Assignment 1 - State of the Libraries: Montana

Almost all of the articles I found to discuss the state of libraries in Montana could describe any state. My favorite bit of local culture that I could winkle was that any discussion of new services or budgetary considerations was very careful to lay out the exact amount required, even down to cost per household.

Montana has a state holiday to celebrate the library. This is cool, and unfair. School libraries all over Montana are in trouble though. Budget cuts mean that the school district featured in the article no longer has sufficient staff for their elementary schools libraries to be accredited or even open for the entire school week. Access for school children is much harder outside of classes scheduled in the library, which everyone agrees is the wrong message to send to kids. In an older article I found about Butte elementary schools, they were forced to terminate all of their “library monitors” leaving all libraries staffed by a licensed teacher split half time between library duties and being the technology teacher. Much of the informal and personally motivated access to the library is cut off by the budget cuts.

Also near Butte, the public library has tried to increase access and convenience by setting up a pickup and drop off-site in a grocery store on the opposite end of town. I liked this concept especially as it is a good illustration of the shift in attitudes towards the goals of librarians, from the 19^th century perception that the collection is paramount to clearly putting the patron and the patron needs first. A remote site to pick up ones holds also would not be possible without the digital presence of a library, allowing for remote and asynchronous use of the library.

I found a few articles about the main library on the University of Montana- Missoula campus, but the vast majority of them were on events at the library, and not about the library itself. In the United Kingdom, bars or taverns are called pubs, which is short for ‘public house,’ and when I lived there I was struck by how much communal living goes on in them. Even the knitting club met in the pub. Perhaps because of the stigma of establishments that serve alcohol, in the United States, that role is very often filled by the library. My favorite Montanan example of this was the Strong Women Project exhibit, although there were dozens of events to choose from. The Strong Women Project is such local celebration of the women in the community, and in a space devoted to community, I was delighted at the idea, and that many of the images were available online. The picture at the top is of one such strong woman.

The Maureen and Mike Mansfield library on the University of Montana- Missoula also played host to a fracas this summer, for the only article I could find that dealt with the business of the library. A community user was arrested for disorderly conduct stemming from trying to incite other in the library to protest the new policy of limiting access to the majority of library computers by requiring a student log- in. Community use is still allowed on eight of the hundred or so computers, but only for hour- long stints, when prior to this policy change some community patrons would use the academic library’s computers for six to eight hour stretches. The change was made to allow students access to new digital resources that were not available to the public due to licensing agreements. When I first started this article I was worried that the librarians at Mansfield Library weren’t upholding what Marilyn Johnson called the ideal of little‘d’ democracy, in that access was being denied or limited. Reading further assured me that this was not the case.

When I first compiled these articles, initially grateful that they all fit within the requirements of the assignment, I was at a loss as to how to tie them together with a concept or theme of this class, as the purview, audience, and duties of each of these library types are so different. But as I read my summaries, I realized that they are all about issues of information access through the catalyst that is the library. For the Public library in Silver Bow, it’s a celebration of increasing access. For the elementary schools in the north western part of Montana, it’s about bemoaning a sharp decrease in access, both to the library facility and to a school librarian’s time for each student. For Mansfield Library in Missoula, it’s differentiating between the services meant for the community they serve, the university, and the citizenry at large.

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/news/local_montana/article_71ebeee2-c12e-11df-b922-001cc4c03286.html

http://ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=n5h&AN=2W61170567323&site=ehost-live

http://ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=n5h&AN=2W62410805144&site=ehost-live

http://missoulian.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/article_f48f32fa-3367-11df-a7a3-001cc4c002e0.html

http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/article_a765bc7f-687c-5482-9dfb-38af3ceeb2bc.html

pans narrans- Week 2 readings

In The Science of Discworld II: the Globe Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen describe the way the human brain and mind interact, and use the term pans narrans as a much better species descriptor than homo sapien.

Pans narrans or the storytelling ape is how McKemmish starts her chapter Traces, and I wish she was more coherent through the rest of it. I enjoyed her example of Children Overboard, but I had difficulty with the writing style, that made verbs of adjectives and wasn't particularly readable. Describing what archives are, what records are, and how they become so shouldn't be as abstruse as she made it. I did find her emphasis of the importance of context informing the meaning and information encoded into a document to make it a record, with the same photographs representing totally different bits of story depending on what archive had them as a record especially helpful in thinking about the concepts she was trying to get across.

I enjoyed the encyclopedia entries by Pawley and Rusch-Feja as things I already knew about put in complete, precise, cogent terms. I didn't learn anything by reading them (except the names of a few minor historic figures and the cool fact that the Soviet Union had a library for every two thousand citizens), but they were helpful as a connotation-check of many of these terms and concepts at a basic level.

Carrot Cake

This is the second LIS assignment blog I've had, but this one seems more systematized with all that other online profile business.

As a favorite character says, Let's see what happens.

Some biographical background. I am a Madison native, a second year special student (it's complicated), in my fourth class at SLIS. I've worked in four libraries and six different departments. I don't feel like I've been flitting as much as that statement denotes. I would like to be a Reference librarian in an academic library when I grow up.

All through Johnson's This Book is Overdue (I won't dignify the attempt to coin a terrible word by including the subtitle) I found myself enjoying what she had to say about libraries and librarians, but I only felt any sort of spark or recognition when things were going wrong for the librarians. When the narrative went all "Gee whiz!" I was more alienated, especially during the second life section.

I made carrot cake today for my fathers 64th birthday, which was yesterday. Yesterday was a brainspike of Lord of the Rings extended edition (brainspike: watching the entirety of something in basically one sitting or at one go.) and oniondip. I seem to be beating cream cheese into other things to make delicious unhealthfulnesses this weekend.

Look for a post on the Week 2 Readings later tonight