Greg’s (My boss) New Orleans Recommendations #ala11 #alatt

Posted on by pcsweeney

I got this email from our assistant director in the library system where I work. His name is Greg Bodin and he used to live in New Orleans and really knows all about where to eat drink and what to see in New Orleans. This list was really good so I thought I would share it with more than just our staff.

From Greg:
These are just a few recommendations.  Having been to many conferences, one never really has time to see lots of things but I suggest these as worth your time while visiting New Orleans.  Of course, please contact me if you have questions or would like other recommendations.

Things to see
The conference takes place at the Convention Center, which is in the Warehouse District.  The Warehouse District is adjacent to the French Quarter, the Garden District, the Central Business District and Uptown.  Lots of things are walking distance or an easy cab ride.  I indicate if things are a bit farther afield.  Below are things I enjoy.

Warehouse District:
Contemporary Arts Center
This is New Orleans’ main museum for contemporary art – also a really cool space.

World War II Museum
A really great museum – even if you aren’t a history buff.

Ogden Museum of Southern Art
This is one of my favorites – it is a collection of traditional and contemporary art from throughout the South.

French Quarter:
Jackson Square
This is the center of the City.  While New Orleans is a very French city, it’s design and architecture reflects it’s time as a Spanish colonial city.  Jackson Square is reminiscent of the plazas and zocolos in Latin American counties.  Central to the square is St. Louis Cathedral.  The Cathedral is flanked by the Prebytere (originally a residence for the Bishop) and the Cabildo (originally the main government building).  On either side of the square are the Pontalba Apartments.  All of these are worth a visit.

Moonwalk
Directly in front of Jackson Square, the Moonwalk is an elevated walkway along the

Mississippi River 
You get a great view of the Mississippi and a pleasant walk that can take you from Jackson Square back to the Convention Center.

Algiers Ferry
The Algiers Ferry connects downtown New Orleans to the Algiers neighborhood across the Mississippi River.  The Ferry is free for pedestrians and is a great way to experience the River.

Royal Street
A stroll on Royal Street is a lovely way to see beautiful architecture and do a bit of window shopping.  Royal Street is the traditional shopping street in the French Quarter and is filled with art galleries and antique stores.  Check out the beautiful Supreme Court Building on the walk.

Bourbon Street
Bourbon Street is best experienced in the evening.  Even if you are a teetotaler it is worth checking out the spectacle.  If you aren’t a teetotaler there are plenty of places to quench your thirst.  Be warned that Bourbon Street gets touristy.  If you want to go where the locals go, head to Pat O’Brien’s.

Historic New Orleans Collection
A wonderful little gem of a museum, archive and library.  This is one of the principle repositories for historic New Orleans documents, ephemera, books, etc.  I highly recommend it.

Uptown/Garden District:
St. Charles Streetcar
The oldest continually operating streetcar in the county.  Both locals and tourists use and love the streetcar.  I highly recommend getting on Downtown and heading Uptown for a ride.  Warning: it isn’t air conditioned.

Magazine Street
This is the main shopping street for Uptown New Orleans.  It is really long and filled with lots of cool stores and restaurants, ranging from funky to high-end.

Audubon Park/Zoo
One of the most beautiful parks and zoos in the country.  You can also take a boat from the French Quarter to the Zoo and get a ride on the Mississippi River.

New Orleans Public Library: Latter Branch
Sadly, the New Orleans Public Library is a poorly funded institution that has suffered from years of neglect.  Visiting New Orleans Public libraries will make you realize how lucky we are at the San Mateo County Library.  However, a visit to the Latter Branch is always a treat.  The branch is located in a beautiful old mansion in Uptown New Orleans.

Bars

French Quarter:
Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop
A great bar for ambiance.  The building is one of the oldest in New Orleans.

Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone
A fun bar in a beautiful old New Orleans hotel.

Napoleon House
This is one of my favorites in the French Quarter.  You can’t beat the ambiance.  Order a Pimm’s Cup.

Frenchman Street
This is where the locals hang out (as opposed to Bourbon Street).  Lots of clubs and bars and lots of good live local music.  Frenchman Street is located just outside of the French Quarter.

Decatur Street
There are two parts of Decatur Street – the upper part near Canal Street which is touristy and filled with tacky t-shirt shops.  The lower part near Esplanade has numerous bars that are lots of fun and definitely funky.  Molly’s on the Market and Coop’s are my favorites.

Uptown:

The Columns Hotel
A beautiful, old hotel on St. Charles Avenue.  Have a drink on the front porch.

Restaurants

Warehouse District

Herbsaint
Really good New Orleans cooking that is walking distance from the Convention Center.

Emeril’s
This was Emeril Lagasse’s first restaurant in New Orleans and it is still a great place to visit.

Cochon
My favorite Cajun restaurant in New Orleans.

French Quarter

Café du Monde
An absolute must-see.  The place to get coffee and beignets (French doughnuts).  Great any time of the day or night.  Filled with tourists but worth the experience.

Central Grocery
A take-out sandwich place.  They invented the muffaletta sandwich.

NOLA
Emeril’s French Quarter restaurant.

Stella
Really good food – kinda pricey but worth it.

Stanley
Really good food – Stella’s cheaper sister restaurant.

Muriel’s
A beautiful restaurant on Jackson Square in the French Quarter.

Coop’s
Kind of a dump but really good food.  One of my faves.

Get ready for ALA in New Orleans with this great library gear!!
Purchases from The Library Advocacy Store Support Library Advocacy Projects
like the Great Librarian Write-out

Librarians Unplugged (Mobile Guitar Lending Library) #ala11 #alatt

Posted on by pcsweeney

Hey! Stop being a “hero” and play a real guitar! This year, the ALA Think Tank folks are all about the power and strength of music to bring folks together. We will be returning from midwinter to Annual with our mobile guitar library. The ALA Think Tank will provide two guitars and various other instruments of construction. If you want to play guitar, maybe learn something from each other, network, or just want to enjoy some good… music played by some of the great talent found in our profession come on by and jam for a while. This is an open session where anyone and everyone can “check-out” an instrument and jam for a bit while meeting other awesome librarians. If you want to find it, you can follow @pcsweeney or the #alatt hashtag on twitter for current locations. See you out there!

If you want to check out last year’s Mobile Guitar Library you can check out the video –

(About the Vid)
At the 2011 American Library Association Midwinter meeting, the crew of the Think Tank infiltrated the conference with a guerrilla guitar lending library just to see what would happen. We invited all kinds of folks to “check-out” a guitar for a few minutes or a few hours. Many librarians and other good folks sat and played. As it turns out, our profession is filled with talented musicians. This video is the mashup of many of the patrons of this guerilla library.

Starring….
Librarian JP (JP Porcaro)
Lisa Carlucci Thomas
Jaime Corris Hammond
Josh Hadro
Peter Bromberg

Get ready for ALA in New Orleans with this great library gear!!
Purchases from The Library Advocacy Store Support Library Advocacy Projects
like the Great Librarian Write-out

Eat and Drink for Free at #ALA11. #alaTT #ALAfree

Posted on by pcsweeney

Free stuff with #ALAfee
Going to ALA can be expensive and I know that there are many of you starving MLIS students out here who came to ALA on your own dime. There is also a buttload of unemployed librarians who paid their way to ALA, and even more folks whose library didn’t pay them for their trip out. There are many ways that you can save money at the conference by sharing hotels, taxis, and volunteering for passes into the conference, but did you know that you can also get books and prizes and eat and drink for free?

I’ve never eaten better than at an ALA conference and mostly I eat and drink for free! This is in large part due to my fantastic Think Tank team and the sharing of what’s happening at the conference. When one of use hears about something free we text each other and we all descend on the free goodies like a pack of vultures. Well… Now you can be a vulture too!

The vendors at the conferences want you to come and check out their products and they usually try to entice you with free food, drinks, and other good stuff. Mango Languages, for example, is keenly aware of the starving librarian and almost always has something delicious at their booth. However, the big problem is knowing where these events take place, so I am once again proposing a hashtag for all of us to share where we find the free stuff! So, whenever you find something free you can tweet about it and let some of these starving librarians in on the goods using the hashtag #ALAfree. Who knows? You might find out about some of the cool new stuff that our vendors are offering too!

If you are a vendor and want to let people in on the secret, don’t be shy about using the hashtag to entice these future customers to come and see your products and services with free good stuff.

#ALAfree

Get ready for ALA in New Orleans with this great library gear!!
Purchases from The Library Advocacy Store Support Library Advocacy Projects
like the Great Librarian Write-out

Death to Grassroots Library Marketing!! Start a Library Franchise!

Posted on by pcsweeney

Ok, here it is. I’m absolutely and totally fed up with grassroots library marketing. Now, I’m not saying that some folks aren’t doing awesome things with it, I’m just saying we can do better. I think it’s about time that the library starting some real fundamental advertising and marketing. I mean the kind of awesome commercials you see during the super bowl or at the very least prime time television. Or, at the VERY VERY least, late night or midday commercials. But really, what I would love to see is one of those hour-long infomercials like you see for those products that slice and dice and make some kind of fries. But wait! There’s more! I would also like to see billboards, street signs, signs on buses and popups on the Internet and the whole litany of regular advertising in use by major corporations. Why can’t we do that?

Ok, I’ll tell you why. Its because we all work so far apart from each other and our networks aren’t tied together like a franchise where we can do real resource sharing, where our friends groups can work closely together, and where we can share costs on such extreme projects. I think it’s about time that we start these kinds of projects. That we start coming together as a profession to really start a library franchise with a brand name that we can plaster our cities, televisions, and intertubes with. Maybe then we can finally get away from this crap grassroots (read cheap) marketing, start playing with the big boys, and getting the word out to Joe Public about what libraries are and what we have become.

While we’re at it…. Can I beg you to please, at the very absolutely total complete least, knock off the eight and a half by eleven colored paper with clipart and comic sans font that so many librarians pass off as adequate marketing?

*added* I just recently discovered these library marketing blogs. I was going to write more but these folks pretty much cover it all.

Marketing Matters for Librarians

Marketing Ideas for Non-Profits and Libraries

Get ready for ALA in New Orleans with this great library gear!!
Purchases from The Library Advocacy Store Support Library Advocacy Projects
like the Great Librarian Write-out

Save Oakland Public Libraries is AWESOME!!

Posted on by pcsweeney

Via the Amazing Rosario Garza

“Here’s a situation that has not gotten much attention at all: Oakland Public Library is slated to have their budget DRASTICALLY cut, by 85%. Fourteen branches will be closed, leaving only 4 branches open to serve a population of over 400,000. Those four branches will be understaffed. This proposed budget will surely devastate the public library system in one of California’s largest cities.”

So here is where is gets really good! Rather than lay down and take it, the fantastic librarians at Oakland Public Library deserve mad props for their outreach, advocacy, and awareness campaigns. Many of these are broadcast through their Save Oakland Library Facebook Page that has over two thousands likes! I’m showing your their Facebook event pages instead of all the media about it because THIS is how you run a Facebook campaign!! AMAZING!

I’m going to link you to a couple below. You should do some of these if your library is in danger too. (San Jose Public Libraries are your there?)

Zombie Crawl to Save Oakland Library

Purple Pajama Storytime–plus PIZZA!

SILENT Funeral Procession for the Library–at ART MURMUR

Save Oakland Libraries Bike Ride

Save Oakland Library: Guerrilla Storytime #2!

Save Oakland Library: Guerrilla Storytime #1!!

Be sure to look for all the news about that was generated from these great events too. They are receiving a huge amount of media attention and that is where their power is coming from.

Get ready for ALA in New Orleans with this great library gear!!
Purchases from The Library Advocacy Store Support Library Advocacy Projects
like the Great Librarian Write-out

So the ALA Think Tank sold out. #ala11 #alatt

Posted on by pcsweeney

So the ALA Think Tank sold out.  But it’s cool, we do it for you.

Andrea Davis brought this to our attention.  Mango Languages is holding a Mango Mania Competition at ALA Annual 2011.  In order to enter the contest we had to submit a video all about where we would Mango.  Luckily, our group had a little “unconference” trip to Tijuana at ALA Midwinter in San Diego and I filmed some awesome footage of that trip.  So, basically, without even planning for it we already “Mangoed.”  It’s interesting how these past unplanned #MIH shenanigans come back to work for us in strange ways.  Here is our video entry –

I’m not going to lie to you. We do get some personal benefit out this competition. The swag and grand prizes are nice (iPad anyone?), but more importantly, the winning team gets credit towards our Mango Languages Subscription at our library system. In the financial state that we are living in now, I’m sure you can appreciate my desire to not get laid off and to be able to bring something back to my library system?

But anyway, down to the meat of this post… So how is this good for you?  Well, Mango Languages is giving us some cash for our trip to ALA, but since we all already paid for our trips we decided to spend it on our ALA parties and other off-the-books kinda ALA Think Tank events.  We want to make this the best ALA that we can for all the folks going out to the awesome city of NOLA so let us know what we can do to help make it EPIC for you!

We also wanted to get some good publicity for the Think Tank group that is doing all kinds of awesome stuff.  The folks involved in the group are fantastic librarians who are doing great things!  You can read about this group and what we want to do to revolutionalize from our manifesto.  There are many amazing people involved in this group who are working to make conferences more beneficial to the members of ALA and to ensure that the organization is working for its members.  You can be a part of this amazing group of awesombrarians by joining the ALA Think Tank group on Facebook.

If you want to follow our Mango shenanigans on the Facebook Fan Page (we had to make one as per the rules of the contest) you can check it out here – ALA Think Tank FB Fan Page

You can follow us on Twitter with the Hashtags #ala11 and #alatt or individually as
Librarian JP
Tiffany Mair
Jenn Wann Walker
Patrick Sweeney
Andrea Davis

ALA Think Tank events so far…
ALA Dance Party
ALA Flash Mob and Freeze
What else?  It might be a surprise!

Get ready for ALA in New Orleans with this great library gear!!
Purchases from The Library Advocacy Store Support Library Advocacy Projects
like the Great Librarian Write-out

Rebooting Libraries Back to Issue #1

Posted on by pcsweeney

I was just thinking about DC comics idea to reboot all of their comics back to Issue number one. As part of the news they are also reissuing all of the #52 comics in the reboot in digital format starting with Justice League. Now, I was a HUGE comic book fan when I was kid, and my super hero of choice was Firestorm (also by DC comics), so this whole idea got me thinking about this concept for libraries.

What you have to remember is that, while they are starting the comics at number 1, they are not republishing the first comics. They are retelling the stories in different ways. There will be new storylines, new ideas, and bigger and better concepts. Or, as DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio told USA Today;

“We really want to inject new life in our characters and line. This was a chance to start, not at the beginning, but at a point where our characters are younger and the stories are being told for today’s audience.”

So basically, they are not doing away with the core of their product. They are not changing Superman’s powers, or the speed of The Flash, they are just re-examining the story that they are telling.

What if we could reboot libraries back to issue #1? What would we change about our story now? If we could rewrite our library’s stories for today’s audience and inject new life into our characters what would we say?

Get ready for ALA in New Orleans with this great library gear!!
Purchases from The Library Advocacy Store Support Library Advocacy Projects
like the Great Librarian Write-out

Guitars at the Library? Its Gonna Be Freaking RAD!!

Posted on by pcsweeney

I thought I’d share an update on the whole Guitar Lending Library at my library. It’s been a long journey but I think we are almost there. A whole lot of awesome has happened since we started this back in October. If you want to read about the genesis of the project you can check out the link to it here.

The first thing that changed is that we decided to not get our guitars from Guitar Center. I’d like to say that I love Guitar Center, but they didn’t really give me that level of service I was looking for when I went and told them I wanted to buy 15 guitars. I mean, I’m buying 15 guitars! At least sound like you want me to buy them from you.

So… I went and bought them from a great local guitar shop called Gelb Music. They totally bent over backwards to help me out. They sold me great guitars at a great price and I couldn’t ask for better service. I purchased Hohner Classical guitars, with a gigbag, tuners, extra strings, wall hangers, and I’m going go back and buy some capos too. I’ll let you in on a little secret too… They gave me a better price than guitar center!

I took the guitars up to the central library office and our great cataloger Ida hooked me up with the item record, and loan rules and all that. The guitars check-out for 8 weeks, they have a five dollar a day fine up to $50.00, and can be renewed, but can’t be put on hold. There are various reasons for all this, and if you’re interested in the finer details, I’ll lay that all out in a later post. (If anyone cares)

In preparation of the guitars arrival, we had county maintenance install the hangers. When the guitars finally came in after all the processing (RFID, Barcodes, etc…) we hung them up to be ready for our first round of guitar group lessons.

Our group lessons are being taught through a great partnership with a member of a local band called Vintage Music Collective named Justin Phipps. This partnership came about after their band played at the library and we found out that Justin taught lessons in the local schools. Justin was also the one who recommended the Hohner guitars and Gelb Music since that’s who he gets his guitars through.

Overall, I’m pretty stoked about this project so far. We don’t start checking them out until June 15th and I’m leaving a lot of details out of this post. In a future post, I’m going show you our loan agreements, staff guitar training guides, and various other details of the project.

-This project was made possible through the Eureka! program and an LSTA grant

Get ready for ALA in New Orleans with this great library gear!!
Purchases from The Library Advocacy Store Support Library Advocacy Projects
like the Great Librarian Write-out

Jane Yolen Wrote to LAUSD: reposted here

Posted on by pcsweeney

I received this in my ALA council email. I’m passing it on so people can see what is going on. FYI- this was posted from my phone and I have a lot to say but I don’t want to write it from here.

“I wrote this yesterday, posted it on my FaceBook page with permission to send it verywhere:

Letter to the administrator in charge of firing LA school librarians who had the Board of Ed’s lawyers take the librarians into the school basement and asked them to prove they were teachers with such questions as “Do you take attendance?”.

Dear Mr. Deasy:

As the author of 300 published books (yes, that is not a typo!), many of them winners of the highest awards given for children’s and adult books, I have to commend you for closing libraries. You are turning out the lights in children’s minds. It will make them much easier to recruit as cannon fodder, much easier to move them on conveyor belts, much easier to treat them as cattle.

Of all the people who work in a school, teachers and librarians are the heart and soul of the place. Not administrators. My late husband
was a professor and later on an administrator. You should have heard what he had to say about top-heavy administrations. I suggest you
take the administrators (yourself included) and ask them the same questions the lawyers are asking the librarians in the basement: do YOU take attendance? Do YOU teach in the classroom? Perhaps you should fire the administrators first. And the overpriced lawyers. And when you do, you will no doubt find you have the money to keep the librarians.

And the library.

The ones who turn on lights in children’s minds and guard the flame in their hearts. With or without taking attendance.

Yours very truly and to tell the truth angrily as well,

Jane Yolen

Today I got this letter in return. Blame the system, the budget, the unions. Not my fault. Etc. But who, I wonder, twisted his arm to send the lawyers down into
the basement to interrogate the librarians.

THIS just arrived in my email: Thank you for your email and sharing your thoughts. As you are most likely aware our school district, state, and nation are currently facing a serious budget shortfall. While librarians and library aides are extremely important, there is not an area in the school district that has not been cut. If all Unions agree with the Furlough Agreement, we may be able to rescind notifications.

Thank you,

Patricia Carranza on behalf of
Dr. John E. Deasy, Superintendent
Los Angeles Unified School District
213) 241-7000

Anything more I can do for ALA, just ask.

As ever,

Jane Yolen”

So just so folks know, there’s people
on out side.

Get ready for ALA in New Orleans with this great library gear!!
Purchases from The Library Advocacy Store Support Library Advocacy Projects
like the Great Librarian Write-out

Seth Called Us Out On Our Bullshit And Folks Got Mad

Posted on by pcsweeney

Ok, yeah, I was going to just ignore this whole thing, but then a couple of other blog posts from librarians kinda got to me (Librarians I love and respect BTW). So, I’m going to throw my two cents at this whole debate since just about every other person in the library world has. And, I’m going to say this – Seth is Exactly Right!

The thing is that librarians are debating about how Seth perceives the library. Some librarians are making this statement;

“the article reinforces Godin’s belief in the stereotype of librarian as clerk, declaring that films are “a mere sideline that most librarians resented anyway”, exhorting us to stop “defending library as warehouse”, and arguing that”what we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper” – absolutely right Mr. Godin, but then this ceased to define a librarian many, many moons ago.”

Or this one;

“Godin then addresses access to information:

‘Wikipedia and the huge databanks of information have basically eliminated the library as the best resource for anyone doing amateur research (grade school, middle school, even undergrad). Is there any doubt that online resources will get better and cheaper as the years go by? Kids don’t schlep to the library to use an out of date encyclopedia to do a report on FDR.’

He’s right, they don’t schlep to the library to use an out-of-date encyclopedia. They schlep to the library to use a current, up-to-date online one, and databases to write that report on FDR. Online encyclopedias and databases that the library pays for.”

The problem is that the real root of this article, and the aspects these good folks are arguing against, are problems of perception. Of course, we all know that the library isn’t just a “warehouse of books” and we know some folks use our databases, and we all know that kids shouldn’t use Wikipedia. But unfortunately Seth’s statements are exactly what a HUGE percentage of the population believes. This is our fault. This is the brand that generations of librarians have been reinforcing for years. In fact, some of my favorite library marketing has been about the book brand of libraries. Seth is merely calling us out for not doing our jobs to ensure that we are adequately re-branding libraries.

In this sense I think Godin hit it just right. Seth is pointing out what a library is in the minds of the average public non-user. Maybe that’s what’s ruffling some feathers? Remember that this guy isn’t a librarian at all. He is library user and an advocate for libraries. He is exactly the kind of person who should be telling us what a library is. He is Joe Public and he has very Joe Public perceptions of the library.

What we need to do is listen to him, listen to what he says a library is, then talk to the public and see what they perceive the library to be. I bet you’ll get a lot of the same answers. I know that I get these answers when I talk to non-library users. When I talk to people who haven’t been to a library for a couple of years, I usually get the response “it’s a shame people don’t need libraries anymore, all the ebooks and Wikipedia have taken its place. I used to love the library when I was kid.”

So, to all the librarians who are arguing with Seth (who probably won’t read your blog anyway), I’m going to tell you to do something more productive and market your libraries better. Spend some kind of money on library marketing. I mean real marketing that sends the message about what libraries are in the 21st century. Because a lot of us are what Seth says a library should be. We’re already doing a lot of the things he says we should be doing. We just haven’t told anyone yet, and that’s our fault. Thanks for pointing that out Seth, kuddos to you good sir.

If you want to win some money by doing this marketing and telling folks what a modern library is…

Get ready for ALA in New Orleans with this great library gear!!
Purchases from The Library Advocacy Store Support Library Advocacy Projects
like the Great Librarian Write-out