Libraries

The Ugly One's a Beaut at the Out of the Loop Fest

Turns Out Dallasites Love Their Libraries. If Only City Hall Didn't Hate Them.

There's a briefing for council today on whether or not our public library system sucks. Looks like the verdict will be that it does not totally suck, but it should, because we do. The briefing is based on a nationwide bench-marking system Dallas participates in with most other second-tier cities in ... More >>

The Dallas Public Library is Looking for a New Director. Again.

It's been more than two years now since Laurie Evans stepped down as director of the Dallas Public Library. Since then, the operation has been steered by a pair of interim directors: first Corinne Hill, who set off for Tennessee earlier this year at least in part because the search for Evans' was mo ... More >>

Dallas Finally Stopped Cutting Libraries, But the Damage is Already Done

Libraries, as we already know, have not been spared City Manager Mary Suhm's budget cleaver in recent years. The library budget has been chopped and quartered like perhaps no other city department, having been sliced in half since peaking at $36 million peak in 2007. That's decimated staffing levels ... More >>

The Rangers Fan Who Did the Sprinkler Last Night Has a History of Being Awesome

God bless the ESPN video librarian who dug up all this footage. The sprinkler is cool, but the immediate throw-back is even better.

Comerica Donates $15,000 Worth of E-Books and Readers, Setting a Trend, Rawlings Hopes

With its budget shrinking and shrinking over the past several years, the Dallas library system has an acute need for a Daddy Warbucks. Several, actually. More specifically, branches need deep-pocketed donors who can pick up the public book-houses by the boot straps, smack them in the behind and prop ... More >>

The Librarians of America Just About Destroyed Wild Salsa on Saturday Night

We arrived at Wild Salsa a few minutes before our reservation on Saturday night, but the door wasn't even closed behind me when I realized we wouldn't be sitting soon. America's librarians, in town for a big conference, had descended on the downtown cantina in force, and the waiting area was a dense ... More >>

Glacial Pace of Dallas Library's Top Job Head Hunt Is One Reason the Interim's Out of Here

Corinne Hill​Dallas Public Library system interim head Corinne Hill says she wasn't pushed out. The decision to quit Texas for Tennessee and helm Chattanooga's Public Library system was hers alone. But the city's leisurely search for a new director -- and a blown Thanksgiving deadline -- sure ... More >>

Corinne Hill No Longer Wants Dallas's Top Library Job. She's Taking Chattanooga's.

​Couple of days back I noted that Corinne Hill, the interim director of the Dallas Public Library system since July 2010, is slated to give a talk about "Re-imagining the Public Library in a Post-Recession Economy" when the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting comes to town next week. Bu ... More >>

Be On the Look Out for Large Groups of Hungry Librarians Lurking in Dallas Restaurants

​The Magazine of the American Library Association has been compiling information for prospective attendees to its Midwinter Meeting, hosted here in Dallas at the end of January. The most interesting tidbit the head librarians have offered on their blog? A dining list for librarians, by librari ... More >>

The City Has Three Finalists for Library System Director, and Two Come with Some Baggage

​Back in late August we mentioned that the city had hired a search firm to find a permanent (well, you know what I mean) director of the Dallas Public Library System. Corinne Hill's been serving as interim director since Laurie Evans retired in June 2010, and by all accounts she's done a bang-up j ... More >>

Yes, We Kindle: Now You Can Check Out an Amazon Title From a Dallas Public Library

​I've yet to make the transition to Kindle; I was reminded of yet another reason why over the weekend, which I'll explain later. But when a colleague, peeking over my shoulder, saw the news release in the in-box late yesterday -- the one from the city titled "Kindle e-book downloads now available ... More >>

The Endless Summer? 800 DISD Teachers Vie for 700 Jobs At One Downer of a Job Fair.

Photo by Leslie MinoraPolice directed traffic as teachers searched for parking at Harold Wendell Lang Sr. Middle School. We tried to get closer, we swear.​Hundreds of former Dallas Independent School District teachers flocked to Harold Wendell Lang Sr. Middle School late yesterday. They were h ... More >>

"Preserve Our Dreams": Council to Hear From Syracuse Prof About the Future of Libraries

Via.If nothing else, R. David Lankes's presentation will be the most entertaining and enlightening council briefing presented this year.​Only yesterday I watched as my son's school's librarian begged the Dallas ISD school board to reinstate 42 librarians likely to be let go next school year. Trust ... More >>

Before Dallas ISD Releases Two New Budgets, a Plea for Trustees to Save 42 Librarians

​School's out, but not for the Dallas Independent School District's trustees, who're meeting at this very moment (behind closed doors) before they look at two versions of the 2011-'12 budget -- what they're calling versions 5.1 and 6.0, which follow the iteration presented to the board on May 26 t ... More >>

The City Says It Needs Your Help Putting New Titles on the Dallas Public Library's Shelves

​Even though the city council ultimately added half a mil back to the Dallas Public Library's new-materials budget back in September, seems the grand total of more than a million wasn't enough to keep up with the demand for new titles. Hence the e-mail that just arrived from City Hall asking citiz ... More >>

We'll Make Great Pets

As Deep Budget Cuts Loom, the Dallas Genealogical Society Sends Out a Cry for Help

​This morning, there were several e-mails in the Unfair Park in-box concerning City Manager Mary Suhm's latest suggestions for cuttinggutting the budget of the Dallas Public Library system. Two I'll need to set aside till Suhm calls back (she's in meetings all morning). But others direct our atten ... More >>

PETA Brings Its Fight Against "The Greatest Show On Earth" To Cowtown Library

From PETA's coloring book for kids, which it wants handed out at Fort Worth libraries​At 10:30 this morning, the Riverside Branch of the Fort Worth Library played host to Slappy and Monday -- two clowns from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus who treated some 43 kids to Reading with Ri ... More >>

This Afternoon at NX35: Digital Downloads Are Ruining Everything!

​What: From the Physical to the Digital PanelWhere: Dan's SilverleafTime: 3 p.m.In his keynote, Steve Albini mulled the ephemeral nature of digital media files over physical. It is on this point that the 3 p.m. panel at Dan's Silverleaf elaborated. The panel featured May Carpenter (associate profe ... More >>

Revisiting Lillian Bradshaw's 1967 Essay on Censorship Versus the "Freedom to Read"

Dallas Municipal Archives/City Secretary's OfficeLillian Moore Bradshaw​Friend of Unfair Park Gabe Edgar was kind enough to send us the entirety of the late Lillian Moore Bradshaw's essay "The 3 R's of Censorship vs. The 3 R's of Freedom to Read," written in 1967. It's after the jump and worth you ... More >>

Reading Up on Former Dallas Public Libraries Director, Pioneer and Anti-Censorship Activist Lillian Moore Bradshaw, Who's Died at 95

Lillian Moore Bradshaw​I've spent the better part of the morning trying to get to know Lillian Moore Bradshaw, who has died at the age of 95. The memo City Manager Mary Suhm sent to the mayor and city council last night is brief, a few sentences containing a few notable accomplishments -- chief am ... More >>

The Bookworm Has Turned as Dallas Libraries See New Materials Budget Slashed

​So many pages of Mary Suhm's FY2009-2010 budget left to sort through, and so little time left till tomorrow's council budget briefing. But several Friends of Unfair Park worry about an item they found at the very bottom of the page devoted to the Central Library's line-item breakdown: the amount ... More >>

SMU Landed the Bush Library, But a Group of Former Condo Owners Still Want the World to Know At What Price

The New Dallas Public Library Foundation Will Be Filled By and With Political Appointees

Friends of the Dallas Public Library's David Kusin, at far right, with Mayor Tom Leppert and AT&T officials during a recent $500,000 donation presentationYesterday, in a sunlit room on the second floor of the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, the (mostly) ladies of the Municipal Library Board did ... More >>

A New Lowe for Bush Library

That headline's intended with all due respect -- because, see, the new director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library on the SMU campus will be Bourbon County, Kentucky, native Alan Lowe, currently exec director of the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy on the University of Tennessee ... More >>

Whatever Happened to That Presidential Library Disclosure Bill, Anyhows?

Bacon Bonanza

Take your kids to a pig party

Laura and George Bush Haven't Bought Their Dallas House, Are Methodist

Couldn't SMU Just Retire His Jersey?

Beating Around the Bush Library at SMU

Woe Is They

Conservatives need not apply

SMU and A&M are Damned Liberal Anti-Bush Bastions. Sure, Prof, Whatever You Sez.

SMU: Where Left is the New Right?

SMU and the Bush Library: Doin' It for Dr. Farmer

Colbert on Bush Library: "A Great Honor for Southern Methodist University." Wink, Wink.

Dogging the Presidential Library

SMU Profs to Bush: Bring the Library if You Must, But Keep the "Think Tank"

Flashback Friday

For a Guy Who Doesn't Read...

SMU's Shame

Even people who like the president shouldn't want his library here

Best Library That You've Never Heard Of

Dallas County Law Library

Best Library You've Never Heard Of

University Park Public Library

Saddam and City Bonds

Is this really the best possible moment for half a billion in bonds?

Howard's End

Carlton Stowers goes in search of the dark muse that inspired pulp-fiction legend Robert E. Howard, the West Texas recluse who created Conan the Barbarian

More is less

College professors say the Morning News charges an exorbitant price for database that isn't worth it

Censor.com

Plano wades into the thicket of Internet access, porn, and the First Amendment

History in the making

Richardson video company searches for past heroes and gets rave reviews

Events for the week

BeloWatch