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.  

 

 

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. 

   

 

In the Archives

Tess Taylor. "In the Archives: Susan Howe's New Poems Paste Together Collages from Old Letters, Manuscripts and Concordances." New York Times Book Review, August 2, 2020, p. 18

When do we risk happiness? When do we risk encounter? How can reading offer those things now?  Howe's books may accompany you in these questions.  They may also make you long for the smell of libraries, for the humming quiet of reading rooms, the gentle rustle of others turning pages, too.  Howe writes against a world that disappears too far away online, in which we lose the bodily perception of space, the tenderness of touch.  In this era of social distancing, I felt the prick of these poems: They urged me towards aliveness.

 COMMENT

Howe's collage poems evoke a sensory experience of the library as place.  "We need to see and touch objects and documents," Howe writes, and the reviewer agrees.

Readers Have Many Opinions on How to Cull Your Book Collection

Stephanie Merry. "Readers Have Many Opinions on How to Cull Your Book Collection and Also Why You Never Should." Washington Post. August 2, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/readers-have-many-opinions-on-how-to-cull-your-book-collection--and-also-why-you-never-should/2020/07/31/c5a6d044-d26f-11ea-8c55-61e7fa5e82ab_story.html

It’s a dilemma all collectors of books face at one time or another,” writes commenter RBSchultz. “When I last moved, I gave away to the local library my vast collection of World War II and Vietnam War books so that others might enjoy them. After I moved, I decided that my collection of photography books was too heavy and large in volume. These went to my local Friends of the San Francisco Library where the sale proceeds supported the library. My vast collection of polar and mountaineering books will ultimately go to auction.

...

When Jacques Caillault complained that the local library had no interest in a personal library, commenter gareilly offered some helpful alternatives:
“I don’t suppose you would be willing to ship your books here, to The Friends of the Temple Public Library, in Temple Texas. When our world isn’t falling apart, we have two sales a year of donated books. The money funds a book mobile (we are saving to buy a second one), kid and adult programs in the library and special needs, such as installing a “Free Little Library” at a local elementary school. If you aren’t willing to reward us with your stash, search online for a library group closer to home. Talk to them, not the main librarian, who probably has more on their plate than we know. A volunteer group would have the members to sort your stash. Once, we got thousands of books from a chess master who passed on. That donation, properly marketed brought our group thousands of dollars, but I am sure the head librarian would have turned it down if she’d seen the specialty chess books in the collection. Our group had the resources and time to make sure those books found good homes.”

COMMENT

     Libraries that accept donations and hold book sales perform an essential public service.  People who like to read inevitably acquire too many books.  The books have to go someplace. 

    With Friends of the Library providing volunteer help, book sales can help with funding. However, many librarians, overly focused on money, have failed to grasp the public service aspect of accepting book donations.  The librarian prejudice against book sales is so strong that one such volunteer suggests avoiding the librarians all together.  

Follow the Science. Back to the Classroom

Dale R. Wagner.  "Follow the Science. Back to the Classroom." Salt Lake Tribune, July 22, 2020.  https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2020/07/22/dale-r-wagner-follow/

     There is no shortage of legitimate peer-reviewed research on the topic. Combining the search terms “COVID-19” with “children” and “school closure” resulted in 143 articles in PubMed, a database of the National Library of Medicine. The journal citations that accompany my statements are “open access,” meaning that anyone can view the article online in its entirety without a fee or journal subscription.

     

 COMMENT

     In this editorial the author is using open-access articles in scholarly journals to consider COVID-19 studies.  Many journals have made COVID-19 research publicly available, at least temporarily.  The National Library of Medicine maintains the database that makes these articles easy to find. 

On Moral Injury

Janine di Giovanni, "On Moral Injury," Harper's Magazine, August 2020, pp. 65-69.

     He knew that soldiers returning from active combat suffered from PTSD, but he'd never heard of a conflict reporter suffering similar symptoms. He asked his research team to compile studies that might provide precedents, but they came back empty-handed.

     They told me there was nothing published on the topic," Feinstein recalled  "I didn't believe them. Because in medicine there is always something that comes before you."

     But the University of Toronto's medical library did not have a single study on the subject.  Feinstein was baffled: there was extensive scientific data on firefighters, police officers, soldiers, and victims of sexual assault, but a void when it came to reporters. 

COMMENT

    Psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein is looking for studies that link war journalism to PTSD.  The search turns up a void which guides his research into "moral injury" caused by witnessing a situation where people are in trouble and failing to help. It seems like a failure when there is nothing the library because patrons want to find an answer, but librarians know that a gap in research is also an opportunity for a PhD or scholarly publication.   The trick is to be good enough at searching to feel confident that the knowledge gap is real and not an artifact of sloppy information research. 

     

The Chekhov of Suburban Connecticut

Gal Beckerman, "The Chekhov of Suburban Connecticut," New York Times Book Review, July 12, 2020 p. 14.

     So deep is my remembered shame that men now, sitting at my keyboard at the age of 43, I'm blushing.  I know that times have changed, that today boys can like whatever they like, are even applauded for it.  But in the 1980's, when it seemed the only real option s for me were "The Hobbit" or the Hardy Boys or choose Your Own Adventure books, stories that as I recall all involved dragons and trap doors and motorcycle chases, sneaking home one of Ann Martin's books about a group of 12-year-old girls from fictional Stoneybrook, Conn., felt like a crime.  I mean, all of the covers were pastel. 

     It was a moment.  I think I read the first 15 books in the series over the course of fourth grade; whatever was in my school's library-- and I certainly didn't share my enthusiasm then with another soul.

 

 COMMENT

     The division between "boy books" and "girl books" is remembered as a shameful enthusiasm for books in "The Babysitters Club" series.  Luckily, these books were available from the school library.  How a 9-year-old boy worked up the nerve to check them out, the author does not say.