Support your school librarian March 21, 2007
Posted by Laura Pearle in : Hot Topics , 2 commentsThere’s been a bit of a kerfluffle about American Libraries and school librarians. Specifically, a perceived editorial bias against reporting on what’s going on in school libraries and with school librarians.
Doug Johnson wrote:
Open letter to Lenonard Kniffel, Editor of ALA’s American Libraries (americanlibraries@ala.org):
Dear Mr. Kniffel:
Once again ALA has demonstrated that school libraries are truly the red-headed stepchild of the library world.
I appreciate your re-working of American Libraries to acknowledge that there is actually a digital world where libraries play a part. Adding columns by a few librarians who are under 110 years old is a good start. (Andrew Pace and Merideth Farkas are refreshing)
But it really grinds my gears reading an article like “Mattering in the Blogosphere” without even the token school library blogger being mentioned. I can just hear Alice Yucht asking, “What are we, chopped liver?”
Let me list a few of the vibrant school library voices writing blogs:
- Alice Yucht: Alice in Infoland http://www.aliceinfo.org/blog/
- Rob Darrow: California Dreamin’ http://robdarrow.wordpress.com/
- Diane Chen: Deep Thinking http://deepthinking.blogsome.com/
- Sara Kelly Johns (AASL president-elect) From the Inside Out http://fromtheinsideout.squarespace.com/blog/
- Frances Harris Gargoyles Loose in the Library http://www.uni.uiuc.edu/library/blog/index.html
- Chris Harris Infomancy http://schoolof.info/infomancy/
- Mary J Johnson The Primary Source Librarian http://maryjjohnson.com/primarysourcelibrarian/
- Joyce Valenza’s TheNeverendingSearch http://joycevalenza.edublogs.org/
- Jacquie Henry’s Wanderings http://nlcommunities.com/communities/wanderings/default.aspx
I hope you print this in your Letters to the Editor section. But you know it doesn’t really matter since it is also out in the school library blogosphere - which I would wager has more school librarians as readers than does American Libraries.
For a more inclusive editorial policy,
Doug Johnson
The Blue Skunk Blog http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/
Peter Milbury, co-creator of LM_NET, also commented, and Sara Kelly Johns has urged us to share our thoughts with both Mr. Kniffel (lkniffel@ala.org) and Keith Friels (kfiels@ala.org).
Do your part: be heard!
(posted by Laura Pearle)