Will’s Current Booklist Column
Will writes a monthly column for Booklist Magazine.
- Click on Getting Lost for his April ’12 column.
- Click on Notable Journeys for his March ’12 column.
- Click on Trivializing History for his February ’12 column.
- Click on Those Wacky Tudors for his January ’12 column.
- Click on Alternative Medicine for his December ’11 column.
- Click on Point, Push, Print, & Publish for his November ’11 column.
- Click on Let Them Eat Donuts for his October ’11 column.
- Click on The Boys of Summer for his September ’11 column.
- Click on Reading the Clues for his August ’11 column.
- Click on Poor Little Rich Boy for his June ’11 column.
- Click on More About Mysteries for his May ’11 column.
- Click on The Longest Journey for his April ’11 column.
- Click on How to Benefit from the Coming Apocalypse for his March ’11 column.
- Click on Starting a Conversation on Race for his February ’11 column.
- Click on Redemption Does Not Come From Books for his January ’11 column.
- Click on Darwin vs. God for his December ’10 column.
- Click on The Art of the Narcissist for his November ’10 column.
I am not a librarian, but I subscribe to Booklist for the reviews, and I read your excellent column on race and cultural changes as reflected in libraries. Your description of practices whose memories should prompt consideration of retirement naturally brought to mind the recent news from my own hometown library, the Akron Carnegie Public Library, in Akron, Indiana. (My mother happens to be the board president right now.) Effective Dec. 31, the Director, Velma Bright, retired after a 69-year career at the library, 60 as director. Her retirement reception is Feb. 20. The entire community is grateful for her years of service, but I think it’s fair to say that the library will benefit from a fresh direction. Although a successful expansion was completed a few years ago, and the library has certainly kept pace with technology in certain respects, it also bears something of a stamp of an earlier era, and would almost make an interesting case study of this kind of long-term tenure of leadership. I have no idea if this interests you or not, but it does me, having grown up naturally thinking that our little library and the old lady behind the desk were perfectly normal, and now slowly having to recognize that they may not be.