Monday, June 28, 2010 • WASHINGTON, D.C
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Are your students puzzled about research design? Direct them to SAGE Research Methods Online—they can use its unique tools to search award-winning Research Methods texts and find real-world answers. Please visit us at booth 3549 to learn more about SAGE Research Methods Online (SRMO), the essential tool for researchers. www.sagepub.com/srmo Page 16 • Cognotes Monday, June 28, 2010 • WASHINGTON, D.C. Toni Morrison and Libraries: An Intimate Relationship By Jeanna Vahling ing in the public library she learned University of Kentucky just how “provocative and transform- ing words [could] be.” Nobel Prize winning author, Pu- Morrison spoke about her intimate litzer Prize winner, charming and relationship with libraries. She served witty are all words to describe Toni as a library page after her sister be- Morrison, this year’s Opening Session came secretary to the head librarian Keynote Speaker. More importantly in the town where they grew up. As she is a library advocate with a genu- Morrison puts it, she was a “very slow ine love for our profession. “I suspect page”, taking time to read or at least that every single author that speaks peruse the books she shelved in the to librarians can tell you about his or stacks. her intimate, steady, and vital rela- “What led me to writing was my tionships to libraries” she said in her hunger for reading” she told the audi- opening remarks. ence as she began to talk about herself Morrison recalled stories of her as an author. She was hungry for a youth and her first glimpse of the certain kind of story. One she couldn’t power of words. “I don’t even remember find, “so I wrote it, ” she humbly my life, my sentient life, before I was stated. It was only by accident that able to read.” With genuine affection she began to write children’s books. she spoke about she and her sister us- She explained that her son provokes ALA President Camila A. Alire shares a laugh backstage with Nobel Prize and ing pebbles to spell out their names and the questions while she “pumps them Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor Toni Morrison. other simple words. She recounted the up and develops them” into stories. story of their failed attempt to expand “He’s the one who sort of gives me the brary has its purpose – from the ing “no talking” signs. In closing she upon their vocabulary by writing out laughter and joy that I think I can newer, community-centered libraries expressed her desire to secure our a word they happened to see spray move along with this, with his help.” with their adjacent coffee shops to future, “because that future is mine painted, rather largely, on the side of a She has recently written Peeny the libraries of yesteryear still post- as well.” building. The word started with the let- Butter Fudge, a story for her grand- ter F, and their mother prevented them children and her way of passing down Library Cat has Facebook Fans from moving past the second letter. a third generation peanut butter Though Morrison, at the time, was fudge recipe. Morrison is pleased with Nyx, goddess of night, is the collection management library cat at too young to realize why their mother the outcome of this book. “Language Chesterfield County Public Library (VA). This lovely dilute calico, was was so adamant in preventing the is magic for them [grandchildren]. born without eyes but nothing keeps her from fulfilling her job respon- girls from writing out that specific They like rhyme and they like repeti- sibilities. She has many Facebook fans and is attending ALA where she word, by the age of 13 she had a gen- tion. They invent words. They invent has met some of her “libraryland” fans and visited the exhibits to hang eral appreciation “that words have people. It’s very creative for them.” out with her publisher friends and authors at Sisters in Crime. brutal power.” And through her read- Morrison stressed that every li- eBooks, audiobooks & more Visit booth 1741 to see what’s new from OverDrive • Integrated eBook apps for iPhone®, iPad™, Android™ & others • Manga & comics for children and YA • Library eBook Accessibility Program • OverDrive Dashboard™ for librarians Stop by the Digital Bookmobile and help Random House record a community- sourced audiobook of The Wizard of Oz! Friday - Sunday across the street from the Renaissance Hotel The leader in eBooks, audiobooks & more for libraries www.overdrive.com ©2010 OverDrive, Inc. WHERE PUBLIC K-12 school &ACADEMIC libraries ARE GOING BOOTH #1942 Ingramcontent.com Page 18 • Cognotes Monday, June 28, 2010 • WASHINGTON, D.C. Dave Isay and StoryCorps: Preserving the Voices of Everyday People By Brad Martin Danny and Annie Perasa, from time Martin Luther Jr. was LAC Group Brooklyn, NY, came to the StoryCorps killed and a retired librarian booth at Grand Central Terminal telling her husband about About seven years ago, a booth was in the first or second week it was in how she originally prepared set up in Grand Central Terminal in operation, and Isay shared some ex- for her career by cataloging New York to record interviews that cerpts from several recordings they her comic books as a little would later be preserved for future made over the years and which have girl. generations to hear. Studs Terkel cut been featured on NPR. One recording StoryCorps will be coming the ribbon and made a remark about was broadcast just days before Danny, to television this summer people knowing who designed the fa- a retired OTB worker, died of cancer, with animated cartoons ac- mous railroad terminal, but that that and the original StoryCorps booth was companying the recordings, we didn’t know that much about the renamed in his honor. and Isay played one example everyday people who built it. “This is about the real America,” of a young boy named Joshua Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps, Isay said, “not the celebrities, the Littman interviewing and be- spoke to ALA attendees Sunday Lady Gagas, the sludge that comes in ing interviewed by his mother morning about this ongoing project over TV so often.” Sarah. and shared many examples of the Isay also played a recording of an He closed by saying, “these recordings. According to Isay, these interview between Olly Neal and his are the people we should be recordings, which are being preserved daughter Karama. Neal, a retired building statues of in this Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps, discusses his at the American Folklife Center at judge, told of being a teenager and country... at its core, every company’s ongoing project at the Auditorium the Library of Congress, “exemplify stealing a book by Frank Yerby from life matters equally.” Speaker Series Sunday. “eloquence and grace and wisdom in a library because he didn’t want oth- the voices of everyday people.” ers to know for fear it might hurt his So far, about 60,000 people have reputation as a tough guy. Years later, participated in the project, resulting he recalled how he learned that the Librarians Can Change Society in about 30,000 interviews. Two years librarians actually had known he was By Amy Pace ian from the University of Illinois at after its founding, StoryCorps took doing this, and had encouraged his High Point University (NC) Urbana-Champaign. the project on the road with two Air- reading by going to great lengths to How can librarians become more Cheryl Knott Malone, Associate stream trailers, recording interviews buy more books by the same author. engaged in social movements? On Professor at the School of Informa- coast to coast - often parking at public He said he could not understand why Sunday morning, activists, historians, tion Resources and Library Science libraries. every time he returned a book, there librarians and other creative thinkers at the University of Arizona, spoke Isay explained that “part of the was a different title by the same au- discussed their research and work to first, suggesting librarians today power of listening to these recordings thor magically on the shelf for him. promote civic engagements to help consider the history of the desegrega- is that you are walking in their foot- Isay played several other excerpts, provoke this question. The program tion of southern public libraries, and steps and you learn that there is more including a couple of sanitation work- was moderated by Annie Paprocki, the roles librarians played therein. that unites us than divides us.” ers recalling being in Memphis at the Anthropology and Sociology Librar- “Both segregation and desegregation PRO2935 CognotesPRINT 5/27/10 1:48 PM Page 1 were processes that moved back and forth,” she said. “Most southern cities and towns that built public libraries… restricted their use to whites.” Excep- tions to this were rare, she stated. However, Malone then described a number of articles and books that began to pop up before the passing of Brown v. Board of Education, which spoke of the more practical and fair Open the Door to Inspiration. desegregation of their public libraries. She told the stories of two librari- ans: Ruth Brown and Juliette Morgan, early vocal proponents of civil rights Project MUSE is adding back issues and more! in their libraries, whose careers ended with dismissal and suicide, respec- A core discovery and research tool for scholars in the humanities and social tively. Among the numerous stories sciences, Project MUSE now offers even more rich archival content electronically. involved in this evolution, Malone also told the history of the Houston Public Back issues from over 80 of our respected, peer-reviewed journals are being added, Library’s slow process of desegrega- with many available from the first issue.