Naomi House of INALJ.com (I Need a Library Job) has just posted an interview with me about Library Juice Press and Library Juice Academy. I enjoyed doing the interview. Thanks, Naomi!

I’ve just added four new people to share in the blogging responsibilities here at Library Juice: Aliqae Geraci, Maria Accardi, Lua Gregory, and Shana Higgins. This adds to the five bloggers I added a year or so ago: Erik Estep, Melissa Morrone, Alison Lewis, Alan Mattlage, and Terry Epperson. Here is who the new bloggers are:

Aliqae Geraci is the Industrial and Labor Relations Research Librarian at Cornell University’s Hospitality, Labor and Management Library. A former public librarian and labor researcher, she is a co-founder of Save NYC Libraries and serves on the Board of Directors of Urban Librarians Unite. Aliqae speaks and writes about library advocacy and library workers’ organizations, and is the co-author of the book Grassroots Library Advocacy (ALA Editions, 2012).

Maria T. Accardi is Assistant Librarian and Coordinator of Instruction at the Library at Indiana University Southeast. Maria holds a BA in English from Northern Kentucky University, an MA in English from the University of Louisville, and an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh. She served as a co-editor of and contributor to Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods (Library Juice Press, 2010), and is the author of the forthcoming Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction (Library Juice Press, 2013).

Lua Gregory is the Instruction and Educational Technologies Librarian at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and holds an MLIS degree from University of California, Los Angeles. Before moving to Boston, she was an Assistant Librarian at the University of Redlands for several years where she met Shana Higgins and together, began teaching, presenting and researching issues such as censorship, free speech, and the social justice undercurrents of information literacy. She is co-editor of Information Literacy and Social Justice: Radical Professional Praxis (Library Juice Press, 2013). Lua can be reached at lua.gregory@mcphs.edu.

Shana Higgins is currently the Education, and Area & Interdisciplinary Studies Librarian at University of Redlands. She earned an MLS degree, as well as an MA in Latin American & Caribbean Studies, from Indiana University, Bloomington. She has had the great fortune to work with Lua Gregory, a remarkable partner in teaching, presenting, and researching issues such as censorship, free speech, and aspects of social justice inherent in information literacy. She is co-editor of Information Literacy and Social Justice: Radical Professional Praxis (Library Juice Press, 2013). Shana can be reached at shana_higgins@redlands.edu.

I’m very happy to be adding Aliqae, Maria, Lua, and Shana as fellow bloggers here, so join me in welcoming them.

There was a problem with a spam-blocking plugin in the back-end of this blog that was preventing people from making comments. The problem is now fixed, so if you feel like commenting on any recent posts, have at it.

Cheers!

After doing Library Juice as a solo project for twelve and a half years, I have decided it should be a team blog, and I have recruited a group of co-bloggers. There are now six people behind the Library Juice blog: me (Rory Litwin), Alison Lewis, Erik Estep, Terry Epperson, Alan Mattlage, and Melissa Morrone. Their one-paragraph bios should give an idea of where the blog may be headed.

Please welcome the new team members to the Library Juice blog.

Are you going to be at the ALA Conference in Anaheim later this month?

Litwin Books / Library Juice Press will be holding a reception. I will be showing the eight books we have published so far and networking with readers and authors. I look forward to meeting you at the reception if you’re interested in our books.

I’ll be holding the reception in my regular old hotel room mega suite at the Anaheim Marriott on Saturday night, June 28th, from 8pm to 11pm. I’ll be serving wine and cheese for you (until I run out). I expect to have some materials you can take back to your library if you are into collecting that sort of thing at conferences, and as always, I’ll be networking like a madman.

I don’t have a room number yet at the Anaheim Marriott, but you can ask for Rory Litwin at the main desk, and they should give you the room number.

Looking forward to seeing you…

Libraryjuicepress.com and Libr.org were down and out for several days due to e-gremlins. Service has been restored.

I decided to do something a little different with the blog. Let me know if you have seen this elsewhere. In my right-hand sidebar I’ve added a section of book authors, which links to searches for their books on Red Light Green. I read books, so why should I link only to blogs and online content? The authors I list are ones whom I like and who have informed my discussion.

Two of the links are actually not to Red Light Green but to publishers’ websites. These are authors with just one book. I am a bit frustrated with Red Light Green, because the linked searching function gives different results than the same search expression input into their search box. If you search on the site you get broader results with more books included than if you encode the search into a URL. And I’m not talking about false drops; I’m talking about books I’m interested in. For that reason I left out James Danky. Compare that linked search with one you try yourself for his name on the site. The linked search does not include his Alternative Materials in Libraries, which is now fairly obscure, but a search for his name using their search box does.

Leave comments to tell me about authors that progressive librarians should read, and a little about why! Library Juice Concentrate is going to have a bibliography for that purpose, and I’d like to expand it.

Some readers will be happy about this: I’ve changed the settings so you don’t need to register in order to comment. We’ll see how it goes.

It took a little longer than anticipated, but as I said I would do in my parting message in Library Juice, the e-zine, last September, I have revived the publication as a blog. The delay, for those who’ve been waiting eagerly, has had to do with other projects taking precedence, as well as a desire to take a break.

Among the other projects is Library Juice Press, the publishing company. The book projects are coming along, and I will share information about them here as I have things to announce. I’m hoping to have four titles available for purchase by the start of this year’s Fall semester.

As you know if you’ve been a reader of Library Juice in the past, I’m getting into blogging with a degree of ambivalence, as I have taken issue with certain aspects of blogging culture. Wanting to avoid becoming what I hate, but to continue Library Juice in a contemporary way, I’ve set up a set of rules that I hope to stick to as I go, a sort of a blogging pledge.

Because of some bad experiences on LISNews I was initially planning not to allow reader comments on this blog. I have a sense, and we will see if this turns out to be true, that heavy readers of blogs are a different group than the group who subscribed to and appreciated Library Juice, so I’m not sure if it’s the audience I’m used to that will be reading and commenting here. I’m allowing comments in the hopes that former Library Juice readers will find this blog and participate. Denizens of the internet, even now that the internet has become so ubiquitous, still skew (on average) in the direction of technolibertarianism, and Library Juice decidedly does not. So, we’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, I’m glad to be back with you.