I'm Wizard Marks and I, too, am running for a seat on the Public Library Board.
I trained as a secretary and I have a college education, with emphases in philosophy, English literature, theater, and writing. (I stayed too long at the fair--er, colleges.) I was trained by nuns and educated by great teachers.
I have worked principally as an organizer since I hit middle age, after 14 years working as a stage hand. I spent seven years driving city bus, and I was librarian during the formative years of the first library for home day care providers in the USA, where I designed the catalog system for toys by the toy's proven developmental potential. I worked in the children's division and the folk music division of Lovejoy Library, a university library in Illinois while a student, when it first opened and was buying it's collections. As present I am a VISTA Volunteer for Hosmer Library's America Reads effort. My crowning achievement as an organizer is Central Neighborhood's creation of a five-neighborhood consortium to revitalize Hosmer Library. I am 57.
Sheldon Mains wrote:
====>I want to emphasize that I am not running against Sheldon Mains, I think much of what he has to say is key to building a library system for the twnety-first century and that the library board, at this juncture, needs both our skills.
WHAT'S IMPORTANT ABOUT THE MINNEAPOLIS LIBRARIES?======>Agreed.The new downtown library and the new and improved branch libraries need to
be the town squares of our communities. They need to be welcoming to
everyone. They need to be our gathering places. Our libraries need to be
the physical and virtual centers of our city.
The Library Board needs to work closely with our neighborhoods, the===>I would rather phrase it that the city will get better use of their tax dollars when we link the libraries, schools, and parks together in neighborhoods. It is the library/park/school boards' duty to grease the skids so that their staffs are not so enmired in red tape common to all bureaucracies that they cannot devote energy to their work, providing access and assistance to library resources..
Minneapolis Park Board and the Minneapolis School Board.
Information and education are power in our society. The Minneapolis======>Carnegie Libraries, as public libraries, were designed to "even the playing field" between the haves and have nots. It is the mission of public libraries. I want MPL to move in a direction that meets the library's mission.
library is the only place that gives everyone access to books and
information. They are, to use a term from the 1930s, "The People's
University."
While books will not go away, there is an explosion of information======>I would disagree to this extent: MPL leadership needs to be educated on the capabilities of computers vis-a-vis their mission in the 'age of information.' Concurrently, the library has to also educate the public on the limitations of the cyber-self-education, if you will. Too often people come to the library with the idea that the internet has replaced all other sources of information. At the moment we're a long way from having the Dead Sea Scrolls on CD.
resources and an explosion of ways to transfer information. The Minneapolis
Public Library needs to keep up with this explosion.
Before the Internet, to effectively exercise your first amendment rights,=====>I would have to disagree here. Those who have mastered their craft have had access to their First Amendment rights. Those who bought the means of production have created the necessity for libraries.
you had to own a newspaper or a radio station or a TV station.
With the=====>Agreed.
Internet, if people have access to the tools, they can tell their own
stories. They can be publishers, authors, producers. The Minneapolis
Library system can help people access the tools.
Members of the Library Board of Trustees must be willing to defend our======>Monthly I receive newletters from organizations fighting censorship. The American Library Association regularly publishes attempts to ban books. Some months I can hardly look at it. Perennially, their are groups trying to ban good books (and bad) most often the best books, books like Huck Finn are offered up as sacrifices to one notion or another. That, to me, is a source of fear. To quote one of my heroes, Barbara Jordan, "I love the Constitution." It is my birthright as an American. I do protect it.
First Amendment rights. I will.
We need to make sure that when we build the new downtown library and======>I am in disagreement with the library board in their plan to close the current central library for two to three years while they knock down the building and rebuild on the same location. It will be a massive disservice to the public to move much of the collection into a warehouse, move the perhaps skeleton crew of the library, and force them to operate at a disadvantage for two years.Moving the collection twice is really not a good idea, either for the public, the collection or the staff. It could cause layoffs and we could lose valuable staff either through layoffs or through frustration. I think that the relationship among board, management, and staff during a building/changing phase like this is too fragile to weather two moves in two or three years. It's hugely unfair to all involved, particularly the public. There are times when a city can be penny wise and dollar foolish and this plan seems to have that quality.
improve the branches, we do it right. We have one chance to build a new
library that will last for at least 50 years.
Wizard Marks, CentralFOR MORE INFORMATION:
http://www.shamelessagitator.org>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>
sheldon mains seward neighborhood minneapolis [EMAIL PROTECTED]
the shameless agitator in the electronic town squareyes, i really am running for library board. check
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