Librarian faces racism at trial if extradited, lawyer tells court

Sep 22, 2007 04:30 AM
Peter Small
Courts Bureau, TheStar.com
A Toronto librarian accused of shooting a white police officer in Chicago almost 40 years ago should not be extradited to face trial in the U.S. because as a black man, he won't get a fair trail, his lawyer has told three appeal court judges.

"Black men in the United States have been victims of persecution for centuries and that includes to the present day ... including state authorities in Chicago," John Norris argued yesterday.

Canada's justice minister turned a "blind eye" to this deep-rooted racism when he ordered Joseph Pannell to be surrendered for extradition, Norris told the panel.

But federal Crown counsel Janet Henchey countered there would be no particular risk to Pannell due to U.S. racism. "Frankly, there is racism in Canada."

Pannell, 58, has been in jail since July 2004, when he was arrested at gunpoint as he left his job at the Toronto Reference Library. continue reading

LIGHTSPACE: Paradigm Shift in Education

"In my student days I studied in some of the world’s most renowned libraries, such as the awe-inspiring library of the British Museum, — where supposedly the dream and the horror of communism was born —, or the much smaller library of Mackintosh’s Fine Arts School in Glasgow. Their difference in size was immense, but there was a common denominator shared by almost all the classical style libraries: that was their dark atmosphere, dim spot lights only, hardly any sound, only whispering; visually you were surrounded by stacks of mostly leather bound and dusty books looking all very ancient. Both buildings were center oriented, inward looking only. You were meant to be glued to your seat over your book. One had the feeling of being in a monastic setting with ancient editions of the Bible, the Greek tragedies and other heavy volumes of sacred wisdom. One wasn’t allowed to speak, forget about laughing. Libraries were conceived as castles of learning, education and ancient wisdom, as if education by default had to be directed backwards. And above all, the accent was on seriousness.

The results of this cloistered and serious paradigm of human learning, whether in the dark halls of Oxford, Harvard or Berlin, ultimately sanctioned by the “religions of the book” from 2000 to 2500 years ago and not derived from “religions of personal experience”, are not encouraging: the 20th century was the bloodiest in human history, and the 21st promises to beat the gruesome record. continue reading Architecture of the Month: 2006 April

"

Yahoo Answers on the Street

See also: Yahoo's New Reality Show:

Shifting Careers - Outside The Box Interactions

Blogging Your Way Into a Business

By MARCI ALBOHER

Published: August 12, 2007

New York Times

Extract:

When Ellyssa Kroski, who is in her mid-30s, completed her master’s degree in library science in 2004, she could not find a full-time job. She was working part time in the Butler Library at Columbia University and in technology consulting, the work she did before she started her master’s program. She decided that blogging about her expertise might be a way to build connections in the field that could lead to a job.

Befitting a librarian, Ms. Kroski’s posts are well researched and well cited, the old-fashioned way, using properly formatted footnotes rather than hyperlinks.

And the blog did lead to a job, an adjunct faculty position at Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science. But in the meantime, her interests have changed: while the job is not full time, because of her blog Ms. Kroski’s horizons have risen even further.

“As a new librarian, no one would publish me,” Ms. Kroski said. Yet, after publishing her first article, “Authority in the Age of the Amateur”, on her blog, Infotangle, and circulating it to bloggers in her field, she discovered that she was cited everywhere.
Continue reading

ALA Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher

Developed and maintained by Pat Ensor

Tired of endless lists of Web search tools that give you no guidance as to which ones to use? Or that were last updated when Gophers were alive? I'm inviting you to look over my shoulder and use what I use every day for Web searching in an academic library. I keep up with this stuff so you don't have to! continue reading

Top Ten Facebook Apps for Librarians

Part One @ iLibrarian & OEDb

Librarians are experimenting with a wide range of Facebook Apps ranging from the productive such as the 30 Boxes Calendar, Meebo, Twitter, and Zoho Online Office to the silly with Zombies, Likeness, My Aquarium, and SuperPoke. Here are the first three Facebook Apps designed for the librarian in all of us:
Books iRead – With nearly 200,000 users, this handy app claims to be the most popular book application on Facebook. .



LibGuides Librarian – For those of you using Springshare’s LibGuides subject guides maker for libraries, you’ll be pleased to see this new app which lets you display your guides in your Facebook profile and also provides a search of your library’s catalog.


Librarian –This virtual librarian service provides links to books, scholarly sources, and reference resources which the community can add to and vote on. Those who access this application can access an “Ask a Librarian” service, as well as customize and build their own widget based on the original. Continue reading

“11 Life Rules”. This is not the work of Bill Gaets.

posted @ www.gaets.com

Did Bill Gates really say that?
Bill Gates: Life Is Not Fair - Get Used To olliebray,

(Alleged) advice from Bill Gates
As the story goes, "Bill Gates gave a speech at a high school in which he talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world."
I don't believe this actually came from Bill, but I like it anyway!
Originally from:
Dumbing Down Our Kids
Charles Sykes is the author of DUMBING DOWN OUR KIDS. The following is a list he created for high school and college graduates of things he did not learn in school. In his book, he talks about how the "system" may have created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and set them up for failure in the real world.

The 6th Annual Ohio Library Support Staff Institute August 5 – 7, 2007

at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio

Just added to the agenda:
“The Library Degree: Is It For Me?”
a discussion with Michael Bradshaw, 2006 OLSSI Chair
and Doug Morrison, OLSSI Founder
Keynote Address by Neal Semel of Diversity Matters - "Multiculturalism and Respect"

Classes include:
3-Dimensional Picture Book Art: Movable & Pop-Up Books
Assault Prevention and Self-Defense
Basic Animation Techniques in PowerPoint Presentations
Book Repair
Creating Original Records in WorldCat
Creating Your Own Blog...Hands- on Training
Etiquette and Greetings Around the World
Multicultural Communications and Holidays in a Diverse World
Sexual Harassment: Working With Respect
The Elixir of Librarianship. ..Maps
What A Difference A Generation Makes
Yoga for Stressed Library Staff
This year’s grand prize is an Amish Heartland Package for two at the Inn at Honey Run in beautiful Holmes county.
SPACES ARE FILLING QUICKLY! Register at: http://www.olssi.org [librarian-wannabes]

- posted by Rachel @ Beyond the Job