Week 9: Book clubs, webinars, and gun laws

Book Club
Boy, these were a lot of fun! If we had time for it, I'd love to have a monthly SI book club. There's something so exciting about discussing stories with people who care about books and literature. Things went quite smoothly, though we did find it incredibly difficult to stay in character and respond as high school (or middle school) students. Perhaps because all participants were eager to respond, leading the workshop wasn't particularly challenging. However, we did have some issues keeping people from talking over each other. Though it's a shame that folks were being interrupted, it's still kind of exciting that people were that eager to share their opinions.

Class
I will admit that by the time class rolled around, I was exhausted. The sugar from the cookies I'd ate had worn off, and I was crashing. The explanation of our one-shot-workshop left me a little overwhelmed (but, luckily, planning for it has gone okay...we'll see about the execution). However, I perked up for the second half of class with our webinar with Bobbi Newman. As I've indicated on this blog, I've been obsessed with the HCOD drama. It was refreshing to hear Newman's reasonable take on the controversy. It was also really neat to see elluminate at work. What a cool program! I found myself attempting to describe it to a friend of mine, and I think I overwhelmed him by talking so quickly about what it can do ("And there are buttons that can show that you're laughing or clapping and you can write on a board with markers and send messages, but they aren't completely private, beware!...")

Other stuff
Friday was CDL's Staff in Service day, so I had the opportunity to ask some of my coworkers what they thought of the HCOD controversy. Generally, though disappointed, the librarians saw this as inevitable and something they had been expecting (not the particular number 26, but that checkouts would be limited). Plus, there are so many more things for Michigan libraries to worry about. The first is the huge budget cuts we're facing. Here's MLA's page-long take on the cuts. Also, at the beginning of our day, we were visited by Chelsea's police chief to discuss the actions of Michigan Open Carry, an organization that has been carrying guns into libraries as a form of "protest."
Michigan Law currently allows registered gun owners to carry their guns openly in holsters or over the shoulder. Though it is prohibited in a small number of places, including schools and banks (plus, any privately owned businesses can make their own rules), libraries are not on that list. Though I'm not entirely clear what MOC is trying to promote when it goes into libraries with guns (what they're doing is already legal...doing crazy things is just increasing the chances that it will be made illegal), it's clear that attention is what they're after. I did try to get a look at their insights, but their website (michiganopencarry.org) is down as of this writing. Recently, after MOC members carried guns into children's and teen areas at the Capital Area District Library in Lansing, a preliminary injunction preventing MOC members from carrying guns into that particular library.
Unfortunately, as the chief told us on Friday, because MOC's actions fall under the law, there isn't much the police can do. Basically, he told us that it's best to ignore them, if they do come to CDL. Only if the person's actions would prompt us to contact the police even if he/she did not have a gun, could the police take actions. All in all, not a great thing to hear. Here's hoping that legislation to add libraries to the list of exceptions will get passed soon!