Librarian

The International Book Fair of Turin is May 8-12.

The guest of honour at the International Book Fair 2008 is Israeli literature. A literature that has won increasing appreciation with European readers with authors like David Grossman, Amos Oz., Abraham Yehoshua, Aaron Appelfeld and Meir Shalev. Israeli literature knows how to blend a solid sense of its roots while confronting the conflicts and divisions that trouble contemporary societies and that for sixty years have been reproduced in territories contested by Israelis and Palestinians. Alongside them are writers of the most recent generations and the voices of Arab writers of Israeli nationality, they too witnesses of common work for dialogue and understanding of the reasons of the others, and the liveliness of the country’s free culture.

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Tariq Ramadan, professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford and at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, called on “all people of conscience” to boycott the fair.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano opened the prestigious Turin book fair in the northern city on Thursday amid Muslim anger over the choice of Israel as the event’s guest of honour.

The shortlist will be announced on 15 May. The judges will announce the winner of the Prize at an awards event in the Ballroom at the South Bank Centre, London on 15 July. The winner receives £30,000, and each of the five shortlisted authors, £1,000.

Felszámolás/ Liquidation

Why Won’t He Tell a Proper Story?
Imre Kertész in Conversation with Zsigmond Sándor Papp
in The Hungarian Quarterly,Spring 2008.

“I don’t trust crowds, because I think crowd psychology leads to irrationality and violence, and turns otherwise suppressed fears and superstitions into mass action.”–Rory Litwin at Library Juice.

Rory Litwin’s post on Crowds extends to “cooperative user-generated content or the collaborative side of Web 2.0, and the emphasis on group work in higher education, both of which (in my view) de-emphasize and undervalue critical individual thought.”
He makes me think of Walter Benjamin.

I was in a crowd over the weekend–graduation. It’s part of my job to be in crowds.
I also attend demonstrations against the war and demonstrations in support of candidates and labor rallies. The majority of the people in the world do not have college degrees. Some connection kick starts writing in the first place.
But really, looking at librarians committed to human rights one does see a mix of public and contemplative people:
[pdf file]:Let‟s Honor the Qualities Required of a Librarian Dedicated to Human Rights
For me, right now, I’d rather be writing and thinking. I’ve just done a chapter for Loreine Roy’s ALA editions book,”Human Rights as a Framework for Reflection in Service Learning: ‘Para que Otro Mundo es possible,’” but I don’t think this writing and thinking on social justice issues is possible w/o some engagement in one’s life in the streets or at least with people in stressful situations [Coalition of Immokalee Workers; Fight to Increase Minimum Wage; Standing up to a County ban on Gay Pride in library displays ]. Otherwise writing on these issues is just words w/o connection and to me, an arrogant stance if the only choice. In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Walter Benjamin sees politics as replacing art and while that idea once repelled me I think to some extent we–librarians–need to take the approach of Earl Shorris in his book-Riches for the Poor on the liberating aspects of the humanities for everyone.

Lydia Cacho Ribeiro Mexican freelance journalist and head of a centre that helps abused women in Cancun is the Laureate of the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.

“I believe the role of journalism is to be a lantern, allowing society to exercise its right to know and understand; I believe human rights are non-negotiable. As long as I live, I will continue to write and writing will keep me alive.”

World Press Freedom Day 2008

“The A to Z of Literary Translation: W, X, Y & Z ” by Georgia de Chamberet at Words without Borders.

Students enrolled in a $6 billion federal reading program that is at the heart of the No Child Left Behind law are not reading any better than those who don’t participate, according to a U.S. government report.

The 211-page study, Reading First Impact Study, analyzes the performance of students in 12 states who were in grades one to three during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years.

The study concluded that as a result of Reading First, teachers were spending about 45 minutes to an hour longer each week helping students with essential components of reading instruction, including phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.
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Feb. 28, 2007. The New Standard reported – A government audit has found that a federally funded literacy initiative has been run more like a sales pitch for private interests than an education-reform effort.
A scorching internal review of the Bush administration’s reading program in 2006 found the Education Department ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money the way it wanted.The government audit is unsparing in its review of how the billion-dollar-a-year Reading First program has been beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement. It suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum the schools must use.

Media Release
Contact:
Dr. Terrence W. Epperson
Chair, Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize Committee
Progressive Librarians Guild
E-Mail: epperson@tcnj.edu
April 29, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize Winner Announced
(The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ) – The Progressive Librarians Guild is pleased to announce the winner of the 2008 Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize. This year’s prize has been awarded to Miriam Rigby for her essay entitled “Just Throw It All Away! (and other thoughts I have had that may bar me from a career in archiving).” Ms. Rigby is currently enrolled in the MLIS program at the University of Washington’s Information School and plans to graduate in spring, 2008.
Essays were submitted by library and information science students from colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. Their papers considered such subjects as the USA Patriot Act, health literacy outreach, and humanism as critical librarianship.

Ms. Rigby’s essay will be published in the forthcoming issue of Progressive Librarian, the journal published by the Progressive Librarians Guild. She will also receive a $300 stipend for attendance at the 2008 American Library Association’s annual meeting in Anaheim, CA, and an award certificate at the PLG annual dinner on June 29, 2008.
The Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize is awarded annually for the best essay written by a student of library/information science on an aspect of the social responsibilities of librarians, libraries or librarianship. The prize is named in honor of Miriam Braverman (1920-2002), an activist librarian who was a longstanding member of the Progressive Librarians Guild and a founder of the American Library Association’s Social Responsibilities Round Table.She was a strong proponent of the social responsibilities perspective within librarianship and an inspiration to younger librarians entering the field.
The Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG) was founded in 1990 and is committed to supporting activist librarians and monitoring the professional ethics of librarianship from a perspective of social responsibility. For more information, visit the Guild’s website at: http://libr.org/PLG/
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An exposition about celebrated American novelist and short story writer Jack London is one of the feature attractions of Geneva’s annual international book fair, getting under way Wednesday at Palexpo. The fair has set aside 100 square meters to exhibit documents and photographs of London (1876-1916), reputed to be the most read author in the world, widely translated in multiple languages, including French.