Lowrider Librarian

On a web site I frequent someone recently posted a photo from an article on the san Francisco police giving some books to children.  Here is the link to the article: Article I commented on the site that “I hope they gave the kids some books on how to survive a confrontation with the pigs.”  I said this in all seriousness because the police routinely kill people of color in the US.  In fact, citizen survival tactics during interactions with police should be programming in libraries. Using the term pig is English in origin and has also been used to describe police since 1851. Apart from the police brutality based on race there was also some POC on POC bullying going on in this exchange on the board. Immediately, the person who posted the article (a professional in the same profession as me) told me that I should act professional--”Aren’t you a professional Max--we should behave as professionals!” I’m used to getting the “professional” ad hominem fro...

Information and knowledge are diffused via artistic expression in Hip-Hop culture among other methods. Here is a very brief sketch of some ideas on this topic. ANY and ALL comments will be answered and are valued.  Graffiti and Tags There is a lot of metadata here!   Tags and other graffiti carry metadata. for instance, when one sees a tagger's tag--and one is familiar with the the tagger, then one will know about them--how brave they are--by where they throw up their tags--the more dangerous, the braver. One would know much about their style oftentimes. If they are a local, they might have legendary status, people might know much about the tagger from the metadata derived from their tags, yet they might not even know the tagger's real identity. Murals Political Information Hip-Hop Mural Hip-Hop murals tell stories. Sometimes the story is that of the local neighborhood. The art will be done by someone who intimately knows the neighborhood's charac...

When you are a person of color and you speak about race, you are playing a game of Whack a Mole and you are the mole. Ready for the next one! Something I have seen recently jarred me into consciousness about how peer pressure bullying works in combination with Race in the US. Often, when a person of color brings up Race, they are most often told to shut up in one way or another.  If they don't or happen to bring up Race again, then they are most often attacked. Once the initial attack happens, other bullies join in and reinforce the idea that non-White viewpoints on Race don't count and don't matter. This has happened to me countless times and most often it happens with the bullies hiding behind the guise of paternal/maternal patronizing comments about the person of color being a racist. This type of bullying has happened to me in forums, on Facebook, in person and in various other scenarios when speaking about Race. Recently I was a witness to this on th...

ALA 2015 Presidential Candidates Joe Janes Joe Janes is an academic who uses run of the mill librarian arguments about the importance of libraries.  He sounds like a great guy who is really nice, but didn't have much to say about how he was going to lead ALA. He gave some standard answers like, "We must rethink, reinvigorate, and reinstate our why--our rational for being--above and beyond the familiar." I've heard that for a very long time already with little result.  We won't be getting any real changes with his Joe's leadership.  He will maintain the status quo.  I'm not voting for him. James LaRue James LaRue has been a librarian, a community leader, columnist, radio and tv show host, writer, teacher and a leader of a large organization.  His statement is concise and focused.  You can tell he has experience writing. 1)  We should elevate librarians as community leaders.  "Imagine librarians who catalog their c...

The dysfunctional model of Librarians, who already have great jobs as librarians--writing books for ALA, or other publishers who will then pimp their information out to libraries who can afford the price to these publications. Most often, these publications are on essential library best practices and technology implementations. To put up a barrier to this librarian created information is ethically and morally wrong. It goes against the librarian principle of sharing information. This information should be made freely available to libraries who can't afford the new ALA techSource title, or to small rural libraries who can't afford to attend the 350.00 pre-conference. Shit--I have learned more from Hackers for free than I have learned from librarians sharing their vital information. This site needs to be hackerfied--meaning--it should be converted to an information sharing site: http://www.alatechsource.org When I was first introduced to computers and the internet I...

Book Review! Cannabis Pharmacy By Michael Backes 978-1-57912-951-4 Michael Backes has done a great service by producing this wonderful book on medical cannabis. His book covers a nice portion of material on cannabis and related subjects.  It is often hard to get all this material in one book. Cannabis as medicine has a long history of usage.   Here are the contents: Contents of book.  Click image to enlarge. This wonderful resource is broken into logical chunks of information for readers who want to learn about medical cannabis.   Mr. Backes gives a great historical and social perspective on cannabis that is well-researched and is put in terms that the average reader can understand. Adverse side effects are covered and explicated. He then goes on to describe what makes the particular varieties of cannabis and shows a large sample of strains that have been developed by breeders. Varieties of medical cannab...