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Cheery Friday Greetings and Happy September!
SCRLC Annual Meeting: The Future is Sustainable! October 30, 2024, 10:00 a.m. (join us at 9:00 a.m. for the bird walk!). Registration is opening early next week so watch your inbox! We are so excited to be at Sapsucker Woods, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, in Ithaca for this program! Sapsucker is easy to find just off Route 13 and there is plenty of free parking. Topics will include:
- Sustainable Libraries Initiative and how to participate
- Metropolitan Library Resources Council’s The Library Field
- Opportunities for libraries to participate in avian citizen science and bird-friendly design,
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Hodinöhsö:ni perspectives on sustainability
The morning will be interactive and in person. The business meeting will be hybrid.
Reminder: The SCRLC Awards are Back! During our field visits, we heard that some of you missed the awards, as both a way to recognize your colleagues, departments, or institutions who are doing great work—and also to bring more visibility within your community. We listened to you, aligned the awards more closely with our values and strategic directions, and then reimagined them.
The nomination process is easy and it is confidential: Think of whom to nominate and complete the form. If you cannot access Google Forms, contact Diane Capalongo for a Word version.
Awards will be presented at SCRLC’s Annual Meeting on October 30. The deadline for completed nomination forms will be Friday, October 4, 2024, 4:00 PM.
National Hispanic Heritage Month begins on September 15. Last time I mentioned that Latino Civic Association of Tompkins County has several events and to let us know if you hear of others and we'll include them. The offer still stands! The Library of Congress’s Latinx resources guide include a page on National Hispanic Heritage Month. In addition to books, newspapers, articles, etc., the page includes a lot of archived webinars featuring Latinx authors, historians, musicians, and leaders.
National Library Card Sign-Up Month continues, as does Banned Book Week. As you know, Commissioner Rosa’s April 25 Decision affords school librarians here in New York State protections against bans. Here is the full text of the Commissioner’s decision. A piece by Jae Moore, Deeply Unpopular Book Bans are a Losing Ticket in the 2024 Election, which was published by GLAAD on August 28, begins, “the results of a new survey published by Knight Foundation in partnership with Langer Research Associates shows that book bans, and the people who promote them, are losing support. The recent primary election results in Florida, home base for book-banning Moms for Liberty, show even more rejection at the ballot box.”
On August 31, the Washington Post reported that Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins and others have filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida. They allege “that the state law, enacted last year, brought about hundreds of book removals and is violating First Amendment rights to free speech.” On September 5, the School Library Journal published information about this case and provided links to a large number of articles about bans happening around the country, both happy and worrisome.
On September 3, Yes Magazine published a piece by Louisiana librarian, Amanda Jones, entitled “We’re All Responsible for Protecting Public Libraries." Pretty powerful stuff.
Yours in partnership,
Mary-Carol Lindbloom
Executive Director
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