Serving Deaf/Hard of Hearing Teen Patrons →

morerobots:

(h/t Anna/ehbeesea)

This is a list of tips on how to serve your teen patrons who are deaf & hard of hearing, and it’s pretty great! Teens are such a specialized population group to work with anyway, since they deal in all manner of emotions (or non-emotions) and can even be intimidating. Deaf/hoh teens may still be struggling with advocacy skills (I know I sure did), and need that extra boost of confidence. If you recognize a teen is deaf or hard of hearing, use these tips! 

The only one I really question is the use of the microphone, because while microphones make sound louder, they don’t clarify the sound. The issue sometimes isn’t hearing the other person, but understanding them, and there’s a huge difference there that people don’t seem to grasp. I would suggest reserving spaces/seats specifically for your deaf/hoh teens to sit in the front, as close as they can be, on the off chance they can see the speaker better and therefore pick up on visual cues.

nypl:

In case you missed it earlier this week Corey Kilgannon of The New York Times did a wonderful profile of Lloyd Burlingame, a devoted user of The NYPL’s Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library. A former Broadway set designer, NYU Professor, painter, and now published author, Lloyd is a modern day renaissance man. Pictured  here with his beloved guide dog Kemp, Lloyd currently has some of his personal artwork on display (known as “touch art”) at the Braille and Talking Book Library. But that is not all, Lloyd is also working with the fascinating Audio Book Studio at the branch so that his recent book TWO SEEING EYE DOGS TAKE MANHATTAN is available to all patrons. 

From LJ’s Posting A Parody Video? Read This First:

Lansdowne Public Library’s “Read It” video, based on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”, was originally yanked from YouTube for a copyright violation. But the story may have a happy ending: the library director told LJ that “The Lansdowne Public Library ‘Read It!’ parody is back up on YouTube and I believe that it will stay there.”

When the video was first proposed, Lansdowne badly needed a project to educate and inspire its teen population. In the impoverished suburb just outside the Philadelphia city limits, the local teens are a textbook example of the digital divide.

Reaching All Users: Deaf and Hard of Hearing Patrons in the Library – A TTW Guest Post by Holly Lipschultz →

morerobots:

Co-sign everything in this post.

As a deaf librarian, I’ve been dealing with difficulties with patrons myself, and it can be really hard sometimes. People think they need to whisper in a library setting, and no, you really do not. I have had to constantly ask people to speak up, because I couldn’t hear their questions, and if I can’t hear you, then it’s hard to help you.

For the phone tips, I want to add there’s also a service called CapTel. It’s a special phone with a video screen that translates what the person on the other end is saying into text. It’s about $100, and when I get my own office with official full-time job, I will absolutely be putting in a request to have one of these phones installed because it would make life so much easier. Many hearing people constantly use phones, and I am a little phone-phobic: while I sometimes do okay, more often than not I usually have to redirect the call to someone else that can hear the person on the other end because I can’t understand a thing. This phone is great because it a) doesn’t use relay and b) the person calling you doesn’t need any special attachments. All you need is to be hooked up to wireless, which in an office space, is probably easy enough to do.

Listen up, folks!

(Source: shrinkinglibrarian)

As far as I’m concerned, when you suppress a minority from your library catalogue, you’re making a statement: you’re pulling the welcome mat out from under that minority’s feet and you’re ensuring the dissolution of that minority and its history within your community. I’m proud of the consideration I see librarians give to their diverse communities of users. I’m proud to see Armistead Maupin on the quick-read shelves with Urdu and Polish texts around one corner and mental health texts around the next. I’m proud of these refuges and community centres and melting pots. I’m proud that despite the shushy stereotypes, these are places where anyone can have as loud an identity as they like and it will be catered to. I’m proud of libraries and of my choice to become a librarian.

— Boolean Berry - LGBT pride and libraries (via contrarylibrarian)

A librarian sitting in front of him cautioned that appraising works before they end up in the Digital Public Library is crucial to maintaining its authority—an up-vote, down-vote system could never be enough of a sanity check. “Well if that’s true then Reddit wouldn’t work,” the volunteer shot back. Of course, the trouble is that Reddit doesn’t work—not like a library, at least, where the voices of women and minorities tend to get shut out in favor of whatever lulz-zeitgeist hit the Internet that morning.

— 

Exercises in democracy: building a digital public library

This. 1000x this.

(via hadro)

thepinakes asked: What is your professional goal as a librarian?

morerobots answered: First question, and that is an extremely tough one. I’m fresh, with not much experience. I flit back and forth between having small goals and big goals, and lots of them. Mainly, though, I want to establish the library as the safe space for everyone. There is a lot of discussion about bridging communities, but it always seems little is being done and there is also little research/anything scholarly on it. For example, a fellow classmate was trying to look up programs for those with mental health issues. There were articles stating “this is what we should do”, but none that was “this is what we have done”. My professional goal is to be a “do-er”. I want to say “let’s bridge these communities” and actually do it. Let’s actually provide programs, support and accommodations for people with mental health issues, people with disabilities, people who are displaced from their homes, people who are new to the community. A lot of what is currently being discussed is how libraries can keep up with book stores and online retailers - and I think this is one way. It would provide a lot of good help and assistance to a part of the population that often gets overlooked.

— From Cait aka morerobots: What is your professional goal as a librarian?

All librarians now rely on software to do our jobs, whether or not we are programmers,” Ms. Goldman said. “Most libraries don’t have an I.T. staff to set up a server and build you a Web site, so if you want that stuff done, you have to do it yourself.

— A Surge in Learning the Language of the Internet - NYTimes.com (via appsandstacks)

thelifeguardlibrarian:

Information Commons coming to Brooklyn Public Library

I think this is the new way, folks. Computers and people. 

The $3.25 million Leon Levy Information Commons will have a 30-seat wireless training center where librarians teach patrons computer literacy and research techniques — and show them how to tap into online databases that are available only at the Central Library.

There will be 25 personal computers loaded with pricey video editing and graphic design programs, and a seating area for laptop and other mobile device users to access the library’s wi-fi.

“Information is the great equalizer,” said John Bernstein, president of the Leon Levy Foundation, which is footing the bill for the project.

“These are resources that exist in the great research libraries of the world,” he said. “We want to teach the people of Brooklyn how to access and use these wonderful resources.”

Brooklyn!

PLA has been my favorite library conference since I attended my first in 2010. I relished the show’s focus—the granularity and prescriptiveness of its sessions; the moxie and optimism of its presenters. I bonded with a group of Connecticut librarians I now call friends, and I met a future Multnomah County mover who would become my surrogate mother, all while soaking up the weirdy beardy energizing Zen of Portland, our host city.

This year’s conference in Philadelphia made a vastly different impression. Maybe it was my own fatigue from weighing the ebook question, but I detected a friction among public librarians that wasn’t present out West two years ago. My schedule mixed sessions about readers’ advisory (RA) with digital migraines, and as I moved from one to the next, two camps took shape: those pros and parapros who believe popular books remain public libraries’ leading brand and that the face-to-face, librarian-patron interaction is at the core of library services, and the technologists who argue that survival depends on being able to code—literally—library infrastructure and publish content independent of established houses.

— Heather McCormack sums up last week’s PLA with Exquisite Informational Immersion: Fusing the Visions of Readers’ Advisory and Technologist Librarians.

In an impassioned address at the Association of American Publishers’ annual meeting, president and CEO of the New York Public Library Dr. Anthony Marx told publishers: “We’re eager to be promoting your books. We are trusted by our patrons to have views about quality. We help to sell your books.” He noted, “on the library site now, if you come in looking for a book and it’s out, the first thing we ask you is whether you want to buy a copy. Our patrons buy books and we buy books. We bring in speakers thorough NYPL live and we hope in the future one, two three or more authors a day…. We are your partners in encouraging reading. We are also deeply committed, pivotally committed to access.

— 

NYPL President Urges Publishers to Propose Pilot Models | Publishers Lunch

So badass.

(via rachelfershleiser)

Congress must see the Federal Research Public Access Act as an important part of the country’s research endeavor, and a crucial component of the public’s access to knowledge.

— Congress Has a Role to Play in Making Research Public - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education (via arlpolicynotes)

If you can take yourself out of your first world techie social media smart-shoes for a second then imagine this: you’re 53 years old, you’ve been in prison from 20 to 26, you didn’t finish high school, and you have a grandson who you’re now supporting because your daughter is in jail. You’re lucky, you have a job at the local Wendy’s. You have to fill out a renewal form for government assistance which has just been moved online as a cost saving measure (this isn’t hypothetical, more and more municipalities are doing this now). You have a very limited idea of how to use a computer, you don’t have Internet access, and your survival (and the survival of your grandson) is contingent upon this form being filled out correctly.

— 

Why we should care about libraries (via A Whole Lotta Nothing)

Other than the problematic phrase “first world” (hate “first world problems” ugh!), I completely agree. I believe that this is what libraries need to become. I have spent time helping people fill out forms, find the correct documents, even send an email. I figured out what people wanted through hand gestures. I just think there’s so much we can offer to people from so many backgrounds.

And yet we still have so many accessibility issues. 

(via morerobots)

appsandstacks:

JSTOR Tests Free, Read-Only Access to Some Articles

It’s about to get a little easier—emphasis on “a little”—for users without subscriptions to tap JSTOR’s enormous digital archive of journal articles. In the coming weeks, JSTOR will make available the beta version of a new program, Register & Read, which will give researchers read-only access to some journal articles, no payment required. All users have to do is to sign up for a free “MyJSTOR” account, which will create a virtual shelf on which to store the desired articles.

Read more…

The surge in immigrants patronizing the Queens system has spurred its branches to offer books, DVDs and CDs in 59 languages, more than double the total a decade ago. So important has acquiring foreign-language books become to the Queens Library’s mission that Radames Suarez, who supervises the Spanish collection, travels every year to the largest Spanish book fair in the world, in Guadalajara, Mexico. The Queens Library even has a staff demographer.