Librarians invade Seattle!

10 Things happily welcomes hundreds, if not thousands, of the world's librarians and library staff to Seattle this weekend at part of the 14th National ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) Convention and the 1st National Zine Librarians (un)Conference! In these days where the nation's focus is on Wall Street, banks, credit default swaps and subprime mortgages, it's nice once in a while to focus on something other than money. Like books and libraries, which are often free to the public. Books have taken a bad rap in these Web/online days, but for the first time in a decade, book reading by the American public is up, significantly up. And our nation's public and academic library staff not only are your gateway to books and information, but they constantly strive to help you, America's citizens, have the most complete and up to date access to information. They do this under shrinking budgets, increased demand, and ever growing expensive print and electronic resources. So library staff, we hope you enjoy your weekend here in Seattle and thank you for helping make all of us just a little bit smarter.

Zine Librarians, say what? As the world of zines and small press publications has grown over the years, so have the people that collect and archive it. And some just happen to be librarians or archivists that want to create large historical collections to share with the public. Locally Seattle is lucky to have the Zine Archive and Publishing Project, or ZAPP, which is possibly the nation's largest publicly accessible zine archive. Zines are also collected locally at both the Seattle Public Libraries and University of Washington Libraries. This weekend, congruent with the ACRL conference, a zine librarian conference will be taking place. Yours truly is curating a public display in the main graduate library of the UW called Focus on Zines, there will be Seattle Zine Librarian (Un)Conference Saturday and Sunday at the Richard Hugo House on Capitol Hill, and a Zine Reading at Cafe Allegro in the U-District Saturday at 7pm (1408 NE 42nd Street, alley entrance between University Way and 15th Ave).