Lunch with the Albany Rotarians

This column appeared in the Journal on July 18, 2008. Past columns can be read at juliewinkelstein.com

“Rotarians provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and help build goodwill and peace in the world.” Rotary International (www.rotary.org)

 

            I was recently invited to speak at one of the weekly Albany Rotary Club meetings. The topic was left up to me, and it wasn’t until the week before the talk that I finally sat down and considered what would be most important to cover in my 15 to 20 minute presentation.

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Diversity at the American Library Association Conference

This column appeared in the Journal on July 4, 2008. Past columns can be read at juliewinkelstein.com

“…The Diversity Leadership Institute strives for the development of a cadre of enlightened library and information professionals who recognize and respect diversity leadership as a basic tenet of our profession, and within society overall.” Valerie Bell, Chair ALA Committee on Diversity          

I have just spent five days at the American Library Association annual conference in Anaheim. There was so much to take in – the workshops, the exhibit hall, and the thousands of librarians walking the streets, filling the hallways, chatting on the shuttle buses, and engaging in listening, learning and exchanging ideas.

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Libraries and Legacies

 

This column appeared in the Journal on June 20, 2008. Past columns can be read at juliewinkelstein.com

“This room is named in honor of Edith Stone (1888-1984), longtime Albany resident who was an avid reader and lifelong library patron. She left her estate to the Albany Library, in the hope that generations would learn the same love of reading that had so enriched her life…” From Albany Library plaque

I recently received an email about a frugal librarian – Carol Sue Snowden – who, when she died at 57, left more than a million dollars to her local public and school libraries. In addition, she left $10,000 to libraries she used growing up, including her grade school, high school and local libraries. The June 14 “Columbia Dispatch” story (dispatch.com) described her friends and colleagues as “stunned to learn that she was a millionaire.”

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Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library

This column appeared in the Journal on June 6, 2008. Past columns can be read at juliewinkelstein.com

“When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams… The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you plant in your community can grow across the world…” Dolly Parton (imaginationlibrary.com)  

 

A couple of months ago I visited with Jinx Stapleton Watson, who recently retired from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. During our conversation – which covered children’s books, literacy, social justice issues and many other topics – she mentioned she is a member of the Library Committee for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Since my knowledge of Dolly Parton was pretty much limited to knowing she sings and there is a place called Dollywood, I did some research about it when I got back from my trip.

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Excellence and Language

This column appeared in the Journal on April 4, 2008. Past columns can be read at juliewinkelstein.com

“When the moon fully blocked the sun, the darkness seemed something between dusk and night…In that cindery pall, the facade of the moon cold and white, I could believe we were watching the end of the world.” From Dominic Smith’s “The Beautiful Miscellaneous”

 

          A recent bout of the flu gave me a chance to use my few waking hours to read and to rewatch one of my favorite DVDs. The combination of the two – and the emotional state I find myself in when I am ill – made me think about the feeling I get when I am experiencing excellence. I tried to come up with a description of that emotion and the closest I could come was truth.

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Free2 at the Library

This column appeared in the Journal on April 25, 2008. Past columns can be read at juliewinkelstein.com
“Indeed, the question is not whether libraries are relevant today. But whether they can keep pace with the increased demand for their services and materials. With your help, they can.” From WeAreFree2.org

Several weeks ago I attended a presentation on the about-to-be-unveiled Bay Area Library and Information System (BALIS), Silicon Valley Library System and Peninsula Library System marketing campaign for public libraries. Representatives from libraries around the Bay Area met together to hear from marketing specialists on such ideas as branding, key messages, logos, elevator pitches and color combinations. During the presentation, we were shown familiar and not-so-familiar logos and asked to identify them and the accompanying slogan. It was fascinating to see how many we could identify and recite. The one I remembered was the slogan for Apple, “Think different” – because I always wonder whether or not it’s ungrammatical.

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Listening to Audiobooks

This column appeared in the Journal on March 28, 2008. Past columns can be read at juliewinkelstein.com

“‘You don’t mind my asking, but what color was this balloon when it was a balloon?

‘Red.’

‘I just wondered. Red, my favorite color.’”

From A.A. Milne’s “Eeyore Has a Birthday”

 

An extended listserv conversation about the narrators of audio books caught my eye recently. For many years I commuted to Fremont from Albany and books on tape made a huge difference in my irritation level as I encountered the usual slow or even stopped traffic on the freeway. Listening to a gripping story, read by an accomplished narrator, can make a trip that seems interminable into a trip that is over too soon. My co-workers and I had numerous conversations about our preferred readers and we were faithful to them – frequently listening to a book simply because of the narrator.

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Customer Service in Public Libraries

This column appeared in the Journal on March 21, 2008. Past columns can be read at juliewinkelstein.com

“Customer service workshops can range from the perennially popular dealing with difficult patrons to conducting effective reference interviews.” From Rachel Singer Gordon’s “The Accidental Library Manager”    

 

Being a public librarian is about public service. Those of us who work directly with the public spend a great deal of our time interacting with people. We answer questions (can you help me download a photograph from my email?); we give opinions (could you recommend a book for my ill wife who loves to read?) and we help locate things (this book is supposed to be on the shelf, but I can’t find it).

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The Amelia Bloomer Project

This column appeared in the Journal on March 14, 2008. Past columns can be read at juliewinkelstein.com

“…the 2008 Amelia Bloomer Project honors the authors, illustrators, editors, and publishers who give life to books that encourage readers young and old to push the envelope and challenge what it means to be a woman, regardless of ethnicity or social-economic background.” From the Amelia Bloomer Project website (http://libr.org/ftf/bloomer.html)

 

One of the many American Library Association committees is the Amelia Bloomer Project, which is sponsored by the Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table. Annually since 2002, the committee members have selected books they think “encourage and inspire girls to be smart, brave, and proud.”  One of the committee members, Amy Cheney, is a former co-worker from my jail librarian days and so I asked to tell me more about the process of selecting these books.

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Grammar in Children’s Books: Does it Matter?

This column appeared in the Journal on March 7, 2008. Past columns can be read at juliewinkelstein.com

“Then we played horses with my other bestest friend named Lucille…And we all runned to Room Nine speedy quick…” From Sara Park’s “Junie B. Jones and Some Squeaky Peeky Spying” 

One of my first assignments as a member of an American Library Association committee has been to help annotate a list of early readers, so teachers, parents, librarians and children can know in advance a little about the books. It’s not always easy to summarize a book in one sentence, but nonetheless, I like doing it. I’ve had some experience with this, since one of my children’s literature library school classes required us to read 10 books a week and write a brief description of each one. I remember how satisfying it was to see how many words I could get into a sentence without making it cumbersome or difficult to read.

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