolyn Prellwitz, Program Officer for the ALA Office of Diversity & Spectrum.

The video is fantastic to watch, but what has really caught my attention is the interviewer.  His name is John Chrastka, and I had the pleasure to work with him when I was the webmaster for Reaching Forward South.

John was (still is?) involved with the $39 support staff membership for ALA, which is directly tied with their efforts to recruit library-folk who happen to not-be-librarians.  This is still one of the best deals that ALA has offered, and John is a really pleasant and friendly presence.  His personality and enthusiasm really shows in the video segment.

As an additional note, videos like this are much more interesting to me than the polished, professional productions that organizations usually craft to show off their projects and people.  This truly feels like a casual conversation between two people who enjoy what they do.

found on The Shifted Librarian

The Library Salary Database (press release) from the American Library Association is an online database where you can find out what people earn in various library positions at various places in the country.

It seems like a good resource, but the ALA is charging quite a bit for access:  $250 per year for non-members and $150 per year for members.  Their “special deal” is $30 for one months access.  I could understand a reasonable fee for access if you were a non-member, but I suspect that they have obtained these figures from surveys of their membership, and to charge this much for access seems excessive.

The book format of this costs quite a bit less than database access:   between $63 and $100, depending on membership and whether you want MLS or non-MLS information.  And why does the non-MLS book cost at least $30 more?

To the ALA:  if you make this resource much more reasonably priced, perhaps making it a no-added-cost benefit for members (or perhaps even “in exchange for providing salary information”), you will find it a much more popular and respected resource.  I don’t believe it will get wide use in its present form.

from ResourceShelf