James LaRue - myliblog

Today I talked with the staff of the Kenosha (WI) Public Library about intellectual freedom issues. (Thank you, director Barb Brattin, for the opportunity!) There is a sense - not just in Kenosha - that things (our society, our norms of political contest) are changing. There are some things we thought we knew that are suddenly not so certain. So, the role of the library is .... ? I said that we should do what we have always done, what is still most urgently required: gather, organize, and present to the public the intellectual content of our culture. That content comes from several sources. Mainstream publishing has been the key pipeline for at least a generation of library users. But I also pointed out that there are now far more numerous and potentially more powerful wellsprings of content production. Small, independent, and self-publishing now completely overwhelms the 350,000 annual titles of our Big Five publishers and three or four distributors. Today, there are over 1 mi...

I've been an Earthlink customer - for home internet, for home networking, for web hosting - since 2002. But for the past few months, I've been unhappy with that relationship. The big problem was that my DSL connection just started pooping out. I called it in, spent lots of time troubleshooting it, and even replaced the modem. I could never get EarthLink to even admit that there was a problem. Nonetheless, the internet connection became unusable. As far as web hosting is concerned, things have gotten cheaper. $10 a month wasn't bad, but some folks charge half that or less. I bought a domain name, jlarue.com, a long time ago, through another company. Then, a few years back, I moved to Google for email, which required some odd gyrations with EarthLink mail server settings. Then I got to thinking: my website had been whittled down to a few links and just a little text. Why not just move that content over to my blog, and make my blog the website? Advantages: the ...

I've created this post for folks who bring me in as a speaker. Typically, they want three things: a brief biography/blurb, a photo, and a description of the session I'm giving. Here's the blurb: LaRue is the former executive director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom , and the Freedom to Read Foundation . Author of " The New Inquisition : Understanding and Managing Intellectual Freedom Challenges," LaRue was a public library director for many years (including a 24 year tenure as director of the Douglas County Libraries in Colorado), as well as a weekly newspaper columnist and cable TV host. He has written, spoken, and consulted on leadership and organizational development, community engagement, and the future of libraries. Photo The session description, of course, varies! Contact information: Please direct all communications to jlarue [at] jlarue [dot] com. Phone: 7 2 0 . 5 3 0 . 4 2 9 4 No spam, please! ...