Showing posts with label Public Libraries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Public Libraries. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Inequality was Never so Visible as in 2020

Emily Badger. Inequality was Never so Visible as in 2020.  What did we Learn? New York Times, December 29, 2020. B3.

Americans also stopped broadly sharing libraries, movie theaters, train stations and public school classrooms, the spaces that sill created common experience in increasingly unequal communities. Even the D.M.S., with its cross-section of life in a single room, wasn't that any more. 

 COMMENT

     Libraries are a place where people from different socio-economic classes can mingle on an equal basis. The article describes how COVID has shut down such interactions so that some people are in a privileged bubble while others are doing low-paid, insecure work to deliver goods and services to the privileged.

Saturday, November 7, 2020

Wisconsin Suburb Misjudged Housing Complex

 John Eligon. Wisconsin Suburb Misjudged Housing Complex: Affordable Unites Challenge Basis of Trump Pitch. New York Times, November 5, 2020, p. A13.


     The story of the fight over affordable housing in New Berlin, a deeply conservative suburb about 15 miles southwest of Milwaukee, challenges a key pitch made by President Trump to voters in the suburbs -- that "low-income" housing invites crime and hurts property values.

     The reality in New Berlin is that the mixed-income development, surrounded by a pond, a farmers' market and a library, is "really rather attractive" said Mayor Dave Ament, who is white and staunchly opposed the project as a alderman a decade ago. 

COMMENT

   Trump voters in a white suburb were terrified that "those people" would move into their neighborhood.  They believed that they had  "worked hard" to live in a segregated neighborhood and didn't want to offer a "handout" to Black people.  In reality, the new housing development was affordable for low-income working people, and it offered new amenities that improved the neighborhood including a library.  In fact, libraries contribute to education and economic opportunity for people who grow up near them.  Whether they know it or not, the proximity of a new library almost certainly improved future earnings for the children of the people who didn't want it built.


Tuesday, November 3, 2020

This Election, Mom Knows Best

 Bret Stephens. This Election, Mom Knows Best. New York Times.  Nov. 3, 2020. p.A31.


The culture that's been cheapened is the one she encountered in midcentury America.  She learned English by reading Archie and Jughead comics, then Nancy Drew mysteries at a New York public library.  In high school, Theodore Dreiser ("barely literate, but a great writer") awakened her to the power of socially engaged literature, as did John Steinbeck.  Her movie crushes were Gary Cooper in "High Noon" and Robert Taylor in "Quo Vadis."

COMMENT

She is the author's grandmother Xenia who immigrated from Russia in 1950 at age 10.  Children's literature at the  library became a way for her to adapt to her new home. Comics and Nancy Drew were a gateway for high school literature. 

Sunday, November 1, 2020

Campaign 2020: Let's Never do this Again

 Matt Flegenheimer, "Campaign 2020: Let's Never Do this Again." New York Times. Nov. 1, 2020, p. A26-27.

     Outside Florida's South Dade Regional Library -- where those casting ballots last weekend were greeted with a steel drum band covering Bob Marley and several pop-up cafecito stations-- Dennis Valdes, 36, had constructed a tent intended to attract eve the leeriest voter with balloons, snacks and "patriotic punch," spiked for those of age.


COMMENT

The library has become a polling place with an associated carnival atmosphere.  

 


 

Friday, August 28, 2020

When 'Back to School' Means a Parking Lot and the Hunt for a WiFi Signal



Petula Dvorak, "When ‘back to school’ means a parking lot and the hunt for a WiFi signal". Washington Post, August 27, 2020. [online]

Kids are gathering in the parking lots outside schools, county libraries, McDonald’s and Starbucks.

From the hill and holler of rural America to urban cityscapes, this is the new back-to-school scene for some of about 12 million kids who don’t have the broadband Internet power to get to virtual class, now that the pandemic has shut down most in-person schools.

...

Schools are trying. North Carolina is fitting idle school buses with power hotspots and dispatching them to parking lots kids can get to. A doctor in Greenup, Ky., offered the parking lot outside her medical office to students who need broadband access. Libraries are inviting students to crib off their signals.


COMMENT

    Before the pandemic, articles portrayed  going to the library as a second-rate option for home internet.  With the pandemic, you can't even sit in the library-- you have to get the signal out in the parking lot.  The root of he problem is, instead of treating internet like a utility, it has been privatized.  All of a sudden, an unstable wifi hotspot that used to be good enough can't handle all-day zooming and kids can't go to school. 

   

 

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Greeting the Future, Gingerly, With Mortarboards and Masks

John Branch and Campbell Robertson, "Greeting the Future, Gingerly, With Mortarboards and Masks." New York Times, May 31, 2020, p. 1

     Charlie Forster was at the library one afternoon in March when he ran into a friend from Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh
     "I was like, 'Do you want to come over to my house?'" he said, "So we took the bus home and made grilled cheeses and watched that movie 'Her'" which explores isolation and relationships nurtured via electronic devices.
     Little did he know that the coronavirus that was spreading accross the country would give him and his friends their own lesson in being along. 
COMMENT

In this library tale we don't know why Charlie went to the library, but we do know that it turned into a social encounter with a friend he might not have though to contact via social media.  The library functions as a physical community space where people can run into each other.

Ask Ann Cannon

Ann Cannon, "Ask Ann Cannon." Salt Lake Tribune, 5/31/2020 p. D6.

Dear Ann Cannon,
I find that during this time of social distancing, one of the activities I miss most is visiting the library. Any suggestions for borrowing books? Not e-books, not audio book, real books.
COMMENT 

I know advice columnist Ann Cannon is a book lover because last time I ran into her it was at the King's English bookshop.  I also miss the library.  We've had the same books checked out for 3 months now, and we've already read them.  During the pandemic I used the online New York Times at the public library and  some research databases at an academic library, but I've been buying books with my stimulus check because I can barely concentrate on reading at all these days, much less online reading. 

Saturday, April 4, 2020

The Needy Will Face Obstacles to Getting Stimulus Payments

Ron Lieber and Alan Rappeport, "The Needy Will Face Obstacles to Getting Stimulus Payments," New York Times, April 3, 2020, B6

     Filing even the simplest of returns could pose challenges during a pandemic.  The I.R.S. does have a free filing site, but those who lack internet access could be unable to use it because nonprofits, libraries and other places are closed. 
COMMENT

     People with no internet or devices are dependent on shared public equipment.  That means they need to go to the library in order to file a tax return.  When libraries are closed, there is no place to file online or even to print out paper tax forms.   COVID 19 has brought the digital divide into stark focus since people who have not filed tax returns will also need to file online to get COVID relief checks.  With libraries closed, where will they do that?
 
    The situation has raised the call for internet as a public utility, but that still wouldn't assure access for everyone.  There still needs to be a public option for internet connections and working devices, and that has mainly turned out to be libraries.




Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Locked Out of the Virtual Classroom


New York Times Editorial Board, Locked Out of the Virtual Classroom, New York Times, March 27, 2020. Online.

     Jessica Rosenworcel, a Federal Communications Commission member who has been proselytizing on this issue for several years, has rightly called on the F.C.C. to use funds earmarked for connecting schools and libraries to the internet to provide schools with internet hot spots that could be lent to students.

     Commissioner Rosenworcel’s access plan focuses on expanding the federal program known as E-Rate, which helps qualifying schools, school systems and libraries acquire broadband at up to a 90 percent discount. E-Rate program funding is based on demand, up to an annual F.C.C.-established cap of $4.15 billion. It would be a simple matter for the commission to extend the program so that schools can buy hot spots that are then distributed to needy students.
     But given the dire need in poor and rural communities, it would also be right to leverage E-Rate — or something like it — to bring permanent broadband into homes for millions of internet-deprived schoolchildren and subsistence workers.

COMMENT

     Schools and libraries are trying to compensate for a digital divide that means some people have fast Internet access and some don't.  They aren't getting much support, possibly because they seem to be a stopgap when the real goal is to get everyone fast internet access from home.  
     Internet would help people get connected since smartphones seem ubiquitous.  However,  the barrier isn't just the Internet connection-- it's also having a device to do homework on, and maybe a printer.  At my house three people share one laptop.  We don't own a printer because we used to be able to go to the library when we needed to print.  Electronic devices become obsolete very, very quickly.  An additional burden on people too poor for Internet is, how will they continue to upgrade their devices?   The global trend seems to be that the ubiquitous computer is a smartphone.  Will poor students end up trying to write term papers on their phones?

     

Sunday, March 22, 2020

To the Editor

Kathryn L. Harris, "To the Editor" New York Times, March 22, 2020, p. 8SR.

     Because of the coronavirus, two of the most enduring institutions in my life are also closed; the library and the church.  I am a writer. Since the library is closed, I can't check out books, consult with library staff or use the internet.  Without the church, I can't enjoy fellowship with other congregants, listen to heavenly spiritual music, or hear the preacher preach. 

COMMENT

   Loss of access to the library is catastrophic for a writer who relies on its resources.  As people are quarantined for the coronavirus pandemic, those who relied on library internet have been completely cut off.  This writer makes a comparison between  the library and  her spiritual practice as similarly important to living a good life.

Monday, March 16, 2020

Dream Worlds

Dream Worlds: N.K. Jemisin's Inventive Sci-Fi Defies Convention and Sells Millions of Books, New Yorker  January 27, 2020, pp 18-24.

Science fiction appealed to her at a young age.  Little about her real life was cohesive, but imagined worlds could be complete, self-contained, and bound by logic. I saw 'Star Wars' when it came out, because I was a creepy, obsessed space child," she told me.  Later she mined her local library for science-fiction novels; she covered the books in paper so that she could read them in class.

 COMMENT

     Young Jemisin wants to be a comic book artist and has to hide behind the school to exchange comic books with her white friends.  She seems to have felt a bit embarrassed about her reading preferences, but the comics and sci-fi had a powerful draw. At the time Star Wars came out, libraries didn't have comic books, but they do now.  Instead of hiding behind the school, kids can get comics from the shelves and go to comic conventions to geek out together.

   The library's sci-fi book collection inspired this author to write books that  earned three Hugo Awards -- not a bad investment in the future.

Sunday, March 1, 2020

My Ex-Boyfriend's New Girlfriend is Lady Gaga

Lindsay Crouse, "My Ex-Boyfriend's New Girlfriend is Lady Gaga," New York Times, March 1, 2020, p. 4.

     Page six produced a deep dive into Lady Gaga's new "mystery man,."  Refinery29 announced that Gaga was "wearing 2020's hottest new accessory: a normal boyfriend."  The story appeared in the Daily Mail, and Business insider and People, where my mother read about the couple after checking the magazine out from the local library
     I dated this normal, mystery man for seven years.  Our relationship lasted all of college, and then a few years more. (A popular song from back then described being "caught in a bad romance.")
      As you can guess from the fact that you've probably never heard of me, I'm not famous. 

COMMENT

    The article descries celebrity gossip spread on the Internet, though the author's mother is still old-fashioned enough to check People out of the library. And  People is still publishing a print edition despite the instant celebrity-gawking on the Web.  I know because sometimes I look at it while I'm waiting at the car mechanic's.  Those magazines are often several years old and do something the Internet doesn't.  They are an archive that reminds you of old, out of date celebrity gossip.   I hope there is a library somewhere saving them.

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Teaching Children in the Bible Belt How to Reverse an Overdose

Dan Levin, "Teaching Children in the Bible Belt How to Reverse an Overdose," New York Times, February 24, 2020, p. A1-

     Shortly after his first-grade class let out for the day, Nash Kitchens sat with a dozen other young children at a library and played a murder mystery game that had a surprising plot twist.
     The victim was a restaurant worker who had been found dead in a freezer.  The killer, the children would discover, was heroin laced with fentanyl, an often fatal opioid.
   Nash, who at 7 years old has a relative who has struggled with addiction, was wide-eyed as Jilian Reece, a drug prevention educator, talked about an ongoing opioid epidemic in their small rural community.  She then demonstrated how to administer Narcan, an overdose reversal nasal spray. 
 COMMENT

    Since the public library is also a community center it is normal to host all kinds of unlikely events.  Even so, teaching little kids how to deal with an overdose seems unusually gritty. 

Thursday, February 20, 2020

Read Deeper

Seth Douglas, "Read Deeper," [letter], High Country News, v.52 no.3, Much 2020, p. 6.

Having read Mary Slosson's review of Deep River ("Wading into murky waters," 11/11/19), I picked up the novel from my local library against my better judgment.  Imagine my surprise when I found, in lieu of the reactionary, stereotype-laden, and politically tone-deaf work described by Slosson, a novel focused on the struggles of working people in the Northwest at the turn of the century.

COMMENT

   A library card lets you try books you might not like.  The negative review was still interesting enough so that this reader borrowed the book, and he loved it.

Monday, February 17, 2020

Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed [By the Book], New York Times Book Review, Feb. 16, 2020, p. 8.
About 20 years ago my husband, Brian, and I were in Antigua, Guatemala, when I became desperately ill with a stomach parasite.  For days, I could do nothing but lie in bed in the cheap hotel where we had a room.  Brian found an English-language lending library nearby that would allow you to check out two books at a time for a small fee.  He brought back the first two installments of Stephen King's serialized novel, "The Green Mile," and read them out loud to me.  When we were done, he returned them and checked out the next tow and so on until we'd gotten through all six.  Brian and I have a long history of reading books out loud to watch other, but that one was especially bonding.  His steady voice guided me back to life.
...
In elementary school, they used to hand out catalogs form the Scholastic publishing company that allowed you to order books that would then be delivered to you at school.  I'd study those catalogs for hours and meticulously fill out the order form on the back, as if I could buy them.  But I couldn't.  I never turned in the forms because my family was too poor to pay for the books.  It's such a visceral memory, aching for those books!  The public libraries and school libraries saved me, as did my mother's bookshelf.  I read everything that looked even a little bit interesting. 

COMMENT

 Not one but two library stories.  The first is about the relief of finding English books in a non-English country.  It helps to understand what a relief it mush be for people with non-English first languages to find non-English books in American libraries.

In the second story, a young reader is too poor to buy cheap paperbacks from the Scholastic catalog.  when I was a kid I was allowed to order books and I absolutely loved getting my new stack of them.  The books where printed on acidic paper and fell apart if you read them too many times, but that was mostly OK because the old ones quickly became too childish.

Saturday, February 15, 2020

Downriver






Heather Hansman, Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West, 2019. 
Life in Vernal ticks by hot and slow.  I eat gas-station burritos, drink weak Utah beer, and run the mountain-bike trails outside of town at dusk, when it gets cool enough to move in the desert.  I camp on chalky flats of BLM land alongside the river and spend a lot of time in the air-conditioned public library and recreation center, which both seem unnecessarily big and glossy for a town this scratchy. [p.104]

COMMENT

   The author is writing a book about the Green River, but she says she goes to the library for the air conditioning.   Though she is camping recreationally, her need for a cool-shelter is essentially the same as is experienced by homeless people.  The library is a benefit of boom-and-bust oil and gas money, but this was written during a bust. 



Tuesday, February 4, 2020

The Cancer Chair

Christian Wiman, "The Cancer Chair: is Suffering Meaningless?" Harper's Magazine, February 2020, pp. 51-57.
Frustrated with the line between life and literature, Svetlana Alexievich sought a form that fused the two.  From interviews, letters, bits of history that History did not want, she complied The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II, which I once picked off a library cart while my daughters searched for graphic novels.  That's where I learned about the radio operator drowning her own infant.  And the "sniper girls" who, as they became more expert at death, found themselves more susceptible to love.  And the woman who, among all the atrocities, thought nothing so awful as the neighing of wounded horses ("They're not guilty of anything, they don't answer for human deeds.").

COMMENT

      By serendipity, the author discovers horrifying tales of suffering in the safe space of the library where his kids are looking for something fun to read.  He teaches a course for divinity students on the Book of Job and the nature of human suffering, so had a predilection towards this sort of reading.  Nonetheless, without the library cart he might never have found this particular book with it's haunting stories.

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

American Dirt is Proof that the Publishing Industry is Broken


David Bowles, "American Dirt is Proof that the Publishing Industry is Broken, New York Times,  January 27, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/opinion/american-dirt-book.html

     The white saviorism is tough for me to swallow, and not just because I’m a Chicano writer critical of “American Dirt.” My hometown library was chosen in late 2019 to be part of a pilot partnership between Oprah’s Book Club, the American Library Association and local library book groups. The libraries would receive several boxes of books to use with patrons in their book club, as well as other discussion and promotional materials. 
     Last week I was in touch with Kate Horan, the director of the McAllen Public Library here, via phone and email. She told me she felt “excited and honored” by the news, “proud that our library on the border with Mexico was recognized and selected to be part of a new initiative.”
     No one at the library knew which book had been selected: Ms. Winfrey keeps titles a tightly guarded secret. But Ms. Horan was told that it would be “the most talked about book of the year.” Instructions were given: Upon arrival of the shipment, the library should film an “unboxing” video and submit it to Ms. Winfrey.
     The boxes arrived on Jan. 17. Upon opening them, Ms. Horan said, her “heart sank,” and she immediately recoiled at this “deliberate assumption that libraries on the border, who were selected to receive the books, would be automatic endorsers, given the subject matter.”
     She sent the unboxing video off, and after two agonizing days consulting with her predominantly Latinx staff and others, she decided to send the books back, and politely declined to participate in the pilot program.

COMMENT

   This is a sticky issue and not as simple as the op-ed writer wants it to be. Accusations of "cultural appropriation" seem to me to be a red herring.  The real problem with the "American Dirt"  seems to be that it has been heavily marketed as your next book club read yet according to to the critics (who all dutifully reviewed it), it's not actually very well researched or written.

    In many of the library stories I've collected on this blog, readers describe a transformative experience of finding people like themselves in the pages of library books.  It's a reasonable guess that people in the U.S. borderlands might enjoy reading a novel located there. At the same time, I remember hearing a librarian complain that when she gathered books for imprisoned black men people would donate "Black Like Me," which is actually an autobiography about a white man traveling through the South in blackface, albeit with an intention for the reader to develop empathy for "the other."   The publishers who promoted "American Dirt" similarly thought the novel might promote white empathy by focusing on a Mexican woman who is a lot like a middle class white American woman. The virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from the Trump administration  suggests that now might be the right moment for such a novel.    Positive reviews on Amazon.com indicate that it might even be successful in generating empathy for migrants.  

     Should the librarian have sent the books back?  I assume that the library does offer "American Dirt" for anyone who wants to borrow it.  It's certainly not censorship to pick a different book for a book club.  I agree with the op-ed, though, that the misstep reveals a big problem with centralized book publishing and library acquisitions.  The publisher's marketing division, Oprah's Book Club and ALA missed the mark largely because nobody working there stopped to think that Latinx readers were never the target audience for this book. In fact, it seems unlikely that Oprah (a Black woman originally from Mississippi) is ever going to develop a reading list that is particularly sensitive to U.S. borderlands readers.  The reaction of Latinx library staff suggest that they would really love to have a book club that highlights their own region, featuring  people and situations that are more like their own experience instead of getting stereotyped by someone far away.  That's exactly why libraries need to pick their own books instead of outsourcing those decisions.

I've actually written an article about this:  "Re-Localizing the Library: Considerations for the Anthropocene
  

   

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Larry Kramer

Larry Kramer [By the Book], New York Times Book Review, January 19, 2020.

What kind of reader were you as a child?  Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?
As a kid I as a voracious visitor to Washington's main public library. I loved reading plays that Arena Stage performed across the street.  Plays were more fun to read then.  I also loved the Hardy boys and Nancy Drew series.  Nancy was more fun.

COMMENT

    Hardy boys and Nancy Drew are standard choices, but the plays are not.  It's actually quite difficult to read plays and imagine what they might look like on stage.  Perhaps the fact that Kramer had already seen the plays was helpful.  It must have been fascinating to a kid that you could watch a play and then go across the street to read the source material.




Monday, January 13, 2020

Lessons from 4,800 Pages of History

Dana Goldstein, "Lessons from 4,800 Pages of History," New York Times, January 13, 2020, p. A2.

     About midway through my reporting process, I spent an afternoon at the New York Public Library.  There I reviewed American history textbooks from the 1950s and 1960s.  Their racism in depicting African-Americans, Chinese immigrants and Mexican-Americans  was overt, a reminder of the vastly different history educations received by today's adults-- all of whom, from Generation Z to the Greatest Generation, will be eligible to vote in November 2020.
     It was a reminder that the historical stories we tell have a profound impact on the world. 
COMMENT

    This article describes the research process for a newspaper article about differences in history textbooks used in Texas and California.  
     At the library the author consults  out-of-date textbooks, a kind of material that many librarians would weed without a second thought, particularly since they promote a kind of overt racism that would be entirely inappropriate in the contemporary classroom.  However, the books are valuable precisely because they demonstrate pedagogical history and changing attitudes.   The writer believes that knowledge of history informs voting and civic engagement,  with the implication that the racism taught in the classrooms of the past may have created a cohort of racist voters.   If we threw those outdated books away it would be hard to remember how kids learned history so many decades ago.