You get American Libraries magazine if you’re a member of the American Library Association. So you can see that the audience is rather specific.
A lot of the magazine is advocating for librarians (and for librarians to attend the annual ALA conference). (The word advocacy appears about 200 times in each issue).
The magazine opens with letters from the editor and the president as well as letters from the readers. Librarian letters are usually pretty enjoyable because those who write are usually pretty passionate.
And then there’s news about ALA, the organization (like their endorsement of the Public option in the Health Care debate). As the news items continue there’s a lot of items for librarians, but there’ also a lot of news about books and media in general. So, here we learn that J.D. Salinger won his lawsuit against Frederick Colting who wrote an unauthroized sequel to Catcher in the Rye.
The larger news section addresses libraries in the US and abroad. These are stories that are hardly covered in the mainstream media. A recent issue talks about state budgets in light of the fiscal crisis. While most people think that these issues are librarian-specific, the closing of libraries affects everyone, especially people who can’t afford to buy books or computers. So, be mindful, and don’t let them close your branch! The Global Reach box talks about libraries in other countries, usually with a cute or alarming story from there.
The Technology section is often library specific, and yet, since librarians are early adopters of new technology, there’s often a lot of interesting things to read in this section. There’s a cool article about the restoration of the original moon pictures (from 1966).
My favorite section is the sound bites. “How the World Sees Us” contains quotes from various people who mention libraries. Most of them are positive (famous people who used the library a lot as kids) but there’s also the mocking stereotype quotes too. It’s always a fun read.
The large articles in the center usually have a debate about a hot topic (or a topic that they have invented for the issue). I don’t usually read them. (Bad librarian!). Although having said that, the article about how downloadable music (as opposed to CDs and LPs) will impact library collections was very interesting. (I would think even to non-librarians). This issue also had a cool section about library blogs. I knew a lot of them, but it’s always great to hear about new ones.
As the magazine reaches the end, there’s a lot of talk about the conference, both upcoming and just passed. Since I don’t go to them very often, I don’t read this section. And then, like any good organization, the section ends with news about members: who did what and what happened to them.
The ending sections are specific to librarians: professional development titles as well as new products (and the all important classifieds).
The back page is always written by Will Manley. Manley is a humorist (when I was at an NJLA conference this year, he was in the room behind me and he (and the uproarious laughter he garnered) absolutely drowned out the very dull seminar on genealogy that I was attending. I was quite jealous). Manley reminds me of Andy Rooney. You know, his piece on PowerPoint was probably funnier when it was made ten years ago when PowerPoint was originally really prevalent, but it was still quite funny.
Obviously I can’t encourage people to subscribe to this if they’re not librarians, but this gives non librarians an idea what we read about.
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