I know library school can be hard, and that sometimes you don't get the best reactions or perspectives from veteran librarians, or to get to talk about the things you would like to talk about in school (LIS or otherwise). That's why I'm so impressed with the Queens College students who are paving their own way with the Radical Librarians Book Club! (which is open to all--MLS'ed, in the process, or library-curious)

Sunday, August 19th @ 2PM – Free
Radical Librarians Meetup: Bly & Wooten’s “Make Your Own History: Documenting Feminist and Queer Activism in the 21st Century”
The Radical Librarians Book Club is a group of aspiring librarians, current librarians, and other folks who are invested in re-envisioning the traditional library. We seek to examine issues of librarianship from a radical, politically-focused perspective, and build community within the field. The Radical Librarians meet every third Sunday. August’s text is “Make Your Own History: Documenting Feminist and Queer Activism in the 21st Century,” edited by Lyz Bly and Kelly Wooten.

As of today, I've started using this site as one repository for my scholarly writing. While a personal website isn't really the best place to store one's work online for the long haul, I'm also using this platform to publish a project that I have been working on for quite some time: a paper titled "Meta-Radicalism: The Alternative Press by and for Activist Librarians." The piece talks about two waves of alternative library publications that focus on collecting alternative publications in libraries.

This has been the first work of mine to undergo the formal/scholarly peer-review process, and it feels like a major accomplishment. I am very happy to share it here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. I am also proud to report that this piece will also become a chapter of a new book to be published by the University of Wisconsin Press by the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, titled Libraries and the Reading Public.

I welcome thoughts and reactions to the piece. Please read, share, and report back!

Super excited about this--The Orderly Disorder Librarian Zinesters in Circulation Tour !!!
--------------------------
Announcing a librarian zinester summer tour, making its way from the American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans to Milwaukee’s Zine Librarians (un)Conference.

Projected stops and dates:

New Orleans, LA - June 26
Tuscaloosa, AL - June 27
Atlanta, GA - June 28
Murfreesboro, TN - June 29
Louisville, KY - June 30
Columbus, OH - July 1
Pittsburgh, PA - July 2
Cleveland, OH - July 3
Toronto, ONT - July 4
Detroit, MI - July 5
Chicago, IL - July 6
Milwaukee, WI - July 7

We haven’t really started contacting people in our host cities, so this whole schedule could blow up at any time!

Core participants are Jenna Freedman, Celia Perez, Debbie Rasmussen (and her Zine Mobile), Jami Sailor, and John Stevens (from Australia). We’ll pick up other library worker zine makers along the way!

There are already a few blog posts about our shared experiences in Vermont. What I can say about Immersion is that it stretched me really far as a teacher, as a student and as a librarian. I learned a lot about how I like to learn (and how that affects what I teach, and that one of those things is that I need time to reflect, contemplate and collate what I've learned. Being back in Brooklyn I've been on to other things but I hope that soon I'll get a chance to share here and also implement what I took away from Immersion (that hopefully doesn't violate the copyright statement--couldn't let that go without mention!).

Had a good time helping out Books Through Bars this weekend. Things that they could use: paper (grocery) bags and materials to wrap books in, dictionaries, and how-to books. They also have three evening hours per week where you can drop off donations, AND you can donate your bookmooch points to them, also!

I found out about a video project that Queens librarian Loida Garcia-Febo is heading last weekend when she interviewed me about the Zine Fest. Check out her other librarian-related videos on Vimeo.

She's covered some really interesting events, like the Next Library UnConference in Copenhagen!

Inspired by Toni Samek's Librarian Heroes page, I decided to make my own in the wake of a recent rant about radical librarians.

The folks listed below are utterly inspirational people. Not all of them have an MLS, but all of them are library workers and thinkers. My hope is that this list will continually grow.

My library heroes include:

I got the opportunity (thanks to a library friend and mentor) to serve on an ALA scholarship committee this year. Although I have somehow gotten my deadlines all discombobulated, tonight I used up my insomnia time wisely, and theraputically read through the application materials.