Archive for August, 2020

Friday, August 28th, 2020

TinyCat’s August Library of the Month: Solid Ground’s Anti-Racism Initiative Library

To read more about TinyCat’s Library of the Month feature, visit the TinyCat Post archive here.

TinyCat is continuing its focus on amplifying libraries supporting the BIPOC community and Solid Ground’s Anti-Racism Initiative Library is a wonderful representation of that. Anti-Racism Initiative Manager Tiffany Lamoreaux was kind enough to field my questions:

Who are you, and what is your mission—your “raison d’être”?

Solid Ground believes that housing and family stability are foundational to ending poverty. We help families keep or obtain housing and get the support they need to overcome poverty and thrive.

Our mission: Solid Ground works to end poverty and undo racism and other oppressions that are root causes of poverty. Our vision: Solid Ground envisions a community beyond poverty and oppression where all people have equitable opportunity to thrive.

Tell us some interesting things about how you support your community.

Solid Ground has an Anti-Racism Initiative (ARI) and the Anti-racism library serves to strengthen and support our anti-racism work by providing rich resources from academic examinations of racism to literature by authors from marginalized groups.

What are some of your favorite items in your collection?

My personal current favorites in the collection are How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, Emergent Strategy by adrianne maree-brown, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

What’s a particular challenge your library experiences?

We house our library at our headquarters building in the Wallingford Neighborhood, but we have a few other locations. Though the curated library is viewable online, and the books can be shipped through interoffice mail, the library remains underutilized by other sites. We are working to continue increasing awareness about the library to all of our locations.

What is your favorite thing about TinyCat, and what’s something you’d love to see implemented/developed?

Before transitioning to TinyCat we had our library in a conference room, but without a clear way to check out books and manage the inventory, it was largely ignored. In 2019 we moved the library to the central break-room and transitioned the library management to TinyCat. My favorite thing about TinyCat is how easily I can add books to the library and display them for our staff that are at various locations. Since making this transition, the library usage has seen a significant increase!

That’s so great to hear! It’s exactly why we offer TinyCat to small libraries.


Want to support Solid Ground’s Anti-Racism Initiative? Donations can be sent to their Social Justice Fund to support our Anti-Racism Work at solid-ground.org/donate/.

To read up on TinyCat’s previous Libraries of the Month, visit the TinyCat Post archive here.

Calling all TinyCat libraries: become TinyCat’s next Library of the Month—just send us a Tweet @TinyCat_lib or email Kristi at kristi@librarything.com.

Labels: libraries, Library of the Month, TinyCat

Tuesday, August 18th, 2020

Interview with a Medical Library

John S Marietta Memorial Medical Library

LibraryThing is interviewing people in the book world who are affected by current events. This month, we caught up with Tim Kenny of John S. Marietta Memorial Medical Library, to ask about how their medical library is handling recent events. This library manages their collection through our catalog for small libraries, TinyCat.

1) What is the purpose of your library? Where is it located and what population does it serve?

We are a county hospital/health network library. We are located in Fort Worth, TX. Our
population served includes physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and all other clinical, support, and
administrative staff. We also provided patient level and consumer health support, but our
primary focus is health care professional support.

2) How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected library use and services? What are some solutions
you have found to deal with those changes?

Yes, COVID-19 has changed our service model. The library staff has been working from home
since late March. The library space itself is badge access so our community can still access our
computer bank and perform after hours check out. We try to get into the space every month
to clear the book drop and ensure all is well overall with the space. In our library we do a lot
of clinical and patient care focused searches. Fortunately, we can do 90% of our work
remotely as well as access all of our electronic resources. We have a lot of e-books in TinyCat
and our limited print collection is available for checkout to those with badges via a
rudimentary honor system while we are out.

3) If you could pick three items to represent your collection, what would they be and why?

Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine , Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS),
William’s Obstetrics

4) How is your personal library organized?

I don’t keep many books long term but for the one’s that make the cut, I probably go by
subject/genre/author. My physical media films are genre/title. Finally, my comics are sorted
by title, then year, then issue number. I’ve reorganized my comics many times and tinkered
with the organization but this method fits my style best.

5. What are you reading lately?
Letters of Note by Shaun Usher / A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn / Full
Throttle by Joe Hill.

Thanks, Tim! Want to learn more about how people in the book world have been weathering the changes this year? Check out the rest of the interview series.

Labels: interview

Monday, August 3rd, 2020

August Early Reviewers batch is up!

Win free books from the August 2020 batch of Early Reviewer titles! We’ve got 79 books this month, and a grand total of 2,733 copies to give out. Which books are you hoping to snag this month? Come tell us on Talk.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Early Reviewers. If you’ve already signed up, please check your mailing/email address and make sure they’re correct.

» Request books here!

The deadline to request a copy is Monday, August 31st at 6PM Eastern.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US, Canada, the UK, Israel, Australia, France, Germany, and more. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Entrada Publishing Candlewick Press Akashic Books
Revell Black Rose Writing Lavender Ink
RootstockPublishing Orca Book Publishers BookWhisperer
Plough Publishing House University of North Georgia Press Walker Books US
Prufrock Press Red Adept Publishing New Vessel Press
Etchings Press Ooligan Press John Ott
Suspense Publishing Greenleaf Book Group Post Mortem Press
West Margin Press ScareStreet Poolbeg Press
Odyssey Books Zimbell House Publishing Meerkat Press
BHC Press Book Publicity Services Literary Wanderlust LLC
City Owl Press BookViewCafe

Labels: early reviewers, LTER