"The more clearly we can focus our attention onthe wonders and realities of the universe about us,the less taste we shall have for destruction." Rachel Carson, 1954.This May will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rachel Carson. Her groundbreaking book Silent Spring spurned the modern environmental movement. She truly is the First Lady of Green.She started working for the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries during the Depression. Her tenure lasted 15 years beginning with her writing radio scripts and ending with Carson as Editor-In-Chief of all publications for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.She also wrote feature articles...
The American Library Association’s Cuban Crisis
The American Library Association (ALA) is the largest and oldest library association in the world. They pride themselves on being defenders of freedom of expression and censorship.The problem is that for years they have refused to take a stance on the brutal incarceration of Cuban librarians who were jailed "because of their courageous insistence that the people of Cuba should also have the freedom to read books the dictatorship has banned."In 2004 Nat Hentoff first wrote of the of the hypocrisy in the Village Voice.On the day in 2004 , at the ALA's mid-winter meetings, when then President Carla Hayden...
Book Blindness
A couple of weeks ago the Seventh Annual Weblog Award nominations were announced and for the seventh year in a row there wasn't a book related blog anywhere near the stage. There are categories for best food blog, best sports blog, best weblog about music, politics,entertainment and even one for best writing of a weblog but no book blogs.Now there is a new story out at Forbes called "An Exercise in Collecting". It appears in the Art & Collectibles part of the Personal Finance section.It starts off with this quote "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the...
BookWise: The Book Worlds First Pyramid Scheme
I know the book industry is changing but this one takes the cake.What is BookWise:"BookWise is a book-club / network marketing company with a structure that is not only unique to both the book and network marketing industries, but takes the best from both worlds to help our Associates build a library as well as a lucrative home business.""BookWiseTM is the brainchild of #1 bestselling author Richard Paul Evans. Shortly after Evans wrote his internationally bestselling financial book The Five Lessons A Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth, he began looking for ways for his readers to "win in...
The Newest Library Technology
It is called DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) and is now available in many libraries. It is probably one of the most important technologies currently available to libraries for reaching out to the kids they serve.Here is a clip from a DDR booth at the recent ALA Mid-Winter Meetings in Seattle:Thanks to the Shifted Librarian for the lead