Library Liberty
The library, with a partially respectful nod to the SC’s recent partial protection of Habeas Corpus, might be the last functional democratic institution around. Serves the demos, check. Equality, check. Transparency, check. Meritocratic, check. You get the point.
But, check this. Librarians subvert, like founding fathers but different imperials and less with the slavery and Caucasian patriarchy. They actually care about information and an informed, civil society, that is, news. I mean real news: the stuff that “they” don’t want you to know, and not the standard gossip columns, celeb reviews, and adverts that are sold between commercials at 6, 10 and now at 11 as well. News about the restriction of news just doesn’t seem to make it on the telly so much.
Back to the librarians. The American Library Association has a commando called the Intellectual Freedom Committee. Unlike most committees, this one doesn’t suck. Instead, it puts out a Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom–a real news source. You just probably never heard of it because it is a real news source and thus non-profitable and sometimes embarrassing to the point of being anti-profitable and thus democratic. This library has this title in current periodicals @ Z1.N7400 or for you Law folks out there, click here to get started.
This is just one little tidbit of the system busting stuff that lives in the Library. Don’t tell anyone, because if the word gets out, the rules might change and information might not flow anymore…say in something called the Patriot Act…
New Journalism?
Rebecca’s post and its ideas about how the ways we read and think may be changing led me to want to share a recent article about how journalism is changing in these ways too. It focuses specifically on the figure of media blogger Jim Romensko, and it’s written by Howell Raines. One quote really stuck out to me:
Newspaper publishers assumed that even if the printing press disappeared, the internet would still have an insatiable need for their basic product-verified facts, hierarchically arranged by importance. But Romenesko’s rapid growth showed that even newsrooms are part of the emerging market for an unprocessed sprawl of information, delivered immediately and with as few filters as possible between the fingertips of one laptop user and the eyeballs of another. In short, it’s not technology per se that’s killing newspapers; it’s plummeting demand for quality information.What do you think? Sometimes I worry that I too, have developed a taste for new, unverified and immediate information-I feel panicked by the thought that something hugely significant could be happening that I have no idea of, but I must find out about it right away. Or do you think that Raines has a biased (and possibly bitter) view? Roy Harris, author of Pulitzer’s Gold spoke about the history of public service journalism this spring, as part of the Library’s Meet the Author Series. He specifically talks about Howell Raines, Gerald Boyd and the Jason Blair scandal.
In the Woods and other fun stuff
I just recently finished the fairly new book, In the Woods by Tana French. I had seen this book displayed in a Barnes and Noble, read the synopses, and immediately felt the need to read it. It had a very promising plot line: In 1984, three 12-year-old friends go missing in the woods of Knocknaree, Ireland. One boy is found clinging to a tree with blood in his shoes and no memory of what happened to himself and his friends. His two friends were never found. The book takes place over 20 years later where this boy is now a 30-something detective who gets assigned to a murder case in Knocknaree. There are pieces of evidence found that connect back to his 1984 case. The detective struggles throughout the book with trying to remember the events that happened in the woods, as well as struggling with his current difficult case.
This book had suspense, an intricate plot, poetic language, and… the worst ending I have ever read. Without giving away too much detail, the worst thing you can do to a character as a writer-worst than killing them off- is set them up to be a very real, human, compassionate character that is very identifiable to the reader. Then, make their life completely miserable and end the book without any hope or resolution for the reader to hold onto, “Sorry, but that’s the way life goes sometimes. You can’t always get what you want!” This is exactly what French did with this book and I was left feeling extremely empty at the end.
If you (for some reason) feel a desire to read this book, we unfortunately do not have this book at Snell Library. I didn’t want to pay the $14 at Barnes and Noble, so I ordered it through the Virtual Catalog.
As I promised in a previous post on library school, I will post my websites for all to see with the same warning: I am not a very good website-maker!
Tricia’s Writing
And as a bonus, my final site for the same Web Design class!:
All About Fred!
Changing Reading Habits?
I just read an interesting piece from the latest Atlantic Monthly, entitled Is Google Making Us Stupid? The author, Nicholas Carr, observes that he and colleagues have all noticed a change in their reading habits — an inability to concentrate or focus when reading texts longer than a page or two. I’ve noticed this myself — I’ve become far more distractible when reading, especially when reading online, where I may link from article to article without ever finishing one. Or I may skip one entirely, dismissing it as “too long,” if it involves more than one full scrolling of the screen. When and how did this happen? Since when is a two-page article “too long”? It bothers me that I find it so difficult to sit down and pay attention to a book for any length of time these days (unless it’s a really compelling book, and I do still find some of those around, luckily) — I’m a librarian, after all! 🙂 Have others noticed this phenomenon? Does it bother you, and if so, have you found ways to overcome it? (And if it doesn’t bother you, why not?)