A Trip to Menominee

Check out my post describing my trip with the tribal libraries group to the Menominee Reservation. More to come shortly on our visit to the Stockbridge-Munsee Reservation the next day.

LAMP at ACRL Seattle

Check out LAMP scholar Roy Brooks' blog about his experiences at ACRL Seattle where he is presenting for the UW-Madison General Library System's ISIP program and LAMP.

A Visit to the Potowatomi Cultural Center

On Friday I went up to the Potowatomi reservation with the Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums class. It is a good drive from Madison to Forest County, near Crandon in the north of Wisconsin. Most of the trip went pretty smoothly. We did manage to get lost in Rhinelander and learn that Google maps is not always perfect. Our main stop was at the Forest County Potowatomi Cultural Center Library and Museum. We were given a tour by Kim Wensaut, the cultural center's librarian, and Mike Alloway, the cultural center's director. The facility that they have is very new and well-equipped, and the library is an expansion from a much smaller one. In fact, it is new enough that the library still has many empty shelves waiting for books. The collection actually shrank some in the move from the old library to the new because many books that were racist and inaccurate were weeded out. Their current objective is to carefully collect materials that tell the story of the Potowatomi from a Potowatomi perspective and serve the community's needs. The first step down this path was to devise their own system for organizing the materials. In the past year Kim has been hard at work in this task had has created a system that reflects the priorities of the Potowatomi today (at the very beginning under the "A" heading is languge, reflecting their efforts to revive spoken Potowatomi among the people-- this is also reflected in the mural in the library with Potowatomi words for each of the months next to images). The museum adjoining the library is also very modern with multiple interactive video displays highlighting dances, language, and oral histories. It includes high-quality dioramas and artifacts, some on loan from the Milwaukee Public Museum.

The main challenge for the center today is educating the public on the services it provides and developing programming to increase library use. There have already been some successful programs, such as a Summer Creative Writing Workshop and the ongoing Neshnabemwen, or language classes, and it is likely that the community will become more involved as the word gets out about the services the cultural center provides.

Participate in Making Decisions on Campus

This year I have had the opportunity to serve on both the University Library Committee and University Child Care Committee as an Associated Students of Madison (ASM) representative. If you are a student at Madison I highly encourage you to look at the list of committees and apply for one or two. They do not require a large time commitment and they are valuable experiences that let student voices be heard.

Below is an excerpt from the announcement.

Want to help make decisions about campus life instead of reading about them in the paper?

Join the Associated Students of Madison (ASM) Shared Governance Committee – Apply for a standing committee seat for the 2009-2010 academic year!

Another 24 Hour Library on Campus?

The Daily Cardinal student paper reports that ASM, the student governing body, is looking into trying to increase library hours at Steenbock Library. With increased demand for expanded hours and shrinking budgets this could become a difficult issue to address.

A Tuesday Night with Pizza

Last night a number of the LAMP and AOF students at SLIS, and Professors Whitmire and Kim gathered for the consumption of pizza from La Roca's, my favorite local pizzeria. We talked about everything from what is going on in our classes and campus jobs to what we plan to do over spring break. A few of the students were looking forward to attending the ACRL Conference in Seattle and others, including myself, are looking forward to a trip to the Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee reservations to visit their libraries, archives, and museums as part of our group independent study on the topic (it only sounds like and oxymoron: it is a group study that we had to sign up for as independent studies; we are independent of an instructor leading the class though). Good food + good conversation = a good time.

Myth Busting With Stats

As we all know, even the most educated of people can get some very strange and anachronistic ideas. In this talk at the TED Conference Hans Rosling shows how statistics, and a powerful display format, can give people a much better idea of what their world looks like. It's all about the the power of information to create understanding worldwide.