ALA Cognotes D.C. Highlights 2010 - (Page 16)

Page 16 • Cognotes 2010 Annual Conference Highlights • WASHINGTON, D.C. Toni Morrison and Libraries: An Intimate Relationship By Jeanna Vahling University of Kentucky Nobel Prize winning author, Pulitzer Prize winner, charming and witty are all words to describe Toni Morrison, this year’s Opening Session Keynote Speaker at ALA Annual Conference. More importantly she is a library advocate with a genuine love for our profession. “I suspect that every single author that speaks to librarians can tell you about his or her intimate, steady, and vital relationships to libraries” she said in her opening remarks. Morrison recalled stories of her youth and her first glimpse of the power of words. “I don’t even remember my life, my sentient life, before I was able to read.” Morrison spoke about her intimate relationship with libraries. She served as a library page after her sister became secretary to the head librarian in the town where they grew up. As Morrison puts it, she was a “very slow page”, taking time to read or at least peruse the books she shelved in the stacks. “What led me to writing was my hunger for reading” she told the audience as she began to talk about herself as an author. She was hungry for a certain kind of story. One she couldn’t find, “so I wrote it, ” she humbly stated. It was only by accident that she began to write children’s books. She explained that her son provokes the questions while she “pumps them up and develops them” into stories. “He’s the one who sort of gives me the laughter and joy that I think I can move along with this, with his help.” She has recently written Peeny Butter Fudge, a story for her grandchildren and her way of passing down a third generation peanut butter fudge recipe. Morrison is pleased with the outcome of this book. “Language is magic for them [grandchildren]. They like rhyme and they like repetition. They invent words. They invent people. It’s very creative for them.” Morrison stressed that every library has its purpose – from the newer, community-centered libraries ALA President Camila A. Alire shares a laugh backstage with Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor Toni Morrison. with their adjacent coffee shops to the libraries of yesteryear still posting “no talking” signs. In closing she expressed her desire to secure our future, “because that future is mine as well.” Sir Salman Rushdie Putting Messages in a Bottle By Brad Martin LAC Group During the writing of The Satanic Verses, Sir Salman Rushdie’s son asked, “why don’t you write books I can read?” Rushdie made him a promise – his next book would be just that, and the result was Haroun and the Sea of Stories. With Luka and the Fire of Life, Rushdie’s forthcoming book, Rushdie again returns to the same genre—this time responding to his other son’s challenge of “where’s MY book?” Rushdie, spoke on Saturday, June 25 at ALA Conference about the writing of both books. He told how both his books involve fathers and sons, but that “beyond that, they are very different.” They differ as a result of what he described as the shifting perspectives we experience in life. In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, he explained how it was about storytelling being threatened, and that Luka and the Fire of Life was a response to a different kind of danger —the mortality of the storyteller. For a long time, Rushdie said he has wanted to “demolish the boundary between adult literature and children’s literature,” and that movies such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Avatar and many others have done this. He describes this kind of book as a kind of message in a bottle—a book that can be read as a child and then re-read as an adult, with the reader discovering different meanings as they grow up. Rushdie also gave credit to his son who challenged him to write his latest work, calling him “the best editor I ever had.” He said that after his son read an early draft he said he liked the Eppo van Nispen Inspires Librarians to Finish Strong By Stacy L. Voeller Minnesota State University Moorhead On Sunday afternoon June 27, the ALA President’s Program featured inspirational speaker, Eppo van Nispen tot Sevenaer. He greeted the crowd by saying, “Hello, I’m a librarian. Ever since I’ve become a librarian, I don’t get invited to parties.” Eppo van Nispen tot Sevenaer noted that the “number one company in information in the world is you, the library. I realized that so many people are using libraries and that was interesting because nobody knows that.” He started the DOK Library Concept Center in Delft with the idea that they “would always be ahead.” According to van Nispen, “Architects are the worst for libraries because most of the time libraries are publically funded and then the mayors start to call their friends the architects, and architects think in terms of forms, not of people. They miss the point of really designing a library that’s useful. The Delft library’s mission is to become the most modern library in the world, and a better friend than Google.” At DOK, when they think of a new service, “it has to be [about] having more. Life is all about having fun. Not about trying, not about nagging, but it’s about fun. We’ve done an incredibly bad job in libraries of not having fun, it doesn’t have to be 24/7 serious.” van Nispen asked, “Would a library even be invented today? The electronic book is the library of the future. A library is a second hand business model. We buy books and we lend them out. We buy one book and a lot of people use it. In the digital era there is no second hand. Going to the library to ask a question will be outdated.” He said that there are almost no mobile apps for libraries, only about 17. But story, but “some people might find it boring.” Rushdie went back to work, and with some changes Luka and the Fire of Life was completed to the son’s satisfaction. The question and answer period that followed prompted Rushdie to speak about a range of topics, from his depiction of historical events like the Bangladesh War in Midnight’s Children, to whether the fatwa calling for his death still affects his life. With regard to the former, Rushdie quoted author Milan Kundera, who once said that “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” On the threats to his life, Rushdie said that for about the past 11 years, it has not affected him that much, adding that “the Ayatollah is dead, and I am still here.” a library, should connect to social networks. “A lot of libraries don’t allow them, and we need to stop doing that.” He continued by saying, “In libraries we don’t talk about the most popular things. Most librarians are text-based learners. In this time there is so much video coming to your eyes, and your brains like it more. Text is difficult, and that’s why there are so many illiterate people. If you have to choose between reading a book and watching television, your brain will choose watching television.” He suggested getting partners into the library. “Do things that are born digital. When it comes to things of local importance, no one is faster or more important than the library. You have to make a place where people want to come; where gaming is normal.” “There is no other institution that has so much traffic and connects so many people. You are obligated to your country to make something of the library. It’s not about how you start, starting is not the issue, but it’s how you finish. Finish strong,” he advised http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/sites/default/files/Cognotes%20Mon%20June%2028%20part2.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ALA Cognotes D.C. Highlights 2010

ALA Cognotes D.C. Highlights 2010
Librarians Rally on Capitol Hill
Exhibitors Add International Flair
Amy Sedaris Regales Audience At ALA Annual 2010 Closer
Junot Diaz: His Life a Canvas
John Grisham Thanks Libraries
Authors Recognized for Contributions to Children’s Literature at Newbery Caldecott Awards Banquet
Will Shortz Tests Librarians’ Puzzle Skills
NBA Star Dwyane Wade Honorary Chair of Library Card Sign-up Month
APALA Celebrates Its History, Accomplishments, Current Programs, and Members at 30th Anniversary Gala
Library Champions
Librarians Can Change Society
DEMCO/AILA 2010 Scholarship Awards
Dave Isay and StoryCorps: Preserving the Voices of Everyday People
Marlo Thomas Cultivates Seeds of Laughter
Kidd and Taylor: On Memoirs, Relationships
Revised Intellectual Freedom Manual Introduced
Toni Morrison and Libraries: An Intimate Relationship
Sir Salman Rushdie Putting Messages in a Bottle
Eppo van Nispen Inspires Librarians to Finish Strong
Technology Titans Reach Out to Libraries in ALA Technology Pavilion
Archivists and Librarians Working with Legislative Records Display Synergy at GODORT Session

ALA Cognotes D.C. Highlights 2010