2-1-1 ToolKit. A Librarian At Every Table. No. 276.

The mission of 2-1-1 is to build America's capacity to strengthen the way people access help and engage in civic life.

Americans in search of critical services such as emergency financial assistance, food, shelter, child care, jobs, or mental health support often do not know where to begin. Now, more than ever, individuals and families will need a way to efficiently access all the resources of the community to achieve or maintain self-sufficiency.

Community information and referral has been bringing people and services together as a critical part of the health and human service delivery system for over 30 years. I&R specialists are skilled professionals who assess callers' needs, determine their options and best course of action, direct them to appropriate programs/services, provide culturally appropriate support, intervene in crisis situations, and advocate for the caller as needed. 2-1-1 provides an easy way for every citizen to access comprehensive and specialized I&R services in their community.


The Alliance of Information and Referral Systems has designed the
AIRS 2-1-1 Toolkit to help 2-1-1 planners create cost effective, high quality, and investor friendly business plans. The AIRS 2-1-1 Toolkit is the only 2-1-1 planning process developed by experienced 2-1-1 consultants and tested by 2-1-1 planners in the field.

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For 2-1-1 and libraries see:

"Service Integration and Libraries: Will 2-1-1 be the Catalyst for Renewal?"
Reference and User Services Quarterly 40 (Winter, 2000).

Tennessee Library Association 2004.
Why should librarians provide information on community services?
--Doug Fluegel, Audrey May, Catherine Moirai, Martha Earl

Librarians for Peace: A Librarian at Every Table. No. 275.

Librarians for Peace.
Librarians for Peace is an ad hoc group of librarians and library workers, mainly Americans but also people of other nations, using the internet to organize and lobby against armed conflict where we consider it unnecessary, with a focus on our own country and its allies.
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U.S. Troop Deaths in Iraq
Iraq Body Count

Human Rights Video Project: A Librarian at Every Table. No. 274.

The Human Rights Video Project is a national library project created to increase the public's awareness of human rights issues through the medium of documentary films. To that end, we have curated a collection of 12 documentary films on human rights issues. The project also encourages collaborations between public libraries and human rights advocacy organizations to present film screenings and discussion programs.

Essays on the site include, "Sustaining the Public Sphere in Libraries."

The Borgen Project: A Librarian at Every Table. No.273.

The Borgen Project
If the political attention and funding that went into Iraq had gone
toward poverty-reduction; hunger could have been eliminated
globally. Few fully realize the enormous financial burden of war.
There is nothing financially comparable.

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development 2005. A Librarian at Every Table. No. 272.

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development 2005 : what is our duty ?

21 May is World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development (UNESCO Resolution 57/249)

The Day will provide us with an opportunity to deepen understanding of the values of Cultural Diversity and to learn to “live together” better. This is why UNESCO appeals to the Member States as well as to all civil society to celebrate this World Day by involving as many actors and partners as possible.

The need to include indigenous education for development has been highlighted by Education International, a global union federation representing over 29 million teachers.
300 million Indigenous Peoples live in over 70 countries and represent 4% of the world's population. For most Indigenous Peoples, education has been used as one of the tools in the destruction of their culture. It has been part of the process of assimilation. Around the world, children from Indigenous communities feature at the bottom of indicators of educational achievement. Educators and EI member organisations have a special responsibility to support Indigenous Peoples in their efforts to ensure the educational success of their children and the survival of their knowledge, languages, and cultures.

Jail is No Safety Net: A Librarian at Every Table. No. 271.

Jail is No Safety Net

Each year, thousands of Americans with mental illnesses cycle in out of the criminal and juvenile justice systems, punished for the mental health system’s failure to provide crucial services and supports that can help them lead more successful lives in the community.

Last year, lawmakers and the President took an important step toward addressing this disturbing trend. “The Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act” (P.L. 108-414) was sponsored by Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) and Representative Ted Strickland (D-OH) and signed by President Bush. Unfortunately, neither the President’s proposed budget nor the recently passed Congressional budget resolution sets aside any federal dollars to support this important initiative.

The Bazelon Center and our partners in the Campaign for Mental Health Reform need your help to secure funding for federal efforts to stop the dangerous, expensive and inappropriate warehousing of people with mental illnesses in our nation’s jails and prisons.
The mission of the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is to protect and advance the rights of adults and children who have mental disabilities. The Center envisions an America where people who have mental illnesses or developmental disabilities exercise their own life choices and have access to the resources that enable them to participate fully in their communities.

Human Rights Watch Report:
Ill-Equipped:U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness.
Somewhere between two and three hundred thousand men and women in U.S. prisons suffer from mental disorders, including such serious illnesses as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression. An estimated seventy thousand are psychotic on any given day. Yet across the nation, many prison mental health services are woefully deficient, crippled by understaffing, insufficient facilities, and limited programs. All too often seriously ill prisoners receive little or no meaningful treatment. They are neglected, accused of malingering, treated as disciplinary problems.

ColorLines, Summer 2005: A Librarian at Every Table. No. 270

ColorLines is the first national, multi-racial magazine devoted to covering the politics and creations of communities of color. The summer 2005 issue is Food & Culture in Crisis."

Water Woes
Private companies raise the rates on those who can least afford it.

Down These Green Streets
As farmer’s markets grow, more people of color are getting a healthier bite of life.

The Arctic Dilemma
A perfect storm of environmental changes is transforming Native Alaskan food gathering and culture.

Greening the Liquor Store
A national network of organizations is trying to bring healthier food choices to the ubiquitous liquor stores in poor neighborhoods. But converting is hard to do.

Got Tradition?
American Indians use native foods to fight diabetes and revive Indian culture.

Special Interest Takeover. A Librarian at Every Table. No. 269.

Special Interest Takeover, a new report by Citizens for Sensible Safeguards (CSS ) documents a systematic attack on public health, safety, and environmental protections over the last four years. Who are these special interests, and just how much have they taken over?

# First, we need strong protections for public health, safety, civil rights, and the environment, and these protections must be vigorously enforced. Industry self-regulation - which is the Bush administration's answer - is not enough.
# Second, we must commit the necessary resources to do the job. If we do not, enforcement will suffer and public and environmental dangers will not be addressed.
# Third, the scientific advice that informs regulatory decisions must be free of conflicts of interests, so that protective rules are based on sound, independent judgment that does not put special interests over the public interest.
# Finally, government decision-making should be transparent and open to scrutiny, allowing for accountability to a fully-informed public.
The public suffers when these principles are forgotten. The recent wave of corporate financial scandals is a case in point: corporations came to see the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as toothless and irrelevant and subsequently pushed fraudulent practices to the breaking point, cheating investors out of billions.

Unfortunately, these principles are being ignored across the board, and the failure to set and enforce needed safeguards is inviting irresponsible behavior that could have devastating consequences for public health, safety, civil rights, and the environment. We need to get back on course before it's too late.
Become a Member.

Through the Arts Bridges Can be Built Between Societies. A Librarian at Every Table. No. 268.

The Louise T Blouin Foundation will be an international forum for the generation and dissemination of new knowledge about the art and science of creativity. The Louise T. Blouin Foundation aims to generate and disseminate new knowledge about the art and science of creativity. It will analyse and celebrate the many ways in which the human brain gives birth to new ideas, new works of art and new directions for our social, cultural and commercial development. It will support and promote inter-disciplinary research, experimentation and education in the pursuit of international enlightenment, communication and prosperity. It will seek to position itself as the primary hub in a global network of key organizations and individuals who share its core belief in the inspirational and economic importance of the visual and performing arts and in the boundless potential of the human mind.

Community Organizing: A Librarian at Every Table. No. 267.

The COMM-ORG mission is to link academics and activists, and theory and practice, toward the goal of improving community organizing and its related crafts. The project is supported by the University of Toledo Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
The COMM-ORG mission is to help connect people who care about the craft of community organizing;find and provide information that organizers, scholars, and scholar-organizers can use to learn, teach, and do community organizing.

May Day-Labor History and the Haymarket Martyrs. A Librarian at Every Table. No. 266.

May Day is International Workers Day. The Holt Labor Library provides a bibliography which includes:

Foner, Philip S. May Day: A Short History of the International Workers' Holiday 1886-1986 . New York: International Publishers, 1986.

Johnson, Olive M. May Day vs. Labor Day: A Comparison of the Social Significance of the Two Days of Labor Celebration. New York: New York Labor News Company, 1936.

The Chicago Historical Society houses the Haymarket Affair Digital Collection of key documents and artifacts in their historical context with a minimum of interpretive information. Much like the witness testimony and exhibits introduced during the Haymarket trial, these primary sources are pieces of evidence which enable the user to reconstruct and interpret the historical events to which they relate.

See the affiliated, interpretive web site developed by Northwestern University in cooperation with the Chicago Historical Society:
The Dramas of Haymarket.