Libraries and information

Conferences and Diversity

When I go somewhere new (like a conference), I tend to look around to gauge the visible diversity of the attendees. AALL was definitely more white than my place of work. I’m fairly confident it was more white than the…

Questions of Scholarship

A law school acquaintance of mine was killed on Friday, and just as I did 12 years ago when two other friends were killed — that time in a bombing, this time what was likely and shockingly an intentional homicide…

Rigor, revisited

When the Library Loon first (recently, at least) wrote about rigor, I responded at Hack Library School. She wrote again about rigor last week, and I feel that she again is calling for a response. Now, despite my linking to her own…

On ranking LIS programs

School rankings are very important. Because I went to Harvard Law School which is ranked really high. Great, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about how school rankings are not at all a useful way…

Reading update

Looking at my list of posts, it appears that I’ve completely neglected to keep up my running commentary on my 50 states, 50 books project. You might have noticed that you’re not really missing anything, as my “reviews” of the…

Arizona (and why Alaska is missing)

Arizona’s book is Crossers, by Philip Caputo. Definitely not a book I would have chosen to read based on the book jacket (wait until we get to California–THAT’S a book I almost didn’t read despite the list) but I appreciate having…

Alabama

Last night I read the first on my list of books for 2014. Looking for Alaska, by John Green. First of all, it takes place at a boarding school. That’s one way straight to my heart. Second, it is very…

2014 Book list: 50 states

Any list of states that leaves out DC pretty much bugs me, but 50 books in a year is easier than 51, so I forgive the curator of this one. A novel for each state. I’ve read Alaska already (LOVE MICHAEL…

On privilege

Three things in the last 24 hours have me thinking about privilege. First, Fobazi’s great post at Hack Library School about diversity and intersectionality. Read it, read the comments (seriously). Then there was the guilty plea of Florida Rep. Trey…