Learn About All that Albany Public Library Accomplished in 2015

The Albany Public Library is proud to present the 2015 community report to you. The report details accomplishments and highlights some of the programs and services that are available at the library.

As Executive Director Scott Jarzombek wrote, "We are excited to show you the good work we did last year, thanks to your investment in our city. We pride ourselves on being an open organization, and welcome the opportunity to share this information with you."

You can read the 2015 community report HERE.

Albany Public Library wants to know how it's doing

Here's your chance to share with the folks at the Albany Public Library what you think about APL!

If you haven't done so already, please take a few minutes to complete the survey and let them know your thoughts on the programs and services being offered. Your answers will help shape the library's future.

The survey will only run for a few more days, and it takes less than five minutes to complete, so please respond to the survey today.

Thank you.

Now they're coming after the librarians

From Daily Kos:

Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) is, as I suspect most people know, a Teahadist moron. But it takes a special kind of moron to piss off librarians. That’s exactly what she did this morning, with the announcement that she would introduce a bill in Congress, mandating that,

“The Librarian of Congress shall continue to use the terms ‘Alien’ and ‘Illegal aliens’ in the Library of Congress Subject Headings in the same manner at they were in effect during 2015.”

Libraries'... ultimate purpose is not simply to be a storehouse of books, but to make those books useful to patrons. Now, “useful” can mean different things to different people, but for catalogers, one of the chief qualities of usefulness is simply: discoverability. No matter how “useful” a book may be in terms of its literary or informational qualities, if it cannot be found among the thousands of other books held by a given library, it’s not particularly useful at all.

In order to fulfill this mandate, catalogers maintain library catalogs...

When it comes to topical discovery, one of the most important tools that cataloging librarians have at their disposal is the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), which is a suite of controlled vocabularies that enable catalogers to record the “aboutness” of a given work. Because “natural language” is more or less inexact, the terms in the LCSH serve to cut out some of the noise by selecting certain terms as “preferred” and recording other, “non-preferred” terms as cross references...

Now, of course, providing subject access is, ultimately, a language game. And language, like libraries themselves, is an ever-changing organism...

National Library Week

From the Times Union Books blog, written by Alicia Abdul

Nothing makes me happier than a party. Now, imagine an entire week to celebrate. Even better, right? This week is National Library Week and you’ll find that most libraries are having events, activities, and displays to bask in the transformative nature of libraries. It’s as much an homage to the patrons that keep us in business as it is about the employees who invest their time and talent to make them thrive.

And it’s awesome to see the kinds of things that are going on in libraries. Look no further than Scott Jarzombek’s work with Albany Public Library or any public library branch for that matter. They’re hosting authors, running informational meetings about home ownership, providing tax forms, and letting kids get elbow deep is robotics.

NORTH ALBANY BRANCH CHANGES SATURDAY HOURS

New Saturday Hours Start April 2

Starting this Saturday, April 2, the North Albany Branch will now be open from 11 am to 3 pm on Saturdays. The rest of that branch's schedule remains the same, as do the schedules for all other APL branches.

The adjustment to the Saturday hours at the North Albany Branch is necessary because the YMCA building, which houses that library location, is changing its operating hours on that day of the week.