The big C word

Nothing says real world experience and real world education like a big censorship scandal right at your own college, right?

Last week, the Columbus Dispatch ran a story about an admissions officer at Ohio Wesleyan University who decided he didn’t like an article the student newspaper ran celebrating a drinking tradition that happens on  campus. The campus would be hosting an open house for prospective students and the story did not put the campus in its best light, so the admissions officer threw away all of the papers in one of the campus’s buildings (likely a building these prospectives would be spending some time).

When student editors discovered this, they were outraged. The university, on the other hand, seemed less enraged about it and instead offered financial compensation for the discarded newspapers. The university spokesman quoted in the Dispatch article said that the employee made a mistake and that “This person thought that action might help to remove some information that may not present Ohio Wesleyan in the best light.”

There is no question that this is censorship — and for this to happen on a liberal arts campus is quite appaling. I applaud the student editors for their action on this one and using this as an opportunity to discuss the value of the free press, journalism, and the First Amendment rights that students even on a college campus have.

What’s perhaps most interesting about the censorship was that it was done in hopes of presenting the campus in its best light. Certainly, glorifying a tradition that involves drinking doesn’t help illuminate the golden opportunities of a college campus, but doesn’t it seem that by hiding that, the admissions officer is also deceiving potential students? By hiding student life, the admissions officer put on a lying face for prospective students who may truly be seeking a place that does not have a large drinking scene, for example, and by this deception, a future student may not only be unhappy about his/her choice in attending OWU, but also is now out tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours, and may be all together disillusioned with higher education. If an admissions representative can’t be truthful or won’t let a student discover what the campus has to offer for him/her self through a medium such as the newspaper, then why should someone trust that person in making appropriate admissions decisions or counseling?

All of this is to say that one of the most important roles a student newspaper does on a campus is give a picture of what is important to the student body and campus culture as a whole. While a front page story may be about a drinking tradition, there certainly will be articles that refute the tradition, articles that celebrate major academic achievements of enrollees, and other valuable and informative pieces that a prospective student should use in making a decision in college attendance. By censoring the newspaper, the admissions officer has done a major disservice to prospectives by not allowing them access — free, easy, quick, and transportable — information about the campus life.

As a prospective student, however, I would be incredibly impressed with the response by the editorial board; that in and of itself speaks volumes about the campus and its culture. It would have been much easier to ignore the censorship or to have never investigated it, and it would have been easy to let it slide without making a case for it. But these students stood up and used this opportunity to educate their peers about their First Amendment right to the press and free speech.

Too often, new graduates are told they do not have the experience needed for a job, and often, their experiences while in school somehow do not count as “real experience” or it’s not valued in a manner that experience in the 9-5 workplace is. But something like this highlights yet again what dedicated, smart, and driven individuals are doing before they need to put on their professional pants and enter a work place. Issues like censorship and ethics creep into our lives quite easily, but it takes someone with courage and with intelligence to approach and shine light on the subject.

It’s also stories like this that make me wonder about how we will combat these First Amendment issues if the press moves to a digital model, rather than a print model. But for now, it’s time to applaud the hard work of The Transit staff who are likely underpaid, underadvised, and putting their hearts into the newspaper because it’s something they simply love to do — and something from which they are learning incredible life lessons.

If you get a chance, check out some of the great editorials and opinions that ran in support of The Transit. I find it more faith to the fact that newspapers still serve a very important role in a community.

Farewell to a change agent

Saturday night, Judith Krug died in an Evanston, Illinois hospital after a bout with cancer. Although you probably don’t know her name well, she was a leader in the field of librarianship and a true advocate of intellectual freedom.

Krug served as a director for the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF), and she did so starting in 1967. What a run!

During her time as a director, Krug is likely most remembered for beginning Banned Books Week. Each year, typically at the end of September, libraries and book lovers around the country celebrate the freedom to read anything and everything. It is during Banned Books Week that many libraries create displays and market the materials that others have found offensive and have tried challenging or banning throughout the years. Some libraries ask people to come and read these books in a cage while others ask people to read these books out in public and remind people what a wonderful freedom they have in being able to read.

Krug’s idea, which began in 1982, has now become a major annual event. It’s widely celebrate and widely discussed as a reminder to those in the field about the change with which they are uphold: intellectual freedom. Banned Books Week is one part of the challenge that stands as a testament to value such a freedom has in our country.

Krug will surely be missed, but she is certainly to be remembered as a leader in the fight for intellectual freedom. With each celebration of Banned Books Week, her vision and her memory live on and will live on for a good long time.

As librarians, we have an opportunity to be true change agents. Sure, that’s certainly not in the job description nor in the daily work that a librarian does. But with a little drive, a little vision, and a little determination, librarians have the ability to implement true change into their communities, states, country, and even in the world. Being defenders of such radical concepts like intellectual freedom and the unadulterated pursuit of knowledge, we have a lot of opportunity to be community advocates.

Thanks Judith, for reminding us the importance of our duties and for being a little bit ambitious. May your drive and ambition serve as reminders to those of us in the field the value we can have, as well as how important it is to remember that every reader has his/her own preferences and interests in reading and how it is our responsibility to allow everyone full access to their intellectual and leisure pursuits.

House of Dance by Beth Kephart

Rosie has been raising herself — mom’s been busy with her window washing job and romance with the married boss and dad stepped out of their life without reason (though he remembers to send Rosie $20 each week). To top it off, summer’s cresting, and Rosie’s neighbor and her best friend are not around to keep her company.

But Rosie’s a strong girl. She’ll figure it out.

That is, until she gets the news from her mother that her grandfather is dying of cancer, and it’s her job to go entertain him every day. Her mom, being too busy with Mr. Paul, doesn’t have the time to do it, and since Rosie has a summer before her, why not?

House of Dance is a beautiful, poetic account of relationships among people. Rosie and her grandfather, Rosie and her mother, Teresa (grandfather’s foreign nurse) and Rosie, and Rosie herself. Throughout the story, we watch Rosie come to learn about why her mother has avoided spending time with her father and why her mother has decided to engage in such an illicit relationship with Mr. Paul.

The story is fluid and infused by a dance of intricate language usage and imagery. We watch Rosie grow up, and it’s done in ways that aren’t your typical coming of age story. Rosie knows her life isn’t peachy or perfect, and through learning about her family history through a relationship with a dying grandparent, she grows closer to each of them and brings each of them closer to one another. Rosie also discovers her passions — music and dance — and she brings those two passions together in the end of the story.

Aside from the beautiful writing, I was blown away by the end of the story. It was pitch perfect. I became more and more nervous as I rounded home page in the book and the pages became fewer and fewer. So much of what was being worked up to still needed to be covered, and for me, there was the worry of the inevitable ending. But Kephart did something unexpected, refreshing, and satisfying.

This was a great book to begin national poetry month with, even though it’s not technically poetry. I felt throughout that Kephart just had a way with words and images and I connected with that as a reader. She has enough story to make the language play excusable, rather than using the language as a way to offer a half-pitched story.

This book is appealing to anyone who likes stories about growing up, maturity, family relationships, or dance/music/discovering one’s passion. Although Rosie is not quite Frankie Landau-Banks, I think readers who dig E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks will dig Rosie as a character. The story’s not as action-packed nor as boy-filled, but the characters are both strong females learning about themselves. The book has a great pace, and it is the language that does a lot of the scene setting and story telling. It’s modern, relatable, and sweet.

I dig the cover art a lot. And to be entirely honest, that’s why I picked the book up. I’m glad I did. I’m also excited to dig into Kephart’s other books, which fall into so many different genres and styles. She’s got other young adult books, adult books, and even some non-fiction. If she’s this talented in YA fiction, I’m excited to see what she can do elsewhere.

First quarter round up

Although the first quarter of 2009 technically ends at midnight, I’m pretty confident that I won’t be able to finish another book today. Taking a page from Janssen’s book, I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about some of the highlights from my massive amounts of reading in the last three months.

First, if you remember back to my first post about reading goals, I decided this year that I would reach 120 books since I had reached a total of 103 for 2008. Well, I’m very much on my way to blowing that record away. Just how much did I read in the first three months of 2009? [...drumroll please]…

I’ve read 50 books. A nice, fat, round 50 books between January and March.

I’ve covered most genres, adult, young adult, fiction and non-fiction. I’ve intentionally left off the children’s books I’ve read [since those can be read in a few minutes and require little investment]. Rather than list all 50 titles here, you can check out my entire quarter one reading list via my GoodReads account. Instead of the roster, I thought I’d rave about my top ten reads from these last three months. In no particular order:

• Rebecca / Daphne Du Maurier: Part mystery, part romance, and a whole lot of lies. Definitely has ‘classic’ written on it, but it’s a classic that is often overlooked.
• The Adoration of Jenna Fox / Mary E. Pearson: Rather than blow the plot, I’ll say that it deals with ethics and science, and it is hyper relevant to today’s society
• Ten Cents a Dance / Christine Fletcher: Historical fiction set in 1940s Chicago, where a girl chooses to go from the meat packing plant to taxi dancing. Incredible book that I think anyone can enjoy. It does not get too bogged into the larger history but rather focuses in on one particular slice of WWII life.
• Hate That Cat & Love That Dog / Sharon Creech: Meta-poetry written by a middle schooler. Very cute, very funny, and it could definitely turn those not interested in poetry into poetry enjoyers.
• Ten Little Indians / Sherman Alexie: Funny, painful, raw. Short stories that will make you want to laugh, cringe, and cry at once. Alexie is a master story teller.
• Out of the Pocket / Bill Konigsberg: A lesson in being comfortable with who you are. My entire review is located here, and as an added bonus, Bill Konigsberg blogged my review, too!
• Wintergirls / Laurie Halse Anderson: A book that so accurately captures not only the effects of an eating disorder, but also the deterioration of one’s mental state while dealing with that and depression. My entire review is here.
• The Gollywhopper Games / Jody Feldman: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for a new generation. It’s fast, funny, and a new spin on the classic story.
• American Born Chinese / Gene Luen Yang: A graphic novel in three parts about being a teenager who is Chinese in America and the consequences of that heritage. There is a unique twist in the end that makes a great exclamation to the story.
• Those Who Save Us / Jenna Blum: This is another WWII story, but this time it is set in America. A daughter hungry for tenure and for a strong academic project unravels her lineage and the role that her parents played in the war in Germany.

I’m excited about how much I read and how many unique things were in the mix. However, I’m really gearing up for a more diverse quarter 2, as it begins with National Poetry Month. As a poet [aside: I really hate that title, but I am using it only to indicate interest and participation in the art] I find April the ideal time to dig into poetry. I’ve got in mind the desire to read a number of books written in verse, as well as compilations of poetry. I have in my basket a few adult fictional titles and have on my personal shelf some non-fiction to read [second aside: anyone else have a genre they buy rather than check out? I don't buy many books anymore, but those I do buy are primarily non-fiction]. And perhaps what I’m most excited about in the next quarter is the release of the final installment of the Jessica Darling series, Perfect Fifths, on April 14.

Anything I absolutely, positively must read in the next three months? Is there anything you’re looking forward to?

Unveiling my little [massive] project

As you may or may not know, I’m in the midst of a job search for the perfect entry-level librarian job. I’m fairly flexible, since I’m interested in so many different aspects of the field, have experience in many, and I am not entirely set on a specific location (though certainly, I have preferences). I’m young so I know this is really my opportunity to go somewhere totally new and experience it.

And as we all know, the market for all jobs is weak, and librarianship is no different. I can’t count the number of hours I’ve spent searching and applying, and while I’m positive about things eventually falling into place, one thing that really frustrates me is how one can search for positions.

There are some wonderful library-related job resources out there — ALA’s JobList, LISJobs.com, LibraryJoblines, the iSchool Jobweb, and so forth. Almost every state association has some sort of job bank, as well. And then there are the libraries that post their openings only on their website or the city in which the library is located posts it on their website.

All of that’s to say is that it’s a little bit of everywhere.

Even when you’re able to pull together a nice list of regular stops in your daily hunting rotation, sometimes it’s not easy to search through them. I’m a bit of an odd searcher, maybe, in that there are days I am interested only in certain types of jobs or jobs in a certain area of the country or jobs in a specific state. While I know how to run a good database query, sometimes it’s not sufficient for my needs [boy, I'm a needy one when it comes to how I want my information!].

So to resolve this, I’ve decided to develop a huge “database” of library job sites through delicious. In doing so, I’ve taken the effort to tag the links with as much useful information as possible, as well as leave some type of description for each link. Some descriptions aren’t particularly insightful, but others are useful as to locating the actual employment information that can sometimes be buried within another page.

As I type this, I’ve reached 300 unique links, among which are links to specific library websites, city websites, giant general databases, smaller state-based search engines, and others. Likewise, the primary links right now are to public libraries. That is to say, it’s clearly not comprehensive yet. But it’s a start. I hope to continue building this and hope to recruit a few other people with the passion I have for pooling resources like this together.

Clearly, I know there are websites out there — and I point specifically to my alma mater’s jobweb — that offer many different links to jobs. I’ve found, though, there are a number that are a little out of date, dead links, not comprehensive (for example — in a list of links to jobs in the 50 states Nevada is missing), or generally not searchable in the way that I like to approach my job search.

I’m influenced here by Dave Weinberger and many of the ideas he hashes out in Everything is Miscellaneous as well as Small Pieces, Loosely Joined. I’m a believer in the use of tagging. Since the job search is primarily — if not entirely — web based now, why can’t we give as many entrances into this information as possible? Why be limited?

Since librarianship is a field of collaboration, I made this account open to everyone and I am trying to spread the word. I’ve squatted a Twitter account, but I don’t know if it’ll be as useful as I like for spreading the word. Rather, I suspect it might be able to talk for itself, particularly if I can get a couple of people on board to help out.

So, click HERE to locate my library job links project. Tell me what you think and let me know if you want to help out. More importantly, SHARE it. While it certainly begins as a way for me to wrap my head around the vast potential opportunities, I think that it’s only right to make this process as efficient to myself and others as possible.

And if you’re interested, I’m hoping to get a similar project kickstarted for library blogs. While certainly there are great resources out there with links to library-related or library-created blogs, I want something more searchable, dynamic, and more inclusive (down to people’s personal blogs of their own experiences). Collaboration and resource sharing - it’s what I’m all about.

Let me know if you’re on to help. Or if you find this useful.

Libraries as the third place

Ever had those moments when you think about your collective experience and education and you see how it all fits together so perfectly? I had a moment like that when I was in my final semester of school. That moment made me understand how important and vital a role that the public library can and should play in a community. Don’t get me wrong, as I’d obviously had that thought before or else I’d never have entered the field, but it was a culmination of all my reading and projects that made me really want to advocate the idea that libraries are a third place in the American culture and landscape.

As our social scripts and ideas are challenged and transformed thanks to the economy or to the fact we no longer have the one-income one-mortgage standard by which to judge our life’s success, we really do need to find that third place. That third place becomes the opportunity to learn, grow, and understand one another, while simultaneously serving as a place to let loose and be our public selves.

Let’s step back from the larger idea for a second and build up to it.

In undergrad, I took a course in public history and memory. While we did our fair share of listening to and participating in lectures and reading, the crux of the course was the creation of a digital exhibit. We broke into teams and chose from a number of cultural institutions in eastern Iowa where we had the opportunity to explore a collection and build our story. I had the opportunity to work with a partner at the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) in Iowa City. We were told early on that the SHSI had an interesting collection of historical home photos. Since eastern Iowa is home to so many beautiful original Victorian homes, this was an exciting prospect. When we met with the curator at the SHSI, we were further told that the photos seemed to be showcasing the porches of these homes.

That’s when the idea clicked.

My partner and I explored the idea of how, as a culture in America, we’ve moved from having grand, welcoming porches to a society of back porches. There’s been a shift from the porch as a welcome mat to neighbors and the community to the back patio, hidden away behind fences. Of course, this coincides with other societal changes, including the automobile invasion and suburbia. The link a couple lines up takes you to the project and showcases our digital exhibit — how we’ve shifted, what it means, and what impact it has on our American culture.

Fast forward a year and a half later, and I have the opportunity to pick out a book to read and give a report on in my Knowledge Management course. Although there were many interesting choices from which to choose, I went with Ray Oldenburg’s The Great Good Place. Sparing the slideshow, the book focuses on how we have no third place in America. We have a problem of acreage, schedules and privacy that thrive as we have only two real “places” we see daily: work and home. When we seek relaxation, we tend to find ourselves indulging in places of consumption — restaurants, shopping, malls, and so forth — where we find our stress decreases because these are informal places outside the settings of home and work.

However, the problem is that in order to be truly happy and fulfilled, we should have a tripod of life experiences: the domestic, the productive, and the social. We get the first at home, the second at work, and the third — well, as much as we tell ourselves that shopping is a social activity because we may indulge in it with friends, it’s not social — is absent.

The third place, Oldenburg argues, is a neutral space that is a leveller bringing together people from all walks of life. The goals of the third place are accessibility, accommodation, and conversation. They’re places of low profile that invite playfulness and become a home away from home. The third place brings a level of novelty into our daily lives because of the loose structure and fluidity which are catalysts for collective creativity. Likewise, the third place brings perspective, as it allows for a reality check for all — where else can the plumber and the high-power attorney interact on an equal ground about topics without the status of their profession intermingling in the process? Oldenburg adds, too, that the third place is a spiritual tonic allowing people joy, vivacity and relief, as well as friends by the set: people with whom we can interact in a different way than we do our co-workers or with those we know intimately enough to invite into our homes (the sacred and private space).

Where else can we discuss hyperlocal issues openly without a pre-schedule forum, associate with community members, and have “fun with the lid kept on?” The third space is an outpost into the public domain. It quells loneliness simply by being a space where people interact without needing to make a purchase or make a million dollar proposal.

The third place, Oldenburg says, would also help us redefine our idea of streets and public places. Americans tend to associate dirty things with the words public and street when the truth is, those should be where we derive our pleasure and our fulfillment.

Besides some of the issues I had with Oldenburg’s overromanticism of Europe and blatant misogynist comments, the book is definitely worth the read. Anyone who has wondered about why we do things the way we do them would appreciate a fresh and, I think, optimistic vision of what America could become with the right collective mindset. And I think, too, we’re making these strides: we’ve got a third space in digital outlets, in the physical reemergence of pedestrian malls inside of major cities (look at places like Denver), and, where I really think we have untapped potential, the public library.

In the same class, I chose to explore the idea of a knowledge ecology and how it relates to the public library. Though it sounds complicated or unimaginable, it’s quite literally something we have set up already — the knowledge ecology suggests that rather than libraries being where people come to get information [which would only be one level of interaction], the library is where anyone and everyone can come, engage in information transfer, participate in programming, offer their own ideas and insights into library-driven events, and so forth. Rather than the library being “close stacked,” with the librarians at the helms of giving, the public library becomes entirely “open stacked,” with the librarian simply serving the role of trained facilitator. They get the conversation started, keep it going, throw out new ideas, and constantly seek feedback and ideas from the community. The community does quite the same as the librarian - it offers ideas, needs, wants, questions, and resources. Without engaging entirely with the community, the library serves more of the library’s needs rather than the community’s needs. Public libraries should strive to provide and facilitate services uniquely tailored to the people and place in which it’s at, regardless of what may be hot and happenin’ in the literature.

And by doing that, the library becomes a third place.

The more we reach out, the more we talk with the community (rather than TO the community), and the more we engage wholly in the place we are, the more we are able to become the quintessential third place. Look at the small colleges, as well as the major universities, that are moving to user-centered information commons — they’re becoming the third space. And public libraries can do it, too. Except besides focusing on the college student, it focuses on the entire community.

The bones are here. The ideas are here. The people with drive are here. Now it’s just a matter of getting that out there. I think in a recession particularly, the opportunity to remind people about how valuable the library is beyond just its features of free computers and internet can and will make a lasting impression. We want to be places people want to come, engage, and participate. I think there are opportunities to crowdsource projects in the library, and I think people would jump. Librarians should not feel confined behind the desk or the computer. They aren’t merely information centers. They connect.

Librarians should be in the community, seeing what their patrons are doing and seeking, and the library should emulate or expand upon those things. We need to be community servants beyond just the 8 hours at our place of employment. Getting our faces out there can only remind people that there are advocates for them, inviting them into a safe, fun, level, and evocative space . . . and for free [or darn near it].

Let’s get ourselves back into the middle of the community. Let’s become the third place. Now’s the time to become the community front porch. And we’re making strides toward it.

There’s much more that can be said to this effect, but, suffice to say, I think it’s vital we become not just the front porch but that we engage the community in the library’s ecosystem. In an ecosystem, nothing is central. Instead, an ecosystem cultivates and breathes through shared interactions and reactions. If we set it up as the front porch of a community, we become part of the breath of the community and we become that third space people desperately need to have in order to have a fulfilled, joyful, and amicable life.

If you’re so interested in reading my knowledge ecology paper, feel free to check it out here (.pdf download). It’s short, but by parsing out ideas from the special library/corporate world, public libraries have great opportunities to continue growing uniquely public experiences.

Out of the Pocket by Bill Konigsberg

Being a high school senior is tough – there’s the stress of choosing a college, keeping up one’s grades, and performing well in one’s extracurricular or job-related pursuits. For Bobby Framingham, senior year means hoping to be recruited by his top-choice college Stanford as a quarterback, helping drive his team to win their state championship, and, perhaps hardest, come to terms with the fact that he is gay.

Out of the Pocket by Bill Konigsberg is a tremendous first novel. In the genre of books like The Geography Club, Konigsberg’s Bobby struggles to keep his true identity under wraps in order to be the best quarterback for Durango High School, as well as continue to make his parents and his classmates proud.

Unlike other books of this sort, though, Bobby wants to tell people, and he wants to do it quickly to avoid furthering the notion he and his best friend Cassie are an item. He tells his best friend and teammate Austin who, though he promises to keep it under wraps, spills the beans to other teammates. And if that breach of trust wasn’t bad enough, word gets out to Finch Gozman, certified high school newspaper geek, with whom Bobby believes he has forged a friendship.

Turns out, that friendship was a convenient way for Gozman to get just the information he needed to break the story about Bobby’s position as a gay quarterback and seal his own dream of attending Stanford for journalism.

As the story unfolds, we see how Bobby, his teammates, his classmates, and his parents react to the news that spreads on a nation-wide level because Bobby has made a name for himself as one of the first athletes with professional potential to be outted. Add to the mix an unexpected family emergency and a budding romance, and you have one strong and likable character that you root for both on and off the field.

Out of the Pocket is one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. I’m not a huge football fan, but I found the sports writing to be well done without being too long-winded or too sparse. This, of course, can be attributed to the author himself who is a sportswriter for the Associated Press and covers sports from the high school to professional level.

Throughout the book, I was impressed with the character development. I found Bobby to be an extremely well written character, and I found his football teammates to also be enjoyable and dynamic. Perhaps most exciting for me in the book is the wonderful family relationship Bobby has. Unlike so many other young adult books, Bobby grows up in a stable, loving two-parent home. What I love about it, though, is how real it is – Bobby’s mom and dad are delineated as two distinct people. When trouble hits one of the parents, the dynamics are real and depicted very well. And, of course, the reactions to Bobby’s coming out both do and do not meet what you as a reader and Bobby himself expect. The father-son relationship here is believable and I think relatable to many teens.

I only had one real issue with the entire book, and that comes in the final three paragraphs of the book. I felt like it wrapped up the story a little too tidily when it was not necessary to do so – perhaps Konigsberg’s journalism background played into this. Another small issue I had was the currency of pop cultural references, which included admiration of Avril Lavigne and the radio song “Over and Over” by Nelly. I think these are a few years prior to the interests and currency of current high school pop culture; however, considering that some of the dating in the book is 2007, I suspect that this book was Konigsberg’s labor of love and took him many years to get just right. The bones were probably taking shape back when those references were more current.

Without a doubt, I would recommend Out of the Pocket to teens between 13 and 18. It’ll be interesting to see who would be receptive to reading this. Sports fans will love the sports writing, as it is fresh and lively.  It’s a great coming-of-age and coming-of-self novel that I think could appeal to many and perhaps it can reach audiences in a wider way than The Geography Club. While it’s a story about coming out, it’s also a story deeply rooted in the notion that it is okay to be yourself and it is okay to love who you are.

Konigsberg has a line in the story when Bobby is being interviewed by a local paper about his coming out, and I think it’s fitting for why this book could reach great audiences: “They know, at seventeen, how important inclusion is and how hypocritical the current ‘gay is fine, just don’t tell me about it’ model is.” Maybe a bit overly optimistic, but if we don’t live with that optimism, we can’t allow that mentality to really happen.

Put to bed for good

If you have been keeping tabs at all, in the last couple of weeks, two majors newspapers have shut down their operations, The Rocky Mountain News out in Colorado and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Like many institutions, the newspaper industry has hit a very rough path with the economy, along with competing for many years now with digital sources that operate freely and more quickly, and in light of both, decreasing advertising sales. Since the bulk of a newspaper’s operational expenses depend upon advertising, it’s not too surprising that when advertisers move, newspapers are in a tough spot.

That said, the loss of the newspaper is a sad day for all. Whether you do or don’t read the print copy of a newspaper, it’s a huge part of our cultural heritage, particularly in the United States. Sure, newsprint is made from the scum of the scum paper, prone to crumbing and decomposition, a little help from a preservationist and smart archival practices keep them good and strong.

The print paper is of such value to our cultural history that the NEH and the Library of Congress have devoted thousands and thousands of dollars into the National Newspaper Digitization Project, with the hopes of digitizing many of the newspapers that bloomed in America’s younger years. During my graduate study, I was fortunate enough to be working on this grand-funded project — my job involved researching a selection of Texas newspapers, the towns and people who founded them, and the significant historical events occurring at that time. I spent countless hours digging through microfilmed papers, learning about the characters behind them, and really learning about who and what many of these towns were in their seminal years. Beyond the history, it was enjoyable to peruse the advertisements, the anecdotes, the serialized novels, the advice, and the classifieds; rather than simply the news giving a sense of history, these sorts of things really delineate the culture and interests of the community. The project to put these newspapers online is wonderful, as few repositories hold such vast collections as the one in which I worked, and even those libraries and repositories that DO hold these historical newspapers have either the funds or the equipment to make them readily available for public and egalitarian consumption.

Of course, not to be out done by such stronghold institutions like NEH and the LoC, Google also signed on to begin digitizing newspapers. I think it’s yet to be entirely hashed out or completed, so, we’ll see what happens with that project.

With the death of the print newspaper, we will no longer have to worry about projects down the line — these papers will either be entirely gone or will have taken the model that the Seattle P-I has with going online only.

But what happens when a paper goes online only?

The earth gets greener, content can be rolled out more quickly, advertisers are more willing to pay for their inches, it’s an interactive forum for readers, and, it can be accessed through a variety of mediums (beyond a desktop computer) at any time and often freely. The old paper model requires a lot of paper, ink, and machinery to be printed, it is usually printed the night before it is rolled out thus making some stories less than current, it’s static beyond the editorial pages, and advertising budgets are, well, fairly depleated. Likewise, with subscription numbers dwindling and the price of things like paper and ink becoming more expensive, subscribing can be a bit of an investment.

But what else happens?

The digital divide widens.

Newspapers held a place in our culture as moderately authoritative sources. As much as people suggest bias — and I don’t disagree — the newspaper is entrusted by us to investigate leads, hound sources, and write the package in as much a useful, user-centered manner as possible. People who work on newspapers are usually trained in the skills to interview people and to write (though debatably so, sometimes). Through America’s history, the newspaper was what allowed the community to connect and learn about issues impacting their community by people who make their (meager) living by finding out as much information as possible and digesting it for readers.

Reading the newspaper was a public and private activity. People on the plane, on the train, in the coffee shop, or in their own house would read or share the print paper and talk with one another about the stories. I remember when I worked in my community library through high school and people came in every morning and throughout the day to read the day’s paper. And, like the 80-year-old in the story linked above suggests, it was part of the morning routine, just like taking in that first cup of coffee. And now coffee’s companion will come in the form of something online.

How this impacts the digital divide — newspapers are more of a privilege now. No longer are people going to happen upon their local newspaper in a public space nor will they find the latest copy in their libraries or new stands. Sure, they can get the newspaper online, but if they don’t have a computer at home or they are out and about and don’t happen to have a laptop, iphone, kindle or other portable device at their hand, they’re further removed from an authoritative news source. They are further removed from their community, unable to connect simply because they do not have the means to connect.

While I’m aware that a newspaper can’t survive on love and hope alone, I wonder quite seriously how this issue can be resolved by the newspapers [who have an interest in getting the news out to everyone] and libraries [who have an interest in providing knowledge and information to all]. We further marginalize those who are older and not technology savvy, as well as those who are unable to access technology.

I wonder, too, how we can archive and preserve our cultural history. Since everything is digital and there are people who specialize in archiving born-digital material, the important work of holding onto the information will be handled well. But it lacks something that a printed paper has. Moreover, as technology changes, these digital archives face more and more challenges, much in the same way that the move to microfilm newspapers has caused challenges to access — libraries and repositories have to buck up and pay for expensive equipment that people are inexperienced with or are intimidated by, and people on staff must maintain a level of knowledge of technology that grows increasingly outdated.

I think we’re facing a really tough challenge here. It’s very sad to see these newspapers close their print operations, regardless of how much one understands the situations or how much one finds the print mode entirely outdated. People without technology access and/or skills continue to be pushed to the periphery and it poses serious challenges and difficulties for our social and cultural history. We’re living now in a time of change and challenge, and it’s essential we not only overcome these things now, but we plan and anticipate the future needs and difficulties, while keeping in mind that technology is a privilege and not a right. We should not forget that people without privilege DO have an equal right to knowledge and information as those of us with it.

On my shelf

Janssen posted her lovely collection of titles she’s reading right now, so I thought I’d follow along with that one. This is, of course, just my library collection. And while I’m not on spring break, I have plenty of time to indulge.

Currently reading (as in, bookmarks holding my place right now):

The Truth About Forever

Tender Morsels

On the docket:

Suckerpunch

The Possibilities of Sainthood

Little Audrey

A Step from Heaven

Wicked Lovely

A Mango Shaped Space

Out of the Pocket

Matchit

Madapple

Fade

Newes from the Dead

Peeled

Honolulu

A Curse Dark as Gold

Wake

Book of a Thousand Days

Before I Die

The Wednesday Wars

Getting into Guinness

Just Listen

Does My Head Look Big in This?

Graceling

Having more than 20 books out at any one time gives me lots of options for my mood. Since I can get through them quickly, I bring in 5-10 to return soon as I have them out. You have to love the library - it’s such a non-obligation in terms of choosing your reading.

What’s on YOUR shelf right now?

Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin

I’m making more headway into my ARC pile, though I suppose more and more of these titles are falling under the “already released” or “just about to be released” pile now. Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin will be hitting store shelves in ten days, March 24, 2009.

Anything But Typical is the story of Jason Blake, a sixth grader with autism. The book follows him through his daily routines, documenting the sometimes turbulent days he experiences at school and with family when his emotions or inability to communication well overtake him. We learn from Jason’s perspective how much his mom, dad, and brother are vital to him and how much love and commitment they have to each other in living with Jason’s autism.

One of Jason’s big escapes is The Storyboard, an online fanfiction forum where he contributes his stories and comments on other stories. It is through The Storyboard where Jason is able to best communicate because it does not require visual communication — something with which he struggles, as he has a hard time looking people in the eye when he talks with them, causing other people to prematurely judge his listening and hearing skills.

Through The Storyboard, Jason meets his first “girlfriend,” Rebecca. Rebecca, posting as PhoenixBird, sends Jason a comment on one of his stories and seeks feedback on hers. Not only that, but Rebecca shares details of her daily life with Jason, making him feel, for the first time, true friendship. These moments make getting through school easier for him.

And thanks to his good behavior in school, Jason’s parents decide that he deserves a reward. What better reward, they think, than taking him to Dallas, Texas, from Connecticut, in order to attend one of the yearly conventions of The Storyboard. This is an opportunity to finally meet some of the people with whom he interacts, as well as sit in on courses for becoming a better story writer.

While the set up sounds like the ideal opportunity to finally meet Rebecca, Jason is terrified to go and meet her, fearful of how she will react to him and his condition. While he plays the potential scenarios through his mind, developing the story of how meeting his first true friend would go, it is only by reading the rest of Anything But Typical that readers know how and if the meeting happens and what results that may or may not bring.

Overall, the story is cute and because it is told from the first person perspective of Jason, provides an interesting insight into the mind of an autistic child. This book follows in the trope of others like Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night Time and Siobhan Dowd’s The London Eye Mystery, among others. And truth be told, I’m skeptical of books that attempt to tell stories from the mind of someone with a condition like autism — just how authentic can it be unless the author him/her self is living with the condition AS a child? Alas, the aforementioned titles do a good job selling the idea to me. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that Anything But Typical quite holds a candle to that.

The story seems to lack a lot of details and leaves many loose ends in the story that, just in my understanding of conditions like autism and asperger’s syndrome, do not seem “typical.” I think that Baskin aims her story at a younger audience than most, but some of the language used throughout the story is beyond the typical 10-13 year old vocabulary. Although that in and of itself doesn’t necessarily create a problem, that in conjunction with the story being told from an autistic’s perspective could be challenging and confusing. Likewise, many abbreviations and diognastic words in the story are not defined, making the story more challenging.

I think that there were many challenges, too, in the pacing of the story. Jason’s friendship with Rebecca happens much too quickly, particularly as it relates to learning he will be able to attend The Storyboard convention. He seems to have only had 4 or 5 short message interactions with her at that point. I don’t think a book that is this length (just shy of 200 pages) requires a whole lot of development in relationships, particularly between young characters, but seeing that they are sixth graders, it seems a little hinged on a reader’s acceptance of possibility. I wish Baskin developed this a bit further and given the readers more reason to believe why Jason would find meeting Rebecca so scary; right now, there doesn’t seem to be enough of a relationship to make that worry necessary.

I would have liked more story about a typical day in Jason’s life at school and what brought his family to finally make the decision to get him tested for autism. Although he briefly discusses incidents in his earlier years, it wasn’t until he was in 3rd grade anything happened. I wanted more of the whys and hows of his and his parents’ stories. Baskin developed interesting characters with the potential for real dynamicism, but they don’t grow to the potential they could have.

At the end, I was dissatisfied. I had more questions to which I wanted answers. While I don’t expect a book to have answered all my questions at the end, I felt like it just stopped once Jason and his mother returned from the convention. There were many more places the story could have gone and/or a better resolution to what Jason’s life would be like post attendance. Because he is fixated on wanting to stop being a writer when he actually gets to Dallas, I want to know what actually happens when he returns to Connecticut. What happens when he gets back to school?

Another loose end I wanted explored came from an interesting announcement played over the school intercom — it stated that Jason would be out of town at The Storyboard convention because he won a creative writing award. While he says that he knew it was a lie, I felt like this line could have been better exploited. If it was there, what purpose did it serve? It seemed to me that in a realistic situation that because Jason made the arrangements to leave, it was not necessary to tell such a silly lie to the whole school. I think Baskin could have made this a reality and given Jason and/or his parents more depth here.

Overall, it’s a cute story that I think younger readers would relate to, either because they themselves struggle with a condition like autism or they know someone who does. I think this could be a great read for people who have a hard time understanding that not everyone is the same as them. And I think younger readers are much more accepting of story holes than I am, so some of the issues I had with the smoothness and completeness would be less a concern. I don’t particularly think this book adds much difference to the other books already published exploring similar ideas, nor do I think it is the best. However, it certainly would be a good piece to read in addition to or anticipation of other similar reads.

More superficially, I love the cover and the art that leads into each chapter. The font is very fun in the book, as well. I think that this could be a book youth would be drawn to because it is entirely approachable. I’d love to see more books take this approach and fewer take the approach of a girl or guy that looks somehow in distress or in lust or other pose that has nothing to do with the story itself.