Lowrider Librarian

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...

Racial Microaggressions in Academic Libraries: Results of a Survey of Minority and Non-minority Librarians The Journal of Academic Librarianship Volume 41, Issue 1 , January 2015, Pages 47–53 Jaena Alabi , doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2014.10.008 Abstract There is relatively little literature on racism within the profession of academic librarianship. To investigate academic librarians' experiences of racism, this research project uses the framework of racial microaggressions, which are subtle, denigrating messages directed toward people of color. According to the results of an online survey, some librarians of color have had racial microaggressions directed at them by their colleagues. Non-minority librarians, however, are unlikely to recognize these disparaging exchanges. Keywords Academic libraries ; Racism ; Diversity ; Racial microaggressions Read it here:   http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0099133314...

The glass comes between our love. My hand reaches for the father that is gone. "No touching allowed!"  Orange jumpsuits?--they have been putting us in those things long before Guantanamo. A long row of desperate communication to my left and to my right. I pick up the industrial black transceiver so we can talk. ‪#‎ Jail‬ ‪#‎ NewJimCrow‬

[We welcome this week's guest post from Da` Lyberri-Ann] By: Da’ Lyberri-ann So another Midwinter has passed and like red carpet season, our new literary award winners have been announced with great fanfare. Facebook was filled with selfies and group pictures of committee members proud of a year’s hard work and accomplishments. As a librarian I should feel giddy and excited. New books are winning awards for outstanding literature in many different categories. As a children’s librarian I should be pulling out rolls of golden stickers to note these books of honor and proudly promoting them to my community. But I am not excited or proud. I’m upset. Disappointed. Dare I say “pissed off?”. Why? it is because again I see that although #blacklivesmatter for sound bites in the news, it doesn’t result in actual change.   At the risk of pointing out the pink elephant in the room I’ll tell you why: The Caldecott committee didn’t have any people of disadvantaged minority status. ...