American Libraries Magazine

Open Access Spreads to Miami University

Beverly Goldberg — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:25:26 +0000

The librarians of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, joined the ranks of the worldwide open-access (OA) movement May 14 by voting to make their scholarly articles freely available in the university’s institutional repository, the Scholarly Commons. Based on Harvard University’s model policy, MU’s open-access principles take effect immediately and make the libraries the first department on Miami’s campus to successfully pass an open access policy.

Praising the MU librarians for continuing to do “an outstanding job of pushing boundaries,” Dean and University Librarian Judith Sessions said. “In this case, they understand how the culture on Miami’s campus differs from cultures on other campuses. Their ability to move forward in ways that best serve the mission of the university speaks volumes.”

Supported by the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and other organizations, the OA movement also has the backing of (among others) UNESCO, which supports open access to scientific information; the resolve of more than 11,000 scholars who have signed a petition at the Cost of Knowledge website pledging to place their work in OA repositories; and the interest of the British government, which revealed in May that it would make all publicly funded research freely available online. Congress has also weighed in, introducing in both the House and the Senate in February the third iteration of the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) since 2006. FRPAA would require federal research grantees to make their resulting academic papers freely available to the public no more than six months after publication in a scholarly journal; as with past federal efforts, a number of publishers have expressed opposition.

At Miami University Libraries, however, the debate is over. “The adoption of this policy will allow librarians here to gain first-hand knowledge of how facets of open access work, which will greatly improve our outreach efforts to faculty on campus,” said Jen Waller, interdisciplinary research librarian and chair of the Libraries’ Scholarly Communication Working Group.

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Are Harvard’s Realignment Throes Unique—or a Cautionary Tale?

Beverly Goldberg — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:07:05 +0000

A look at the bumpy road from vision to verity

Harvard University Library (HUL) is poised to launch a massive reconfiguration of its services in July. Reorganizations usually trigger anxiety in any work setting, so the mandated realignment of 73 libraries into streamlined reporting structures and shared services was bound to create a stir. Despite a series of communications from Harvard officials since January, campuswide worries about the fate of the library system and its staff have not eased.

More than two years on the drawing board, the reorganization plan stems from a 2009 Library Task Force report that recommended reforms to strengthen HUL so it could “move forward effectively in the face of technological change and financial challenge.” The report noted that “even during the recent years of endowment growth, the libraries struggled to collect the books, journals, and other research materials desired by current faculty and students.” (According to the June 26, 2011 US News & World Report, Harvard’s $26 billion endowment in 2009 topped all private college and university endowments.)

To implement these changes, the report emphasized a path that many libraries have taken in recent years—access to materials over ownership: “Harvard libraries can no longer harbor delusions of being a completely comprehensive collection, but instead must develop their holdings more strategically.” It also recommends centralizing library policies such as collection development and borrowing guidelines, and states that “strategic investments in human capital must be made to achieve these objectives and reforms.”

In January, HUL Executive Director Helen Shenton gathered library employees at a town hall meeting to say, in part, that the reorganization would require fewer workers and that the administration would pursue “a range of options—some voluntary, some involuntary” to reduce staffing. Several weeks later, 280 library staffers—all 55 or older and with 10 years’ service—received early retirement offers, with the stipulation that they accept by April 2. Library officials announced May 9 that 63 people, or 23% of those eligible, were taking early retirement; if all 280 had participated, HUL would have shed approximately one-third of its 930-member workforce, which has already been reduced from roughly 1,300 since 2003.

“Harvard’s intention for the early retirement program was twofold: to help facilitate the library transition while providing eligible staff with the choice of an enhanced early retirement option,” HUL Director of Communications Kira Poplowski told American Libraries, noting that library officials are continuing to meet with librarians, faculty, and administrators campuswide “to assess the needs of the new library organization.”

Emphasizing the goal of universitywide collaboration, Harvard Provost Alan M. Garber said in an open letter February 10, “The new Library will harness both the power of a unified Harvard and the distinctive contributions of the Schools, which will retain responsibility for work that requires deep knowledge of research, teaching, and learning needs within their respective domains.”

The reconfiguration will cluster Harvard’s 73 libraries into five affinity groupings (Professional School Libraries, Physical and Life Science Libraries, Humanities and Social Sciences Libraries, Fine Arts Libraries, and Archives and Special Collections), supported by four Shared Services units (University Archives, Access Services, Technical Services, and Preservation, Conservation, and Digital Imaging Services).

Lisa Carper, cataloging assistant at Tozzer Library, is one of the few library staffers to speak out publicly. “We need all the steps taken toward forming the new Harvard Library to be done with the utmost knowledge and care by the people who have the most invested in the outcome and who have the expertise and experience to do it right,” she wrote February 16 in an open email addressed to the transition team. Carper also wrote that those most qualified “are terrified and uninformed about what is happening and threatened with losing their jobs.”

A March 19 email (PDF file) from the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) to members offered assurances that HUCTW would “present and discuss important themes that have arisen among the staff, in particular the fact that Harvard’s libraries are severely understaffed and that further staffing reductions pose threats to the integrity of the Library.”

Library workers have also received moral support from faculty and students, who have conducted protest marches and written op-eds in the student Harvard Crimson. Additionally, members of Occupy Harvard reached out to alumni donors, conducting a call-a-thon asking them to join the protest; in one posted email, retired English Professor A. Abbott Ikeler cautioned Harvard President Drew Faust, “To dismiss outright, rather than retain and if necessary retrain, numbers of long-serving, hard-working library employees strikes me as an exercise perhaps worthy of a jumped-up, for-profit organization—certainly not worthy of America’s foremost university.”

HUL’s Poplowski added that its “full roster of key library projects” also includes the April 24 release of more than 12 million catalog records, representing almost all of the 73 libraries’ metadata, in the hope that other institutions will follow suit, and an April 17 declaration by the Faculty Advisory Council advocating scholarly publication in open-access journals over increasingly high-priced traditional channels. Also sure to impact the library is the $60 million partnership announced May 2 between Harvard and MIT to offer MIT courses on edX, an open-source software platform to which anyone with an internet connection can log in for free.

Purse strings and paradigms

Harvard is certainly not alone in pursuing such an ambitious agenda—or in finding resistance to its plan.

Among the academic libraries undergoing a paradigm shift is the University of California at Berkeley. Tom Leonard, university librarian, was candid in an April 16 letter to the UCB campus about the trigger for his library system’s reorganization: “With the loss of public funding at Berkeley over the past four years, the Library has lost over 70 budgeted staff, equivalent to more than 20% of our budgeted positions. Assuming relatively stable future budgets, we still need to reduce our workforce over the next three years, via attrition, by approximately 20 FTE to meet budget goals.”

Leonard was conducting an online survey of campus members in May to determine which of two committee-formulated reconfiguration options is preferred, and stated that a decision would be made public in July, with a 1–3 year implementation scheduled to begin in the fall. According to the May 4 San Francisco Business Times, survey questions probed how patrons tend to use the library—as a quiet study location, as a repository of materials, or as the place to find librarians with subject expertise. The survey came several months after members of the Occupy movement held a study-in at UCB’s Doe and Anthropology libraries to demand longer library hours.

A December 2011 SPEC Kit from the Association of Research Libraries documents how a number of other North American universities have consolidated operations as institutional service philosophies—and financial realities—have changed. Reconfiguring Service Delivery (PDF file) also notes that the amount of patron input into such changes varies “because some of the reconfigurations were mandated by physical or financial situations beyond the control of the library.”

As the libraries of Harvard and UC Berkeley navigate academe’s shifting paradigms, new challenges are already looming. New York Times columnist David Brooks noted May 3 that Harvard and MIT’s edX online-course portal will join initiatives at Brigham Young and Stanford universities, which have already offered distance education to hundreds of thousands. The as-yet-unanswered question, of course, is how the movement toward a global networked campus will further transform academic libraries.

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D.C. Officials Feel the Heat over Planned School Library Cuts [UPDATED]

Beverly Goldberg — Fri, 04 May 2012 21:08:11 +0000

Officials move to eliminate more than 50 school librarian jobs in the next academic year

A spring proposal by District of Columbia officials to eliminate more than 50 school librarian jobs for the next academic year has triggered a public relations nightmare for the city council, where the proposal originated.

“Libraries have long been one of the really weak links in the District of Columbia Public Schools,” grassroots activist Peter MacPherson of the Capitol Hill Public Schools Parent Organization told American Libraries. Noting that more than 30 schools lack site-based librarians for the 2011–2012 academic year, MacPherson explained that members of the parents group determined to fight a spring decision by schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson to defund school librarian posts at schools with less than 300 students and let principals of larger schools decide whether to reallocate their librarians’ salaries. “If this situation were to remain unchanged, 58 schools would have no librarian,” MacPherson said. Altogether, there are 124 schools in the district.

Between 2005 and 2008, the parents group worked with the Capitol Hill Community Foundation and the Washington Architectural Foundation to raise $2.4 million for the renovation of eight school libraries. Washington Examiner columnist Jonetta Rose Barras reported April 10 that the fate of those new facilities, as well as improvements funded by Target Corporation and Capital One through the Heart of America Foundation.

Library ROI doubted

“We have invested in full-time librarians for the last three or four years and we haven’t seen the kind of payoff we’d like,” Henderson said in Barras’s column, adding, “We have pulled away from programs where we haven’t received a return on our investment.” On May 3, Washington Post Answer Sheet columnist Valerie Strauss joined the fray, speculating: “I guess that means they are going to have to change the DCPS website” which lauds school libraries for “play[ing] an increasingly important role in the learning process” and citing research studies showing that “an active school library program run by a certified and trained school librarian makes a significant difference to student learning outcomes.”

With the city council about to mark up the school budget, ALA President Molly Raphael and American Association of School Librarians President Carl Harvey II sent letters May 2 to D.C. City Council Chair Kwame Brown. Harvey emphasized the school-library research touted—ironically—online by DCPS, while Raphael reminded Brown of Henderson’s recently unveiled district goal to increase reading proficiency. “How will you meet this goal if you deprive thousands of students of one of the most valuable educational resources needed for students to increase reading scores—a school librarian?”

MacPherson told American Libraries late on the afternoon of May 4 that there has been some movement behind the scenes as city council members continued to weigh school-district budget lines. He theorized that some may be influenced by the hundreds of phone calls they received the day before that demanded full funding for school libraries.

UPDATE, May 11: School-library advocate Peter MacPherson emailed American Libraries that, even though D.C. City Council Chair Kwame Brown is recommending that $1 million be added to help fund school librarians, “that sum does not even restore the existing status quo vis-à-vis library staffing.” A final city-council vote on the DCPS budget scheduled for May 15.

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One State’s Experience at National Library Legislative Day

Beverly Goldberg — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:47:02 +0000

Library supporters bring their concerns to Capitol Hill for face-to-face meetings

Jazzy Wright

Concern over federal and state budget cuts to library programs motivated Georgia State Librarian Lamar Veatch to make his 15th annual trip to Washington, D.C., for National Library Legislative Day (NLLD). In fact, Veatch asserts, coming to D.C. is a big part of his commitment to librarianship. “My job is to represent libraries, and it’s a part of my professional responsibilities to do this,” Veatch said. “If I’m in Washington, I might make a difference.”

Veatch joined more than 350 librarians and library supporters who met face-to-face with members of Congress and their staffs to discuss key library issues April 23–24 at NLLD. Sponsored by the American Library Association, NLLD is designed to afford grassroots library boosters the opportunity to advise congressional lawmakers about why it is essential to save funding needed for libraries and library services.

Those who made the trek to the nation’s capital were joined April 24 by advocates participating in ALA’s Virtual Library Legislative Day. Locally based participants had ready access to contact information for their elected officials through the Association’s action alert gateway, and ALA encouraged advocates to phone and/or email their state’s congressional members during the entire week of April 23–27. Advocates outside the Beltway reported sending more than 300 messages to Congress that week through ALA’s Capwiz interface.

While in Washington, Veatch met with representatives from various members of Congress from Georgia, including the offices of Reps. Austin Scott, John Lewis, and Rob Woodall, as well as Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson. Veatch discussed appropriations funding, specifically for the Library Services and Technology Act and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Veatch thinks of his role in Library Legislative Day as an opportunity to create more library supporters.

“I try to make that connection to libraries for legislators,” he said. “It’s important to keep the role and use of libraries in the minds of decision makers. They need to be aware that libraries are important institutions. Libraries are efficient in the services they provide, but they need more funding to be effective in the community.”

Over the years, NLLD has also given ALA an opportunity to thank elected officials who have steadfastly championed support for libraries at the federal level. This year, ALA’s American Association for School Librarians bestowed its highest advocacy honor, the Crystal Apple, to Sen. Jack Reed (D–R.I.).

Library advocate Louis “Buzz” Carmichael, a member of the Lexington (Ky.) Public Library board, was also recognized during NLLD with the White House Conference on Library and Information Services Taskforce (WHCLIST) Award for his commitment to supporting the nation’s libraries.

JAZZY WRIGHT is press officer for ALA’s Washington Office.

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Think Digitization During Preservation Week

Sanhita SinhaRoy — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:51:41 +0000

As more and more patrons and users go online to do research, libraries must consider several factors prior to digitizing their collections

Julie A. Mosbo

April 22–28 marks the third annual Preservation Week—an event sponsored by ALCTS that’s dedicated to educating the public about caring for personal treasures, and is intended to heighten interest in preservation among library, archive, and museum staff.

For libraries and archives, digitizing materials has become a key concern, especially as more and more patrons and users go online to research information. But several factors must be considered:

Copyright law

Librarians interested in beginning a digitization project must first consult copyright laws. If the item is in the public domain, copyright is fairly easy. If the item is not in the public domain, determining copyright can be time consuming. A good resource to consult for questions regarding copyright is Copyright Issues Relevant to the Creation of a Digital Archive: A Preliminary Assessment by June M. Besek (Council on Library and Information Resources).

Physical condition

Items being digitized should also be in good physical condition before digitization. Handling brittle or torn objects could make digitizing more difficult and could cause further damage. If you are unsure, check with a conservator, preservation specialist, or in-house archivist prior to digitization. If you do not have a conservator on staff, the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) offers a “Find a Conservator” database that you can use to search for conservators in your area based on the materials—documents, textiles, electronic media, etc.—you would like preserved.

Cost

Before you begin any digitization project, you’ll need to assess costs for staff, storage, and equipment. Determine if there are dedicated staff members who have or need training. If training is needed, decide whether those individuals will have in-house training or will need to attend a workshop. ALCTS is offering two webinars during Preservation Week: Taking Care: Family Textiles on April 24 and Preserving Your Personal Digital Photographs on April 26. These webinars will be recorded and placed on the ALCTS website.

Equipment costs can be a strain for libraries on a limited budget. You will need quality scanners to provide the best representation of an item. As for storage, the good news is that such costs have gone down significantly over the past several years. Though not recommended by most people for long-term preservation, a one-terabyte external hard drive can be purchased for less than $100. One terabyte of hard-drive storage for standard servers can cost between $150 and $400. This is important when digitizing—the higher the image resolution and the standards used for scanning, the more storage space will be needed for those files.

Another decision you will need to make is what type of file you want to use to save the images. Most libraries that are actively digitizing have developed standards to follow to preserve noncompressed, larger files and to access compressed or lossy (smaller) files.

Access

After digitizing, consider how the images will be accessed and preserved. Depending on their staff and budget, libraries can do a number of things, such as provide an in-house database, purchase digital collection management software, or create cooperative digital preservation networks. Another important piece to make access readier is the level of metadata used to describe the digital item. Most metadata will be based on descriptive, administrative, technical, structural, and preservation information.

Additional resources to consult before starting a digitization project include Cornell University Library’s Moving Theory into Practice: Digital Imaging Tutorial and in-person and online training provided by regional library consortiums.

For more information about Preservation Week and preserving collections, please visit www.atyourlibrary.org/passiton.

JULIE A. MOSBO is preservation librarian at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and is the current chair of the Preservation Week Working Group.

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Bookmobiles: A Proud History, a Promising Future

Sanhita SinhaRoy — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:27:44 +0000

On National Bookmobile Day, the mobile libraries are running strong

John Amundsen

Bookmobiles have a proud history of service dating back to the late 1850s, when a horse-drawn collection of books began making the rounds in Cumbria, England. Here in the United States, the first bookmobile is widely attributed to Mary Lemist Titcomb, a librarian in Washington County, Maryland, who in 1905 posited “Would not a Library Wagon, the outward and visible signs of the service for which the Library stood, do much more in cementing friendship?”

Today, bookmobiles are still going strong, with more than 900 such mobile libraries still providing the same spirit of community—indeed, friendship—through innovative new services in cities, towns, and rural areas.

“I truly feel that most people would tell you that the physical library is an important and necessary part of any community,” says Brad Thomas, outreach manager of the Tulsa City-County (Okla.) Library and president of the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services. “But for those of us who relied on bookmobile service for economic, geographic, or physical reasons, the bookmobile was not only the library, it was our library. When we couldn’t make it to the library, the library came to us,” Thomas said.

Over the past several years, bookmobile services have expanded to include new materials—computers, internet workstations, DVDs, video games, and even e-readers—and new programs, such as storytimes, career readiness, and English-language classes.

For the Memphis (Tenn.) Public Library and Information Center, introducing their new mobile job and career center, JobLINC, allowed the library to provide job-readiness workshops, one-on-one job search assistance, information on training opportunities, résumé help, and community information and referrals. Without the bookmobile, many members of the community may otherwise not have had access to these important library services.

At El Paso (Tex.) Public Library, the bookmobile plays an integral role bringing technology and internet connectivity to one of the poorest counties in the country. It makes regular stops through its city of 800,000, where 28% of the population lives below the poverty level and one in three adults is functionally illiterate. The library offers classes for adult learners at all branch locations, but lack of transportation can make it difficult for some patrons to attend. With funding from the “American Dream Starts @ your library” grant, the library was able to purchase bookmobile laptops for conducting job searches, filling out job applications, and computer training.

Another “American Dream Starts @ your library” recipient, the Salem County (N.J.) Bookmobile Library, added two new stops—one at a local convenience store and a second at a church—to its 43-stop route. The effort will help the library reach one of the country’s most vulnerable groups: migrant workers. The library stocked the bookmobile with new dictionaries, phrase books, language videos, and Spanish-English books.

Bookmobiles have a proud legacy of service, which continues to this day. This National Bookmobile Day, lend them your support so they can serve generations to come.

JOHN AMUNDSEN is communications specialist for ALA’s Office for Literacy and Outreach Services.

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Books-on-Demand Technology Comes to Brooklyn Public Library

Beverly Goldberg — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:37:16 +0000

A group of 3rd-graders from Brooklyn’s P.S. 399 watched Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses being printed on demand in bound paperback format March 7 at Brooklyn (N.Y.) Public Library’s Central branch. The children were invited to a ribbon-cutting ceremony to introduce the library’s new Espresso Book Machine, which can print more than 8 million titles in any language with the push of a button. In bringing the device online, BPL joins several dozen universities, public libraries, and bookstores around the world in offering the technology to their clientele.

“It’s the photocopier of the future,” librarian Rick Anderson said in the December 2011 issue of Wired. Anderson, who operates an Espresso Book Machine at the University of Utah, predicts the technology will become a “tabletop medium.” Of course, the size of the EBM 2.0 at present—5 feet tall and 7 feet wide—makes that impractical for the time being, to say nothing of the cost: BPL President and CEO Linda Johnson told the March 6 Wall Street Journal that EBM manufacturer On Demand Books quoted a price of $125,000 for the library to buy a machine outright. Because that was infeasible, the library and On Demand struck a deal in which the firm would install and operate the EBM at no cost to BPL, and charge patrons for printing out a book (suggested retail price for in-copyright titles and $8.99 minimum for a public-domain work of 40 pages, up to $23.99 for an 830-page out-of-copyright book—the maximum size the EBM can handle).

EBM accesses the majority of its catalog from public-domain titles digitized by the Google Books Project. Some copyrighted titles are made available for sale by publishers such as HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, McGraw-Hill, Hachette, Macmillan, O’Reilly, and university presses. What made the technology particularly attractive to Johnson, however, is that it enables self-publishing authors to see their book printed at the library and added to the EBM database—albeit at a cost that averages $149 for formatting and design advice, a proof copy, and one upload of revisions. Additionally, the ability to print a book in any language would naturally appeal to libraries such as BPL, which serves a diverse population that speaks more than 130 languages and tends to live in non-English speaking households.

“What it means to be a great library is up in the air right now,” Johnson told WSJ. “Reflecting the community that you serve is really how you become great.”

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Oscar Nod to Fantastic Flying Books Shows Love for Libraries

Beverly Goldberg — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:45:44 +0000

March/April 2012

A film allegory that celebrates the curative power of story in general—and reading in particular—won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short February 26. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, a wordless film whose most inspiring scenes take place in a fanciful library full of living books, was produced by start-up Moonbot Studios in Shreveport, Louisiana, and depicts how the title character heals emotionally, over time, from the cataclysmic devastation of his personal world by Hurricane Katrina through the transformative properties of the written word.

Dedicated to the late HarperCollins children’s publishing giant William Morris and New Orleans children’s literature champion and storyteller Coleen Salley, the 14-minute 2-D short had already received awards at 13 film festivals. Fittingly, William Joyce, who created Morris Lessmore with codirector Brandon Oldenburg, has also written a yet-to-be-published children’s book of the same name and developed an iPad app that enables users to explore Lessmore’s world in a way that differs from the picture-book or film experience.

“The app and film build off the book—neither can be just regurgitation,” Joyce told American Libraries. “I see all of these things coming together in a way so that I can explore different avenues, different details, and different parts of the same narrative and give the reader more story.”

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“Book Traffickers” Meet Tucson Ban on Mexican-American Studies

Beverly Goldberg — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:28:27 +0000

March/April 2012

Educators in the Houston metro area are readying a “book trafficker” caravan that would travel March 12–18 from Houston, Texas, to Tucson, Arizona, to donate books about the Mexican-American experience to four volunteer libraries. The donations are meant to counter the January removal of at least seven titles from Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) classrooms, where they had been taught as part of the district’s now-outlawed Mexican-American Studies (MAS) program. Reminiscent of the Occupy Wall Street Library movement, the book traffickers, or Libro Traficante, organized by Houston Community College professor Tony Diaz, plan to contribute titles to underground libraries in Houston, San Antonio, Albuquerque, and Tucson.

The TUSD school board voted 4–1 January 10 to disband MAS so the district wouldn’t lose 10% of its state funding. The penalty would have been imposed by an Arizona statute enacted in 2010 that bars public and charter schools from teaching ethnic studies programs that “promote the overthrow of the US government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group, or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

At its 2012 Midwinter Meeting, the American Library Association denounced the disbanding of MAS as “the suppression of open inquiry and free expression … on the basis of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.” A joint resolution signed January 30 by ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation and 26 other free-speech groups, booksellers, and academic organizations also condemned the decision.

“Taking away these courses is far more likely to ‘promote resentment toward a race or class of people’ than any title in the MAS curriculum,” Office for Intellectual Freedom Director Barbara Jones told American Libraries.

Expressing a similar argument, US Rep. Charles A. Gonzalez (D-Tex.) and Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have asked the Justice Department to investigate HB 2281, which they contend (PDF file) is “bad public policy and fundamentally flawed.”

Banned, or just boxed?

Critics of the program’s termination decry it as censorship, a characterization that district officials dispute. “None of the books have been banned by TUSD,” district Communication Director Cara Rene said in a January 17 statement, noting that every title taught in the MAS program “is still available to students through several school libraries” or interlibrary loan. “But how easy is it for students to get the books? How many copies are available?” Diaz asked in the February 10 Houston Chronicle.

Also in dispute is the number of titles removed from the classrooms of MAS teachers. Rene stated that “seven books that were used as supporting materials for curriculum in Mexican American Studies classes have been moved to the district storage facility.”

The seven books Rene listed are: Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado; 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures, edited by Elizabeth Martínez; Message to Aztlán by Rodolfo Corky Gonzáles; Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by Arturo Rosales; Occupied America: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuña; Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire; and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson.

However, Diaz claims a total of 88 titles were pulled from MAS classes on literature, US history, and social justice. The list at librotraficante.com includes works by Sherman Alexie, Luís Alberto Urrea, Sandra Cisneros, and Jane Yolen.

Whatever the definitive count, TUSD teacher Norma Gonzalez is seeking to put the books back into circulation. On February 9, she presented 15,000 signatures on an online petition she created at change.org asking for the MAS books to be reissued to classrooms.

“The First Amendment is all about letting people be exposed to different ideas. I don’t think we want to be censoring books out of our libraries,” TUSD board President Mark Stegeman told KGUN-TV in Tucson February 9. “Outside of the classroom, people are entitled to study whatever they want and come to whatever conclusions they want.”

Union Sues to Block Library Outsourcing RFP

Beverly Goldberg — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:59:56 +0000

Just a month after the Simi Valley (Calif.) City Council voted to withdraw its city library from the Ventura County Library System, the union local that represents southern California library workers is suing to have the decision reversed.

Filed January 10 in Ventura County Superior Court by Local 721 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the lawsuit charges that the city, in passing a resolution that went into effect immediately, failed to give the 30 days’ notice required when taking an action that amounts to a legislative act—such as severing its library’s ties to the county system. “The [December 12] resolution is not subject to a referendum or appeal and so they are eliminating the voice of the people,” SEIU Local 721 Communications Director Jesse Luna said in the January 12 Ventura County Star. “We told [the city council] they were doing it the wrong way but they wouldn’t listen.”

The local is seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to keep Simi Valley officials from issuing a request for proposals to outsource the operation of the Simi Valley Library.

The union’s issue is with the timing of the vote, which was taken two weeks before a California law went into effect that mandates transparency when cities contemplate leaving a county library system in order to contract out library services in documenting anticipated cost savings. “We have an opportunity to take action in advance of that law going into effect,” Council member Glen Becerra said at the time of the vote.

“My taxes that go to Ventura County first have paid for this whole system for many years, and withdrawing from the county system is throwing away what we’ve invested to this point,” Simi Valley resident Garr Wharry, who is the other plaintiff in the lawsuit, told the Star. “Until a real cost analysis is done, we are in the dark.”