An updated version of Historical Statistics of the United States has arrived, the first new edition since 1993. It will live in the phone room. This source is handy for commonly-requested historical census information, especially that which is too recent for the Historical Census Browser web page.
City-level historical statistics can be hard to find, but Erin points out that there are sources for the population of St. Paul in the St. Paul Collection. Check in the St. Paul subject index under "Population".
Friday, December 29, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
CENTRAL STAFF FAVORITE READS OF 2006
Check out Central Staff's Favorite Reads of 2006, lovingly compiled by Erin.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Send Email without Having Email
It sounds impossible, but it's not. Here's a cool site that allows you to send an email without having an email account: http://www.yousendit.com
You can attach files also. Of course, the recipient cannot reply to the email and access to the file only lasts 7 days.
You can attach files also. Of course, the recipient cannot reply to the email and access to the file only lasts 7 days.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
African-American Romance Booklist
Do you have patrons looking for African-American romances? Check out The Colors of Love, a booklist by the Lincoln, Nebraska public library. Their Bookguide web site also has other booklists such as time-travelling romances, fiction for fans of online gaming, Native American detectives, and In Space No One Can Hear You Laugh (humorous science fiction).
Andrea
Andrea
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Central Book Club
Here are the upcoming titles for the Central Library Book Club which meets the first Monday evening of the month at 7 PM in the Meeting Room:
January 1st New Year's Day - no meeting
February 5th Simon's Night by Jon Hassler
March 5th My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
April 2nd The #1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
May 7th The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Anyone interested in moderating or contributing to the discussion for any of these titles should contact Barb S.
January 1st New Year's Day - no meeting
February 5th Simon's Night by Jon Hassler
March 5th My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
April 2nd The #1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
May 7th The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Anyone interested in moderating or contributing to the discussion for any of these titles should contact Barb S.
Culture of Poverty Workshop
This was a 2 part workshop which had more eye-opening moments than I can ever remember experiencing at a learning event presented by MELSA. The workshop began with Jodi Pharr, a chaplain and certified critical debriefer for the St. Paul Police department, talking to us about the course itself, and what she hoped to accomplish during the workshop. She hoped to bring us to an understanding of the role our culture plays in creating and maintaining classes within our society, and how to affect change within this model.
To that end, we (meaning the class and Jodi herself) created what she called a “mental model” of poverty, which centered on the forces that drive people who are in poverty. The driving forces are centered around relationship and survival, rather than the equivalent middleclass worldview which is ruled by work and achievement. Using many great anecdotes about her own and other people’s experiences, Jodi was able to helpus understand what this entailed.
For example, how many times have you had a patron ask you for a particular librarian and be unwilling to “settle” for whoever was on duty? If your relationship is with a particular librarian (however tentative), why would you settle for someone you had no relationship with? Many of those in generational poverty are unwilling to deal with those with whom they have no relationship, since it rarely profits them to do so, and can be both painful and unrewarding to even try. So, building a relationship is paramount in any ongoing contact. For example, if “Pete” is told that he owes fines and that he will be unable to check out, it may not faze him in the least. However, if you know that “Pete” has a little brother who uses his card to help him do his homework, and you relate the loss of the card’s privileges to the inability of the little brother to use the library, you may get a totally different response! This is the beginning of understanding how relationship governs the lives of those in generational poverty.
Authority figures are not viewed in the same way as the middle class would, either. Just because “we” say something, doesn’t make it relevant in the life of someone who may not have the resources that are available to most of us. If, for example, you are asking a woman to pay a fine in order to be able to check out, and she is looking at the last $4 in her wallet, it is unlikely that she would choose to pay a library fine over getting food for her family. In fact, I know of no-one who would reasonably ask anyone to make such a choice. However, lesser choices are also clearly weighted toward the family and the survival of that family, through whatever means necessary. As noted before, if a relationship is in conflict with the needs of an institution (say, the library), guess who’s going to “win”?
Generational poverty is also matriarchal in nature, as the male contingent is often not in a position to take the kind of daily responsibility that the middle class assumes would be “normal. In my handouts, I have a diagram of a “family” which gives you a fair idea of how convoluted some family relationships can become in this type of poverty. In fact, I’m not even sure I would be able to do it justice in narrative form at this point. If anyone who took the workshop would like to respond to this posting with both diagram and explication, please do .
So many of the points Jodi covered over the 2 days relate to communication and how it differs both among peers and between classes, that I will simply give one example here. Jodi posited a situation in which both a middle class person and a person from generational poverty were giving a description of a crime witnessed by both parties. In the case of the middle class witness, the description of what they saw was linear, formal and had a clear plot line. In the second decription, it was casual, with no clear cut beginning or end, not chronological tolerant of what the middle class would call interruptions. I won’t even try to duplicate it here, let’s just say “you had to be there”.
Even as we laughed, we were learning.
I will end this ramble with a question that was asked at the beginning of this workshop by Jodi, talking about her clients:
“If you did everything your caseworker told you to do, got a job and kept it for a year, never missing a day of work, how much closer (if at all) would you be to being out of poverty at the end of that year than you were at the beginning?”
The answer (according to Jodi) is you would not be any closer. One of my favorite handouts in the three ring binder (which will be in the FYI basket on the 4th floor staff area) is germain to the question and the answer. It is called Key Points and covers some of the more salient points covered during this workshop:
Poverty is relative.
Poverty occurs in all races and in all countries.
This workshop focuses on economic diversity, not racial or cultural diversity.
Economic class is a continuous line, not a clear-cut distinction.
Generational poverty and situational poverty are different.
This work is based on patterns. All patterns have exceptions.
An individual brings with him/her the hidden rules of class in which he/she was raised.
Schools and businesses operate from middle-class norms and use the hidden rules of middle class.
For our clients to be successful, we must understand their hidden rules and teach them the rules that will make them successful at school, at work, and in the community.
We can neither excuse persons form poverty nor scold them for not knowing; as professionals we must teach them and provide support, insistence, and expectations.
In order to move from poverty to middle class or middle class to wealth, and individual must give up relationships for achievement (at least for some period of time).
We cannot blame the victims of poverty for being in poverty.
We cannot continue to support stereotypes and prejudices about the poor.
In summary, if they ever bring her back, for goodness sake…..GO! It was worth it.
Doris
To that end, we (meaning the class and Jodi herself) created what she called a “mental model” of poverty, which centered on the forces that drive people who are in poverty. The driving forces are centered around relationship and survival, rather than the equivalent middleclass worldview which is ruled by work and achievement. Using many great anecdotes about her own and other people’s experiences, Jodi was able to helpus understand what this entailed.
For example, how many times have you had a patron ask you for a particular librarian and be unwilling to “settle” for whoever was on duty? If your relationship is with a particular librarian (however tentative), why would you settle for someone you had no relationship with? Many of those in generational poverty are unwilling to deal with those with whom they have no relationship, since it rarely profits them to do so, and can be both painful and unrewarding to even try. So, building a relationship is paramount in any ongoing contact. For example, if “Pete” is told that he owes fines and that he will be unable to check out, it may not faze him in the least. However, if you know that “Pete” has a little brother who uses his card to help him do his homework, and you relate the loss of the card’s privileges to the inability of the little brother to use the library, you may get a totally different response! This is the beginning of understanding how relationship governs the lives of those in generational poverty.
Authority figures are not viewed in the same way as the middle class would, either. Just because “we” say something, doesn’t make it relevant in the life of someone who may not have the resources that are available to most of us. If, for example, you are asking a woman to pay a fine in order to be able to check out, and she is looking at the last $4 in her wallet, it is unlikely that she would choose to pay a library fine over getting food for her family. In fact, I know of no-one who would reasonably ask anyone to make such a choice. However, lesser choices are also clearly weighted toward the family and the survival of that family, through whatever means necessary. As noted before, if a relationship is in conflict with the needs of an institution (say, the library), guess who’s going to “win”?
Generational poverty is also matriarchal in nature, as the male contingent is often not in a position to take the kind of daily responsibility that the middle class assumes would be “normal. In my handouts, I have a diagram of a “family” which gives you a fair idea of how convoluted some family relationships can become in this type of poverty. In fact, I’m not even sure I would be able to do it justice in narrative form at this point. If anyone who took the workshop would like to respond to this posting with both diagram and explication, please do .
So many of the points Jodi covered over the 2 days relate to communication and how it differs both among peers and between classes, that I will simply give one example here. Jodi posited a situation in which both a middle class person and a person from generational poverty were giving a description of a crime witnessed by both parties. In the case of the middle class witness, the description of what they saw was linear, formal and had a clear plot line. In the second decription, it was casual, with no clear cut beginning or end, not chronological tolerant of what the middle class would call interruptions. I won’t even try to duplicate it here, let’s just say “you had to be there”.
Even as we laughed, we were learning.
I will end this ramble with a question that was asked at the beginning of this workshop by Jodi, talking about her clients:
“If you did everything your caseworker told you to do, got a job and kept it for a year, never missing a day of work, how much closer (if at all) would you be to being out of poverty at the end of that year than you were at the beginning?”
The answer (according to Jodi) is you would not be any closer. One of my favorite handouts in the three ring binder (which will be in the FYI basket on the 4th floor staff area) is germain to the question and the answer. It is called Key Points and covers some of the more salient points covered during this workshop:
Poverty is relative.
Poverty occurs in all races and in all countries.
This workshop focuses on economic diversity, not racial or cultural diversity.
Economic class is a continuous line, not a clear-cut distinction.
Generational poverty and situational poverty are different.
This work is based on patterns. All patterns have exceptions.
An individual brings with him/her the hidden rules of class in which he/she was raised.
Schools and businesses operate from middle-class norms and use the hidden rules of middle class.
For our clients to be successful, we must understand their hidden rules and teach them the rules that will make them successful at school, at work, and in the community.
We can neither excuse persons form poverty nor scold them for not knowing; as professionals we must teach them and provide support, insistence, and expectations.
In order to move from poverty to middle class or middle class to wealth, and individual must give up relationships for achievement (at least for some period of time).
We cannot blame the victims of poverty for being in poverty.
We cannot continue to support stereotypes and prejudices about the poor.
In summary, if they ever bring her back, for goodness sake…..GO! It was worth it.
Doris
Sunday, December 03, 2006
125th CELEBRATION
As we all know, the Friends are working on the 125th celebration next year. One idea is to make lists e.g. 125 reasons to go to the library....125 librarians and their favorite books.....125 Minnesota celebrities and their favorite books etc. Barb M.'s idea is 125 unusual reference questions. Anyone with ideas for the "125 list project" or anyone wishing to work on the project should contact Barb S.
IF YOU ANIMATE IT
Teen Read Week. Those three daunting words. If you’ve ever lived with a teen, worked with a teen, or even just walked past a teen, you know that there can be a tendency toward introversion and surliness. Am I exaggerating? Yes. And no.
So when you ask a group of bookish librarians to plan a Teen Read Week event, is there a risk that their introversion and tendency toward surliness will clash with that of their intended audience and result in a less-than-explosive program? Maybe.
But not this year.
This year, we assembled the A-Team of Teen Read Week committees: Hannibal (Barb S.), B.A. (Andrea), Face (Kim F.) and Murdock (me). Together we managed to produce a knock-your-socks-off event using only a bucket, a few pieces of wire and an allen wrench. Okay, not really, but we did have a limited budget and only a short period of time in which to plan our program.
So how did we get 45 teens to come to the Central library on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, you might ask. Well, I’ll tell you. Anime. Yes, that’s right. And pocky.
It turns out pocky is a huge draw. Who knew?
For those of you who are not in the know (that category included me a few weeks ago), pocky is a Japanese treat. It’s like sticks of cookie dipped in frosting. Chocolate, strawberry, green tea (yes, green tea—it tastes a little like banana)…they were all a big hit. Pocky turned out to be the perfect accompaniment to Andrea’s DJ-style mix of Japanese pop and anime music, Carl’s anime caricatures (dare we say—AniME), and the judging of our poster contest.
Teens throughout the city were invited to submit entries to our READ poster contest. We received eight incredible drawings of anime and/or manga characters reading books. The winning drawings (we had two winners!) are being made into READ posters which will be on display here at Central, and the design of our runner-up will be made into bookmarks.
Shortly after the pizza arrived (that’s right, more food), we showed Fullmetal Alchemist: The Movie and generally made a huge mess of the carpet with ground-in popcorn and candy. Carl continued to draw throughout the movie, even though it was dark, and Andrea and I tallied the votes for the poster contest.
After a small ceremony announcing our contest winners and handing out fabulous prizes, our visiting teens headed home, bellies full and caricatures in hand, but not before asking, “When will you do this again?”
The Teen Read Week Committee would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped us in this endeavor, especially Carl, Karen S., Phyllis, Debbie, Joanna, Keiko, John L., Therese, Hans, Paul, Kathy C. and Marcus. We couldn’t have done it without you!
--Laura
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