The Stewards of Knowledge

A week ago, the Library was honored to receive a sweet letter from a young person named, Lizbet, a fourth-grader at a Bay Area school who, as part of a class project, wrote us for a USF pennant.  The Gleeson Library staff, always touched by a sincere, handwritten letter, immediately jumped at the chance to send this young person a USF pennant, and some assorted goodies for her classmates, including some stuffed animals and some sweet goodies.

We thought Lizbet, her fourth grade class, and her teachers, might appreciate a photo of the Gleeson staff who sent the package, and to put a face to Librarians and Library Assistants everywhere who, daily and without much fanfare, are often the first line of communication between our occasionally intimidating academic halls, and the real world.  We hope Lizbet and her classmates may always appreciate the hard work of Librarians, Library Assistants, and all associated with the stewardship of knowledge, and will always remember us when they visit their own local libraries, both today, and when they, themselves, enter into colleges and universities.  We also commend their hardworking teachers and school staff, who, in these crazy times (economic and otherwise), (and in my personal opinion) embody the admirable gift of commitment to our young people in a political culture which often forsakes them.

We sent these two photos of our staff to Lizbet and her class.  They show only a small number of our dedicated librarians, staff, and student workers, here at our marvelous library, Gleeson.

Gleeson Library Staff hold a pennant being sent to 4th Grader Lizbet, in a Sonoma, California grammar school.

More Librarians, Staff, and Student Assistants

Books by Librarians

You know lots of librarians turn to writing, right? That Jorge Luis Borges was a librarian is pretty well-known but this list of the Top 10 Books Written By Librarians from online bookseller AbeBooks might surprise you. I didn’t know Madeleine L’Engle was a librarian. But another of my very favorite children’s book authors, Beverly Cleary, was a librarian for many years. Do you have other fave librarian-authors?

Bonus: at the bottom of the list is a link to songs about libraries and librarians. They left out my favorite library song though.

Librarians on the informational picket line

Librarians do lots of different things: we catalog books, digitize documents, search databases, teach people how to evaluate websites, build book collections, to name just a few. This week we did something different: we walked an informational picket line. Students may have seen us and wondered what was going on.

The librarians here at Gleeson are members of the USF Faculty Association. The Faculty Association is a union of the full time faculty and librarians founded in the late 1970′s. For the last 4 months, the Association has been negotiating with the University administration for our contract. Although we have made progress on some issues, we are stuck on the questions of salary and retirement. The goal of the informational picketing was to reach out to the rest of the university and make them aware of our concerns and hopefully move the negotiations forward. We are not on strike but instead are just trying to spread the word. Librarians always believe the more information people have, the better.

The Foghorn just published a front page article about our informational picketing in this week’s issue and they are promising more in depth coverage next week.

Faculty and Librarians on Harney Plaza on Monday

Faculty and Librarians on Harney Plaza on Monday