LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

NYTimes: Amazon.com has threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online unless they agree to a detailed list of concessions regarding the sale of electronic books, according to two industry executives with direct knowledge of the discussions.

The hardball approach comes less than two months after Amazon shocked the publishing world by removing the “buy” buttons from its site for thousands of printed books from Macmillan, one of the country’s six largest publishers, in a dispute over e-book pricing.

Why do you need the library?

Why does anyone need the library?

Why do we need anything?

If we, librarians, could define the role of the library, then we, library users, could decide if we really need them. As it is, we are letting technology define the role of the library. Whereas I think that our service to people should define it.

I think it's a matter of ego. And Homo NOVUS, the superior iPhone-clutching human, can be a huge ahole. Whatever he needs, he gets, with a simple tap of his as-yet-to-be-determined-rightful-ownership-through-patent-litigation futuristic touch-screen. He (and She, the ladies can be aholes, too) is multi-tooled, unlike his club-wielding and single-minded predecessors.

It truly is ego. The new library is about who owns the authority. In the old library, the librarian was the authority. But things change.

(there should be a table here, but I don't think we can use tables)

ANTIQUUS (old library) --- NOVUS (new library)
Librarian-centric --- User-centric
Fixed Authority --- Dynamic Authority
Repeated shushing --- Constant bleeping

So clearly there's a power struggle. But it's not between librarians and library patrons, but between librarians and inanimate devices. NOVUS totes the device around, searching for signals, or wireless connectivity, and follows. So who is the master? the human or the device?

There's a reason you don't hear much about international trade agreements. They are kind of dull, and they're usually not very controversial. But the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is different.

"One feels that you're almost in a bit of a twilight zone," says Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa. "I mean, we're talking about a copyright treaty. And it's being treated as akin to nuclear secrets."

Full story at NPR - audio available 7pm et

NY Times OP-Ed by Thomas Cahill on something else to celebrate every March 17th;

"Why should we celebrate the Irish? No doubt, several reasons could be proffered. But for me one answer stands out. Long, long ago the Irish pulled off a remarkable feat: They saved the books of the Western world and left them as gifts for all humanity."

Charlotte/Mecklenburg (NC) County’s library board will vote Thursday on a proposal which would close half the county’s branches and lay off 140 employees within a matter of weeks.

The proposal, announced to employees Wednesday morning, is the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s way of coping with a 6.3 percent funding reduction in the current fiscal year.

Update on Bernie Margolis on his blog written by his wife Amanda Batey:

"I am devastated to tell you some terrible news. Bernie was diagnosed a few days ago with a dreadful type of blood cancer. We have an appointment at the famed Dana-Farber/ Harvard Cancer Center in Boston soon and anticipate that he will need a bone marrow transplant as well as in-hospital chemotherapy.

A friend in Michigan, Jim Luke, has put together this website so we all can stay in touch. As much as I would like to be available personally I need to focus my attention on Bernie. This is an opportunity to use the world’s new technology in a wonderful application. You can find out how Bernie’s doing and keep up to date by visiting BernieMargolis.com . You may want to bookmark this site. You can also comment, and express your love and support on this site. Bernie says you can argue with him if you are so disposed! See the “Tell Bernie” page/tab on the website. Bernie and I will read them all. You are all part of our larger Bernie-family. You can also register to be notified by email whenever we have news on the site."

In no uncertain terms, the funding that supports our profession has taken beating on both the local and national level. This year, there will be cuts, layoffs, and closures despite our best lobbying efforts. But while there will be less money going around in the public and private sector for the next couple of years, an article I got today from my Twitter friends really made me think that there will be a upcoming shift as to where information management and interpretation skills will be needed.

If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address?

Probably not.

Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced. Services like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae — birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched.

Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number.

Full story

All certified school librarians in the Los Angeles Unified School District will lose their positions next school year if efforts to close the district’s $640 million budget shortfall fail.

Full story at School Library Journal

The crime writer has more than 40 books to his name and dozens of films made from that source material. Leonard gives NPR's Noah Adams a tour of his hometown, with stops at some of the places that taught the writer about the language of crime, and at his writing desk at home.
Full story on NPR

Elmore Leonard's writing desk at his home near Detroit. Leonard writes each page of his books by hand, on canary yellow paper.

Click on the "Read More" link below to see the column.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission released a national "broadband plan" Tuesday that aims to give 90 percent of Americans access to affordable, high-speed Internet by 2020.

"This is not something that is nice for us to do; it is everyone's right," FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said at a commission meeting Tuesday.
The plan calls for billions of dollars in programs to extend fiber-optic Internet cables into new corners of rural America and to educate people about why they need the Web and how they can learn to use it.

Full article at CNN

Luciano Canfora’s The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World...the book contrasts the fate of the ancient Library of Alexandria with besieged public libraries today.
http://uflstaffpicks.blogspot.com/2010/03/outbreaks-attacks-sackings-and-fires.html

The death of the library book
Cambridge (MA) has a gleaming new main building, but something's missing -- and closing local branches won't help.

What's the purpose of libraries -- really? To be a community gathering place? To promote lifelong learning? To help users navigate the information flow? To store print documents for the historical record, as Nicholson Baker argues they should (and aren't) in "Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper"?

After False Start, PTFS Finally Acquires LibLime
After some delay, the acquisition of Koha ILS support vendor LibLime by Progressive Technology Federal Systems (PTFS) is now "signed and completed," according to John Yokley, PTFS co-founder and CEO.

In January, just before the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Annual meeting, PTFS announced its plans to acquire LibLime, but was stymied in February by a dispute over financial terms. The deal was called off.

A Report From meetingnews.com on the ALA. The association's use of new technology is part of a closer integration between its membership services and meetings teams, designed to bring the most value of an event to both members and non-member attendees.

Real Librarians Talk About Their Favorite Fictional Librarians
Librarians have a bit of a reputation to live up to. We expect them to be kind and resourceful. Well-read. Soft-spoken. These days, the bun and glasses are optional, but if you ask us, still fun in a kitschy way. But have you ever wondered what real librarians think an ideal librarian should be like? And more importantly, who are the imaginary librarians that they look up to? To find out, we caught up with our favorite blogging librarians from The Desk Set.

Entertaining video prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books. Originally meant solely for a DK sales conference, the video was such a hit internally that it is now being shared externally. ...

Drew University student is accused of stealing, trying to sell historical documents
As an 18-year-old freshman at Drew University, William J. Scott was hired to work at the school’s archives center. He was entrusted with a key to the climate-controlled rooms housing centuries-old letters signed by presidents, generals and the founders of the Methodist faith.

What makes a bad book bad?
American academics have been grappling with this question and rounding up some unusual suspects
"Unfortunately, some of my colleagues judge everything by how close it comes to Joyce's Ulysses, which they reread annually," he reveals. "A friend of mine was at an academic conference session about Ulysses. Someone on the panel referred to an episode where a character in the
novel had coffee at a restaurant. The rest of the panel turned on him, and one of them hissed, 'It was cocoa!' Now do you see why this ridiculous list came about?"