Unshelved and NYLA

Today's post is going to come to you in two parts. Part 1: I just wanted to touch on how great the library comic strip "Unshelved" is. If you have never read this strip I recommend you check it out. In the strip a librarian by the name of Dewey (I wonder where they got that from) is a sarcastic, book loving, movie watching, apathetic individual that has to deal with odd requests from patrons and co-workers on a daily basis. It is a wonderful strip and they have a bunch of cool T-shirts you can get (I'm a sucker for T-shirts).

Part 2: Is a little funny because it seems much more important that post 1. Anyway, I'M GOING TO THE NYLA ANNUAL CONFERENCE AT NI AGRA FALLS IN OCTOBER! The director at my library invited me along. NYLA is the New York Library Association. They have a huge get together every year where librarians come from all around the state and talk library stuff. I applied for an award a few months back and if I won I would have been sent for free. I didn't win, but that's ok because I'm going any way. I'll give you some more updates on what is going to happen this year at the conference in a later post.

For now, be safe and keep reading!

Ohio Libraries in Despair

There has been an awful lot of news referring to Ohio Public Libraries suffering devastating budget cuts resulting from a news conference on Friday, June 19th. I have read that Governor Ted Strickland has proposed a 30% budget cut ($227.3 million) for Ohio Libraries during the 2010-2011 fiscal year as part of his plan to fill the $3.2 billion gap in the budget that must be balanced by the Ohio General Assembly's Conference Committee by June 30. This 30% cut is not including the 20% cut that the libraries are already facing from the economic decline. This will affect approximately 251 library branches in Ohio, many are faced with cutting back hours and supplies along with complete closures. This is a devastating loss in numbers for public libraries. Funding has been slipping away from many things in this current economy but a cut like this will inevitably close the doors on many libraries in this area. Ohio needs to take a stand to show how important these libraries are to the community. If these libraries do close I hope that research is done to see how important libraries are to communities not only in economic crisis but as a general asset and necessity to the community.

Who is S. R. Ranganathan?

I ran across this name a few days ago in the collection development workshop (explained in previous post) and I got to wondering who is this S.R. Ranganathan. Turns out he was a mathematician and a librarian from India. Most noted in the field of librarianship for his "five laws of library science" and the development of the first major analytico-synthetic classification system, the Colon classification. He is considered to be the father of library science in India.
This is incredible! I never really thought of the "power house" librarians that shaped the domain as we know it. I mean we obviously know Melville Dewey, but after that who do we look up to? I have decided to cure my ignorance by doing a little digging to discover some of the most influential people that have changed the way we check out books. I'll keep you updated. My first step is to continue with the Ranganathan topic. I have found a book titled The Five Laws of Library Science written by Ranganthan (I figure this short post will not do Ranganthan justice, so I'll tell you a little more at a later date. I apologize for anyone who realizes this post does not thoroughly answer the title question). Due to the fact it is summer break obtaining this book will not be easy. I found it at a few academic libraries on worldcat.org. I think I'm going to have to put out an ILL. I post any findings on these important librarians as I find them.

The Wonders of Collection Development

I attended a training the other day that focused on the ins and outs of collection development (those who are unaware of what collection development is should click here. Those who are savvy with their library lingo can parenthetical interruption and continue reading). Overall the training was interesting and helpful in my quest to librarianship. I have recently taken on the task of collection development for ages 0-3 (I must say it is an interesting area of development...) which is one of the main reasons I attended the class. One of the first things that was introduced was Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science which are:
1) Books are for use
2) Every reader his book
3) Every book its reader
4) Save the time of the reader
5) A library is a growing organism

This sparked my interests considerably. I wondered: Who was Ranganthan? Unfortunately I'm not going to answer that right now, never fear, I will talk about him in a future post. Anyway, the five laws are important. Then we went on to talk factors of a collection: Components of Collection Management
-Evaluate
-Plan
-Fund
-Build
-Organize
-Provide access
-Market

Evaluation of a collection
-Enough? Too much?
-Collection level
-Age
-Usage
-Demand
-Average price
-Loss rate
-Physical condition
-Access

This was all fun and exciting...Then we spoke of how budget affects the development of a libraries collection (interesting because of the current state of library budgets). This 20% is divided up among all of the materials for all age groups based on the population served at the library. The population served is one of the biggest things. A population of older adults is not going to be reading Manga, so, that would be a bad collection development decision.

It was a long workshop so this is just a quick gist of it. More can be found at the ALA website.

Some interesting websites that were pointed out for collection development:

http://www.lib.az.us/cdt/

http://www.overbooked.org/index.html

http://www.metacritic.com/

These are mainly sites about upcoming books.