James LaRue - myliblog

Here is the article that tells the tale. I find myself wondering about this issue of "accountability." Suppose (just hypothetically) that Commissioner Repella were to cast the deciding vote on the appointment of a really bad board member. How does the "elected official component" make the situation more accountable? Commissioner Repella is term limited. To show public displeasure against that decision, no one can vote against her for Commissioner next time, because she can't run. And with the many other issues that Commissioners are tasked with, won't library issues tend to get lost in the cloud? If being an elected official just means that people can speak up at public meetings to the decision-makers, the public can do that at library board meetings, too. But also, see this news article from 2011, in which then local Republican Party Chairman Mark Baisley said that "he was approached by a person running for a local utilities board. He says they...

Give ’em What They Want? This is my response to Brian Kenney's piece.

Here's the first article , covering the attempt to take back the nominating process from the Trustees. Here's the second article , covering the meeting between the two bodies. And finally, I have appended the text of the Trustees' guest column to the Douglas County News Press(appearing on page 9 of the March 14, 2013 edition). The Douglas County Libraries, a library district (and like the county, a subdivision of the state), was established by a vote of the citizens in 1990. At that time, the County Commissioners granted to the new Library Board of Trustees (first by InterGovernmental Agreement, and in 2001 by resolution) the right to nominate its own members. The commissioners have always been the final appointing authority. That arrangement isn't uncommon, although there are several variations around the state. There are no elected library boards in Colorado, and appointing authorities often hand over the nominating process. But library law is explicit about...

An article was referred to me from " Beyond the Bookcast ." It's interesting to hear (see the previous link for the podcast) what the folks from Publishers Weekly made of ALA's midwinter. On the whole, I agreed with them: things are looking up. But having thought about this some more, I think there's something really new here. The commentators "got" what we're doing with the DCL Model. The creation of our own infrastructure, our launching of direct negotiations with publishers, our securing of significant discounts, all reveal a fundamental shift in the market. Once we put together our system, and realized that the independent publishers and the self-published authors weren't available to us at any price through the usual suspects of Baker and Taylor, Ingrams, or 3M, we realized that we had cut out the middle man . And having done that, why not go direct to more mainstream publishers? After all, we were using the same technologies as the dist...

This is from my phone, back at ALA's midwinter meeting. I just happened to look up just as the sky cleared. It looked, and still does look, surreal.

Recently Suzanne found a folder that contained photocopies and printouts of a lot of my older writings. I just spent a while reading them through. Examples: "The ALL-OUT Library: a design for computer-powered, multidimensional services," my first professional piece, co-written with Jim Sleeth. He was then the assistant director at Lincoln Library, Springfield, IL's public library. I was the circulation department head. The article talked about a schema to adapt bibliographic records to include information about newspapers, community organization, and library events and programs. American Libraries , October 1983, pp. 594-596. "Sending them a message: Electronic Bulletin Boards," was my next big one, and marked my introduction to the late, lamented Wilson Library Bulletin . By then I was the assistant director of Lincoln Library. (Jim had gone off to be the director of the Steele Memorial Library in Elmira, NY, from which he has now retired after transformi...

You've written a book. You want it to be in your local public library. Why? Because you want to be read, and libraries are where the readers are. After all, collecting books - gathering, organizing, and publicly presenting the intellectual content of our culture - is what libraries do. So all you should have to do is swing by the library, drop off your book (they might even buy it from you), and the next thing you know, the public will be clamoring for more copies. Wouldn't it be nice if things worked like that? The job of the library: a history Because, of course, they don't. But before I get into how you should approach your local library, let me give you a little history. When public libraries first caught on (at the end of the 19th century), they were cast by civic leaders as serious sanctuaries of learning, places where intelligent laypeople could sit quietly, contemplate Great Literature, and stay abreast of the important political issues of the day. Earl...