Jacksonville FL Libraries Threatened With Major Cuts
Jun 15th
From the Florida Times Union: Six library locations would close, a day would be sliced from operations and materials would be cut if the Jacksonville Public Library is forced to find $2.4 million in reductions.
That’s the level of cuts the library would have to make if all city departments had to reduce their budgets by 13.9 percent, as requested by Mayor Alvin Brown’s office.
The library’s board of trustees voted Thursday on a plan that would shutter the Maxville, Brentwood, San Marco, Willowbranch, University Park and Beaches branches.
The closures would result in cutting about 30 positions, said Brenda Simmons-Hutchins, the chair of the library board. Last year the library cut 70 positions. Before those cuts, the library had 281 full-time employees.
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2013-06-14/story/six-jacksonville-libraries-could-shutter-under-plan-find-24-million-cuts#ixzz2WIu9KCZ4
Libraries in New York City: Why We Give a Damn & You Should Too
May 1st
Hello again, Save Libraries Kin.
Christian Zabriskie has an excellent post up on Huffington Post about saving New York City’s libraries that heartily shows how libraries -and library people- are essential and transformative. Please share it. Thank you.
NYC Use of Libraries Grows, Government Support Has Eroded
Jan 8th
New York Times blog posts loss of hours to New York City (Manhattan, Bronx & Staten Island) library branches, even though the libraries are utilized more than ever.
New York City’s libraries are open an average of 43 hours a week, about the same as a decade ago and down from a high of 47 hours. “Even the Detroit public library system stays open longer;” the report noted. Columbus’s libraries are open an average of 72 hours a week. Despite the relatively short hours, the study found, New York City’s libraries “have experienced a 40 percent spike in the number of people attending programs and a 59 percent increase in circulation over the past decade.”
San Francisco’s government contributed $101 per capita to the city’s libraries, the highest of any city in the study, while New York’s library systems all received between $30 and $40 per capita, below Seattle, Boston, Detroit and others.
Board Members Vote to Close MO Library
Sep 24th
From The Joplin Globe: SENECA, Mo. — Just days after Newton County Library Board members voted to close the Seneca library branch on Nov. 1, community leaders are rallying to reverse the decision.
“We’re starting a petition to keep the library here in Seneca,” said John Dodson, Seneca Area Chamber of Commerce president. “Anybody in the county can sign it.”
News of the closing, he said, “has been a major shocker for the entire community.”
Dodson said he plans to speak to the board during its next regular monthly meeting in October and will present the petition in hopes of reversing the board’s decision. Board members voted Tuesday to close the branch library, citing fiscal constraints.
“Just like everyone else in (Seneca), our mouths are hanging open,” said Seneca Mayor Mark Bennett. “Everyone is speechless.”
Newton County voters rejected a proposal for a 15-cent levy increase. The vote in Seneca was 175 against, with 30 in favor.
No Chance of Saving a MI Library Branch
Aug 10th
DEARBORN — Is there any way to save the closed Snow Branch Library? That was the impassioned plea of resident Steve Hammarskjold at the City Council meeting Monday.
The answer is no. The city listed the building, which was one of its four libraries, for sale in a legal notice in last Sunday’s editions of the Press & Guide Newspapers. The asking price is $590,000, and the bidding deadline is Aug. 29.
The library, 23950 Princeton at Telegraph Road, opened in 1960 and was closed Sept. 2, 2011, as part of city budget cuts. Some of the library’s collection of 35,000 to 40,000 items was transferred to Henry Ford Centennial Library and some items in the collection — along with fixtures like tables, chairs and shelves — were sold at a silent auction in April.
Report from the Press and Guide.
Voters Favored Libraries This Election Day
Nov 9th
Looks like there were a number of victories for libraries in the recent election cycle. Check out these stories:
Philadelphia teacher sets sights on Rebuilding School Libraries through Library Build
Oct 19th
The library at Rowen Elementary School in North Philadelphia is musty and outdated – a locked room used for storage and occasional meetings, a repository of yellowing, untouched books.
But Callie Hammond has big dreams for the room, whose leather-bound encyclopedias were printed in 1986, the year she was born.
Hammond sees the West Oak Lane public school as a launching pad for Library Build, a nonprofit group she recently started to renovate and staff school libraries with fellows in the Teach for America model.
The plan is to start in city elementary schools with no library. Library Build would recruit and pay library science graduates in exchange for a two-year service commitment to city schools.
“Libraries do amazing things,” said Hammond, who was a Philadelphia School District middle school teacher until she was laid off in June.
Research shows that library access matters. Students who have a library at school tend to perform better on assessments than those who do not. Libraries can encourage children to love reading and think of it not just as a chore to be handled in the classroom.
When Hammond was laid off from teaching social studies and science to nonnative English speakers at Wilson Middle School at the end of last school year, she figured it was time to work on Library Build full time.
These days, she divides her time between working on grant applications – Library Build received its first award, $10,000 from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation – and organizing the collection at Rowen. She is also studying for her master’s degree in public administration at the University of Pennsylvania.
More on this inspirational young woman from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Evolving libraries say, ‘Check us out now’
Sep 28th
Toga parties, martini meetups, stuffed-animal sleepovers and more are designed to keep book lenders relevant. The article is here.
BHAG 3.0 What’s Next?! Sustained Library Advocacy
Sep 26th
Library advocacy is not a one-time deal. Keep a good thing going: http://goo.gl/xn1NI
Great People Work in Libraries
Aug 25th
If you don’t live under a rock, you know that a minor earthquake hit the East Coast of the US earlier this week. Libraries and other facilities suffered some damage, nothing too serious thank goodness.
Here’s the story (in words and pictures) of the staff at the University of Maryland Libraries, from their flickr page.
The ground shook. The books dropped. The staff got to work.
McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland was the site of a major cleanup after more than 13,000 books fell from their shelves following a rare East Coast earthquake.
Materials also fell at other libraries on campus, including Hornbake Library and the Architecture Library.
But just more than 24 hours after the quake, all the books were on carts, ready to be evaluated and sorted. Workers separated damaged books from those ready to be reshelved.
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