LIS 2212: Library Equipment and Your Strong Opinion
If you don’t have a favorite of every single piece of library equipment then you 100% have a least favorite. Which microfilm reader is a little bitch, which book cart is hardest to steer, which printer jams most frequently, which desk supplies you will under no circumstances allow visitors to use.
Don’t worry. You are not alone in your hoarding of supplies or vendettas.
LIS 2212: Library Equipment and Your Strong Opinion
If you don’t have a favorite of every single piece of library equipment then you 100% have a least favorite. Which microfilm reader is a little bitch, which book cart is hardest to steer, which printer jams most frequently, which desk supplies you will under no circumstances allow visitors to use.
Friends, if you hear your library is going to open up even for curbside pickup, I’m asking you to publicly request details of how staff will be safe. Are there plexiglass shields? Ok, how high and where? PPE? What PPE exactly and is it being taken from medical professionals? How much do they have to reuse it? The books will be cleaned/quarantined? How long and with what? How are you going to keep staff safe from people who refuse to wear masks or distance? Who’s cleaning the bathrooms? What happens if a patrons spits or coughs on people? How are they protecting Asian-presenting staff from hate speech and acts of violence? If staff have to ride public transportation do they have a place to change when they get to work or do you provide masks to them before they get on the bus?
I know you miss the library but for every decent person who washes their hands and wears a mask there’s one who will tell me it’s a hoax and lick the checkout computer. I signed up to be a librarian, not a first responder.
If you’re reading this, download Libby or RB Digital or whatever your library uses and get new content that way, don’t fucking romanticize the library and put us at risk. We’re just people trying to keep our families safe.
“But restaurants/bars/grocery stores are allowed to be open or do pick up!”
Yes, and they don’t require you to return your used bags, dishes, and packages to be handed to the next person in line.
Many libraries serve as default day centers for homeless and others with nowhere else to go. People are also staring to go a little stir crazy after being stuck at home for so long, I get it. While loads of people are making the right choice and staying home if libraries open they will be full. This is a very rare case where librarians are shouting that our doors need to be/stay closed. Use ALL of the amazing digital services or phone services we offer, but STAY THE FUCK HOME.
Today’s submission was written by an anonymous submitter from New England who is passionate about public libraries’ roles to educate the public on digital privacy and surveillance.
Alison Macrina is a librarian, internet activist, the founder and director of the Library Freedom Project, and a core contributor to The Tor Project. Alison is passionate about connecting surveillance issues to larger global struggles for justice, demystifying privacy and security technologies for ordinary users, and resisting an internet controlled by a handful of intelligence agencies and giant multinational corporations.
Alison was a longtime public librarian and left her job to found the Library Freedom Project. This non-profit’s mission is to train and lead librarians on key privacy issues. Their services are free, and the Project offers timely tools, articles, and resources for the general public as well as librarians. Alison started the Library Freedom Project because she is a believer in access to information. She notes that, as stewards of information and providers of Internet access, librarians play a central role in meeting the information needs of communities and are in an obvious position to educate patrons about how to shield their privacy from surveillance threats.
The Library Freedom Project began by teaching privacy tools to librarians all over New England, and they have scaled their work in a huge way, bringing anti-surveillance workshop to libraries across the country. The Library Freedom Institute has started in 2018, which is a privacy-focused collaborative program between New York University and the Library Freedom Project. Alison has inspired many libraries and librarians to walk the privacy walk, not just talk about privacy. She taught over 50 classes in 2017, and while she continues to do outreach, her work is on training others in the Library Freedom Institute to spread the privacy bug.
Libraries provide access to information and in doing so should protect patrons’ right to explore new ideas, no matter how controversial or subversive, unfettered by the pernicious effects of online surveillance. What’s more, public libraries serve communities that have historically come under more surveillance and scrutiny than the general population, including people of color, Muslims, queer people, transgender people, political activists, the formerly incarcerated, and people living in poverty. Libraries are centers of democracy, and the Library Freedom Project gives librarians the information and tools they need to ensure their institutions remain beacons of intellectual freedom in an open society. Alison works with organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Tor Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation.
(Sections used with permission from Libraryfreedomproject.org)
Today’s post is from Jeri Toney Davis, Huntington City Township Public Library, Huntington, Indiana, who notes that “Miss Ticer is my favorite subject.”
In the fall of 1901, three railroad men from the small town of Huntington, Indiana, travelled to New York City to meet with Andrew Carnegie with the hope of securing money to build a free standing library. Two years later, on Saturday, February 21, 1903, a beautiful, 7,700 sq. ft. Bedford stone Carnegie Library was opened to the public in grandeur style. I could say the ole cliche “and the rest is history”, but for this small town with a new library, their journey was just beginning.
In 1904, with the resignation of Miss Lyle Harter, the board decided to promote the Assistant Librarian, Miss Winifred Ticer, to the position of Librarian. Winifred was an ambitious 32-year-old single woman with plenty of ideas of her own. In the years that followed, progress was steady, with new books added and circulation numbers increasing yearly. More and more services were provided while older services were evaluated as to their usefulness.
The library came to life under Winifred’s reign. Winifred listened to the needs of women and understood they wanted more in-depth reading and activities from their library. Winifred introduced a broad range of nonfiction books as well as fiction books for the adult woman. Reading clubs for children were initiated, and reference and genealogical work became important. The library was continuously changing and evolving as the city went through its growing period. Winifred kept up with what was going on around her and kept her library up to date and inspiring for the city of Huntington. She even saw the need for growth and opened a branch library in a small room located in the school.
The Railroad and Scientific reading room was also formed under Winifred. This room contained over 600 volumes of books designed for the workingman to get all the knowledge he needed on the subject he was researching. The reading room was well received for the early 1900’s. Today we would call such a room a “career center”.
Winifred was accomplished in other areas of library work as well. Her library was the first library in Indiana to advertise in the newspaper. Soon she found herself receiving questions from other libraries about how they could advertise their own library. This prompted Winifred to write a book called Advertising the Public Library, published in 1921 by the Democrat Printing Company of Madison, Wisconsin. She also wrote poetry, titled Fellowship and Other PoemsandHill Tops and Other Poems.
In 1922, Winifred was offered a job at the Democrat Printing Company, the same company that published her book. That company today is known as Demco. She stayed at the Democrat until 1929, then moved to Ohio to take a job with Warren Public Library. Winifred retired from the Warren Public Library in 1949 at the age of 77. She passed away in 1964 at 92.
I have only given you a small glimpse into the world of Winifred Ticer. She was ahead of her time in how she viewed libraries and their purpose. The library was more than a brick and mortar building to her. She felt the library had something to offer for everyone and she made sure everyone knew it. Huntington, Indiana, will forever be a better place because of her.
Reference: Huntington City Township Public Library history scrapbook - Indiana Room Archives, Warren -Trumbell County Public Library of Ohio
Here is the first in an ongoing series from the desk of Gratia Countryman. Gratia Countryman was very important to the history of Hennepin County Library. She was the director of Minneapolis Public Library for over 30 years and she founded Hennepin County Library.
This is from Ms. Countryman’s annual report from the first year of her administration, 1904:
What is a library for?
A public library is the one great civic institution supported by the people which is designed for the instruction and pleasure of all people, young and old, without age limit, rich and poor, without class limit, educated and uneducated, without culture limit. Its function being to instruct and benefit, how are we going to accomplish this end? In the opinion of your librarian there is positively no limit to the things which a public library can legitimately do in carrying out its purpose, except the limitations of financial resources. It should be “all things to all men” in the world of thought, by keeping in close touch, not only with the leaders of thought, but with the rank and file of the people. This will mean many forms of activity which in the past were not connected with the idea of a library. Perhaps still in the minds of many a library is only a place where books are stored, or distributed under many objectionable restrictions. But in the larger sense, the library should be a wide-awake institution for the dissemination of ideas, where books are easily accessible and readily obtainable. It should be the center of all the activities of a city that lead to social growth, municipal reform, civic pride and good citizenship. It should have its finger on the pulse of the people, ready to second and forward any good movement. It should be the home of clubs and societies and free lecture courses. …gracious and sympathetic hospitality should be the prevailng spirit of the place, and every member of a well disciplined staff will need, not only a broad education, but the most genuine willingness to serve.
How to reach the busy men and women…how to enlist the interest of tired factory girls, how to put the workingman in touch with the art books relating to his craft and so increase the value of his labor and the dignity of his day’s work - these are some of the things which I concieve my duty to study, if I would help this public library to become what it is for.
Gratia Countryman, Librarian
Kellian Clink (Minnesota State University, Mankato) and Kaia Sievert (University of Minnesota) both got in touch this year to sing the praises of legendary Minnesota librarian Gratia Countryman. Bailey Diers (Hennepin County Library) helped point out HCL’s wealth of online resources about Countryman, including a whole series of Tumblr postsanda significant collection of digitized photos.
Her life and career are pretty amazing (quoted from this post):
Gratia Alta Countryman was born November 29, 1866, in Hastings, Minnesota, the daughter of pioneer parents Levi and Alta Chamberlain Countryman. […] In 1904 she succeeded Hosmer as chief librarian, becoming the nation’s first female head librarian. Countryman was chief librarian for over thirty-two years until 1936 when she was required to retire at the age of seventy. She was then made librarian emeritus.
Upon Countryman’s promotion to chief librarian she immediately began to make changes, expanding the Library’s services to reach more and more people. In the thirty-two years she directed the Library, service expanded into all areas of the city including elementary and junior high schools, hospitals, engine houses, welfare centers, and factories. By the time of Countryman’s retirement, the book collection had increased to 662,842 volumes and the circulation, which was 519,000 in 1904, had increased to 3,293,484 in 1936. The number of registered borrowers had increased from 40,500 in 1904 to 181,582 in 1936. Of the 11 branch library buildings in Minneapolis, 9 were built during her administration. Countryman was instrumental in local, state, and national library work, and was elected President of the American Library Association from 1933-34 becoming the sixth woman to hold that distinction in the association’s hitherto sixty year history.
