LISNews: Librarian News

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

Andre Gide (1869 - 1951)

I just sold a book to a person in New York. The mailing address was a business on Wall Street. I think people may find the title of the book to be ironic. Link to book title.

I have been using the website Paperbackswap.com to exchange books. The site has a neat mapping feature that show where your books are sent to and where the books you get come from. Take a look at the maps for the books I have sent and received. There is a clear east coast bias.
I really like Paperbackswap because you are not swapping directly with an individual. If you send someone a book you receive a credit that can be used to obtain any book listed at the site. You do not have to swap for a book that belongs to a person that sent you a book. Currently there are over 40,000 books listed on the site.

Story in the NYT.

I sold a copy of Altered Carbon to an independent bookstore in New York City today. I find it kind of ironic that an independent bookstore in New York is buying from an Amazon seller in the midwest. Like everyone else he or she probably wants a cheaper copy of the book.
My copy was a paperback. Do some research and see what it will cost you for a hardcover edition of Altered Carbon. The book club edition goes for $40 and the prices go up from there. It is amazing the prices that certain modern editions of a book can command.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is available at Paperbackswap.com.

Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year
Direct link
to book at PBS.
Direct link to book at Amazon.

At Paperbackswap.com you can list your used books and if someone requests them you receive one credit for each book you ship to someone else. Each credit can be used to request a book that you want. You can also buy credits for roughly $2 a piece. Not a bad price to have a book brought right to your front door. There is no shipping charge so a book only cost a credit. You can get a credit for $2 or you can ship someone a book.
Here are some books at the site that I recommend:
Into the Wild (one of my favorite nonfiction books)
Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage
The Mosquito Coast
The Hobbit

I receive an email with the subject line "Titgroup: titgroup in antwerp heart of Europe". I roll my eyes and wonder why my spam filter works so poorly. But the rest of the subject line does not seem to fit for a sex related email so I open the message. The message seems to be spam but it is not of the porn variety. It seems several people of the marine persuasion from Belgium have decided to open a marine services company called "Titgroup". The last line of their email was probably the best, Entrust your maritime affairs ,ships and management to professionals.Entrust them to ''Titgrouyp"
Here is the entire email for your reading pleasure.
Dear Madam,Dear Sir;

We are proud to annouce you that '' titgroup '' is going worldwilde departing from it's headquarters in Brussels and Antwerp Belgium.
Titgroup is a multidisciplinary group inluding surveys of all kinds ,consultancy,ship management,technical management ,ship repairs & maintenance,ISM & ISPS CODE consultants and education ,class and statutory surveys consultants ,ship operators ,IT and telecom for ships etc.........
Our team is composed of highly educated and experienced chief engineers and captains as wel as masters in marine engineering and shipping.
Entrust your maritime affairs ,ships and management to professionals.Entrust them to ''Titgrouyp".

Best regards.

contact us:

Titgroup :297 dammbruggestraat Antwerp 2060 Belgium.
tel/fax : 32 3 707 27 90
mob: 32 477 62 51 36
mob: 32 495 8144 16
email:marine@titgroup.be
www.titgroup.be
msn: marine@titgroup.be
skype:titgroup
We speak english.
Nous parlons francais
Hablamos espagnol
Nataklamou arabia
Deutch sprechen
Wij spreken Nederlands

On the cover of the hardcover edition of The Gulag Archipelago there is the following quote that I have always found interesting.
For years I have with reluctant heart withheld from publication this already completed book; my obligation to those still living outweighed my obligation to the dead. But now that State Security has seized the book anyway, I have no alternative but to publish it immediately. -The authorI have an extra paperback copy of this book. The first person that emails me, and says the want the book, can have it. (for free) As soon as someone has taken the book I will post a comment in my journal that the book is taken so that there is not duplicative request.

I have been selling books online. Recently I have had two orders that have gone to prisons and I have had problems with each order. One book went to a federal prison in Louisiana. Two weeks after I mailed the book I recieved the book back from the post office. There was a sticker on the package that books could only be sent by bookstores and direct from publishers. On the first package I had only included my return address but not the name of my store. I have a batch of return labels that is only big enough for my street address, city, and state. I mailed the package and so far have not recieved that one back so hopefully the person recieved it.
The second book I mailed went to a county jail in Oregon. I recieved that book back with a sticker on it that the book was not an approved item. On that package I used my name on the return address but not the bookstore name. I am wondering if I had to have the bookstore name on to get the book through.
I wish the prisons would have just opened the packages and inspected the contents and then passed them on to the inmate. I am sure there are privacy rules but they could have done things this way. Prison to inmate: "We recieved a package that we think is a book but the package does not meet our labeling rules. We are going to mail the package back unless you let us open it."

I understand the need for security but prisons should do what they can to help get books into the prisons. A prisoner that is reading is a prisoner that is not causing trouble.

Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.

--Plutarch

To find a fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.

--Plutarch

Learn to be pleased with everything; with wealth, so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied.

--Plutarch

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.
- Franklin P. Adams

I purchased a copy of The Da Vinci Code at a book sale to resell online. On the title page of the book is this ISBN 0385504209. The book is a trade edition size paperback but the ISBN on Amazon links to the hardcover edition of the book. Printed on the back of the book is a price barcode and an ISBN. This is not a sticker put on by the store but it is a printed part of the back cover. The barcode has a barcode number and at the top of the barcode it says ISBN and list this number 0965707202. Run this ISBN at Amazon and see what you get. This is not a joke the ISBN I listed is the one that is on the back of the book. I ran the ISBN at BN.com and is also goes to the same wrong book. Run the search, the book that is retrieved will give you a laugh. Anybody heard of this happening before?

I found this Cliff Stoll Quote.Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?Cliff Stolls claim to fame was catching a german hacker as detailed in the book The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage. He also wrote the books Silicon Snake Oil : Second Thoughts on the Information Highway and High-Tech Heretic : Reflections of a Computer Contrarian In my opinion the Cuckoos Egg is a must read.

Here is a link to a little project I have been working on at night that deals with the US Mints 50 State Quarters program. If anyone has any book suggestions I would be happy to hear them.

I think I like Roger Ebert so much because you can learn from his reviews. I think a good movie maker could do worse then reading all the reviews of Roger Ebert and taking some of the advice contained in them.
Here is a line that I liked from Ebert's review on the "Revenge of the Sith". special effects should be judged not by their complexity but by the degree that they stimulate the imagination
Full review here.

Frontline ran a story called "Is Walmart Good for America". They also created a webpage that has some detailed information. The page does a good job of giving opposing viewpoints. In the section about "The China Connection" there is discussion from both sides.

Book: One Nation Under Law
Book Description

If asked, most Americans would probably point to the First Amendment as the legal basis for the separation of church and state. As Mark Douglas McGarvie shows in this fascinating new book, however, they would be wrong. It is the Constitution’s “commerce clause�—article 1, section 10—which separates church and state by protecting contracted private arrangements from government interference. Americans in the early republic, McGarvie writes, “reconceived of churches as private, voluntary associations, legally recognized as private, not public, corporations.�

Drawing on a range of materials, McGarvie examines the disestablishment of religion that followed this legal change, a process that meant not only eliminating public support for religion but also stripping churches of their traditional role as public service providers. Focusing on three key states, New York, South Carolina, and New Hampshire, McGarvie reveals that disestablishment produced a sharp conflict between two competing worldviews; one informed by evangelical Christianity and the other by Enlightenment humanism, inspiring a “culture war� still raging today.

“This conflict emanated� he writes, “from different conceptions of God as well as of man.� If man is weak and inclined to evil, as the devout believe, then strict institutions must preserve public order against man’s tendency to sin, teaching God’s law as a moral absolute. If man is rational, reasonable, and free, however, then the law need only secure liberty by protecting individual rights.

Through his close study of this heated debate from its eighteenth century roots through to contemporary fights over “faith-based� initiatives, McGarvie has made a tremendous contribution to the study of American law, politics, and religion.

Interesting book discussion in the NYT about the book Freakonomics.