LISNews: Librarian News

I came across a great photo of the old library being torn down. The new library is visible through the wreckage.

(A lot of people still think of the old library as the "new" library. When they think "old" library, they think of the Spring Street library, which came before.)

About four years ago, there was a bus or van that used to travel around the country printing books. I think they were printing out Gutenberg books for folks. I can't remember the details.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? What became of the project? This reminded me of it.

I'm almost done with this week's This Week in LibraryBlogland but I can't finish working on it till tonight. I'll be posting it by tomorrow morning. Sorry about the delay.

I think I need to seriously trim the TWiL reading list. Part of the joy of Twilling is seeing patterns between disparate posts, finding conversations in the biblioblogosphere. But now, there's so much to read--adding several blogs to the list every week, for thirteen weeks, it starts to add up. It's turned into a chore. The TWiL joy is gone.

Time to do some culling.

Sorry about not posting This Week in LibraryBlogland the past couple of weeks. I started two new projects, which took extra time in start-up, and then my mouse-related elbow trouble flared up, which slowed everything down. But everything's been figured out, so I'm back now.

Copied from Boing Boing: Hundreds of internet web sites are gathering hundreds, and probably thousands, of entries about missing persons or persons who want to let others know they're okay. The problem is: the data on these sites has no particular form or structure. So it's almost impossible for people to search or match things up. Plus there are dozens of sites - making it hard for a person seeking lost loved ones to search them all.

The Katrina PeopleFinder Project NEEDS YOUR HELP to enter data about missing and found people from various online sources. We're requesting as little as an hour of your time. All you need to do is help read unstructured posts about missing or found persons, and then add the relevant data to a database through a simple online form.

Sorry, but it looks as if this week's This Week in LibraryBlogland is going to be a day late, maybe two. Too many errands to run.

Does anyone know how to make the library bookmarklet work on a Mac (OS X)? I dragged it to the links bar okay, but nothing happens when I test it. I've tried it on Firefox and IE with equally null results.

Any suggestions?

Two sets of photos from ALA 2005:

- Book Cart Drill Team championship. (I didn't take many photos.)

- OCLC Bloggers Salon at ALA 2005. I hope to annotate them sometime later, maybe next week.

Just a quick drive-by post (because I keep forgetting to write up a proper FPP when I have the time to do it properly) re the MGM DVD settlement: is this something that libraries could also take part in? Does anyone have any details about how this works?

(Yes, it's way too early for this.)

LISNEWS VALENTINE

(make your own)

(Note: I don't know that the writer worked at the library; it just says it happened at a library.)

"Although we never met, I like to think I had an impact on [Fred Dibnah's] life as I once bumped into his wife Alison at the library. She was looking puzzled so I helped her to find the 'feminist sociology' section. Weeks later she divorced him saying he was an out-moded chauvinist who was living in the past. Who knows, if I’d shown her to the 'canals and waterways' section, the course of history may have been changed." [Call Centre Confidential, Nov. 16 '04]

(I almost posted this as a regular story, but I wasn't sure it qualified as an FPP.)

3,000th entry! No, not here, on my Livejournal.

Yeah, I scare myself, too.

Back on October 8, I said I was going to cross-post here the library-related stories I posted on my Livejournal . In case anyone noticed that I had stopped: Blake invited me to become an LISNews author. So, instead of posting stories here, I've been posting them to the front page since Tuesday. So far, no one's complained, so I figure I'm doing it okay.

Ten Tips for Getting Close to Rare Materials. Prepared by the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL). National History Day Philadelphia.

"Don't be fooled by the quiet look of a special collections library. There’s real excitement in tracking down information in old documents. You’ll find that the special collections library research for your National History Day project is part detective work and part treasure hunt. With a little information and some advance planning, you can be researching with the best of them. Here are ten tips to help you research like a pro at your very first visit." [More]

Author burns original manuscripts. BBC News, October 12, 2004.

"Best-selling children's novelist, GP Taylor has accidentally burnt three of his original manuscripts while clearing his house before moving. Scarborough-based Graham Taylor was turning the embers on a bonfire when he noticed what was written on them. One of the original manuscripts for Shadowmancer, one of two for Wormwood and the complete manuscript of his new book Tersias were lost." [More] [About G.P. Taylor and interview]

A Solicitation - Attention Comics Afficionados and Creators, by Phoebe Gloeckner, in her blog. October 7, 2004.
"I hereby welcome suggestions and donations as I begin the on-going job of building a comics collection to be permanently housed in the University of Michigan's Art, Archictecture, and Engineering Library on the Ann Arbor campus.
GENERAL NEEDS
With the budgetary constraints we have, it would be impossible at this point to build a comprehensive and all-inclusive collection, but here are a few needs we are attempting to fill:" [More]

My library sadness, by Mrs. S. Pickering, Tamworth. Letter to the editor, Tamworth Herald (Staffordshire, UK), October 14, 2004.
"I am writing to ask what genius in some planning department planned our new Tamworth library? ... In the old library there was a wide selection of books, two large racks of crime, autobiography, craft, world history, large print. I went in there the other day and asked about autobiography. The lady pointed to a small shelf unit, which contained about two dozen books and said that was it. Crime is now only a few on three/four shelves, the bottom one I cannot reach as I am 71 and I have a bad back. The children's section is about one third of what it was. To say I am disappointed is putting it mildly." [More]

Sale of library books. Tamworth Herald (Staffordshire, UK), October 14, 2004.
"Book lovers are being invited to attend a sale of discarded ex-stock at Tamworth Library. Following a number of library refurbishments across Staffordshire, a huge amount of stock, all of which is in good condition, is now up for sale. From 9am on Monday, October 18, visitors to the town centre library can browse through the wide selection of titles available - but buyers are warned to take along boxes to carry them home. The sale will be held during normal opening hours on the library's first floor, but hurry, you've only got until 4pm on Saturday, October 23, to pick up a bargain."

High-tech security for ancient books, by Julie Clothier. CNN, October 14, 2004.
"Librarians at the Vatican Library are using cutting-edge technology to keep track of the priceless ancient collection. About 30,000 books have been tagged with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips since implementation of the technology began last year. Two million of the 40-million piece collection will be tagged in the near future, allowing staff to complete the library's annual inventory in less than a day, something that previously forced it to close for a whole month." [More]

British Library starts email archive. The Times, October 12, 2004; in Australian IT, October 14, 2004.
"Curators have become concerned that conventional letters are becoming increasingly rare as writers and scientists abandon paper for more perishable email. The library has appointed the world's first digital manuscripts curator to collect important material that would otherwise end up as deleted items. ... Jeremy John, who has set up the library's first digital archive, is appealing to writers and scientists to ask them to store their correspondence in a way that will allow future generations to see their work. ... Another problem is that the computer programs required to read the files become obsolete so quickly that even carefully collected data may become impossible to access. He is appealing for help from members of the public who own obsolete machines so he can unlock archaic files. ... The library owns hundreds of feet of paper tape containing the work of evolutionary biologist Bill Hamilton that it cannot decipher." [More]