March is Women’s History Month! Indeed, the end of the month is nearing, but it isn’t too late to honor the women in your lives: mothers, sisters, wives, teachers and those women today, and in history, who followed their hearts and dreams, took risks, stood up against injustices and fought for the freedoms and rights that some of us benefit from today.
The following post was contributed by Shoshana Yehudah, Director of Emergency Perparedness for Touro College.
My job as Director of Emergency Preparedness has made me sensitive to being prepared for emergency situations of any kind. I carry a hand sanitizer at all times, a mini package of paper towels, a light stick for blackouts, a smoke hood for train fires, and even heated insoles for those really cold days. I’m like Felix the Cat with a bag of magic tricks. My family, friends and colleagues all tease me about how serious I am about preparedness; my boss calls me Typhoid Mary because I’m always talking about the latest epidemic. Okay, so maybe I am a little neurotic about the whole thing, but I see it as being practical and don’t give a flying fig what others think about it. Which makes this story so out of character for me. Continue reading →
More computers, less vellum: Libraries from medieval to modern (Old Library at St. John’s Cambridge and Touro Kew Garden Hills)
The other day, our Information Literacy Service Director, Sara Tabaei, approached me about updating an article I had written in 2005 entitled: “Are Libraries Becoming Obsolete?” I agreed and thought it would be a good idea to revisit the topic and reflect over whether my initial thoughts still held. Continue reading →
Melvil Dewey Can’t Land Punch. Librarian of Congress Poised for Victory. (source)
[Continued from Librarians React to Change, part I] Academic and research libraries are not fans of the Dewey decimal system, and they employ other organizational schemes. The Library of Congress (LC) classification system arranges books using an alphanumeric call number system. It spans the alphabet from A to Z, although it ignores the W’s and a range of Q’s. While subject headings are constantly updated and expanded, they are fit within the existing call numbers. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) utilizes the letters unused in LC to classify medical books with a high degree of specificity. If you would like to see a guide to the classification systems, click here. Which classification system should a large library use? I can picture a melee of librarians duking it out for classification supremacy. Continue reading →
A periodical typically indicates its purpose and intended audience, and Lucky Magazine is no exception. Emblazoned on its cover is the phrase “Lucky—The Magazine about Shopping.” Now that’s something I can get behind. I like to keep up with trends I am not going to follow. No hottest coat for chilly days or “ridiculously good riding boots” for me. Clearly, the intended audience for this magazine skews younger than I; nevertheless, it’s a fun read. As a librarian, how can I resist flipping through the pages? The content within may hold the answer to my next reference question. Continue reading →