LISNews: Librarian News

Reminds me that I want to visit BookMarc on Bleecker Street when the weather warms up....

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD and JULIE BOSMAN
Published in the New York Times: February 27, 2011

Kitson, a group of boutiques based in Los Angeles, is the kind of store that appears regularly in the tabloids for both its stylish clothes and its celebrity clientele like Sean Combs and Joe Jonas. But in a town that is all about flash, Kitson is finding a surprising source of revenue that is not from its fashionable shoes or accessories. It is from books..... Read the rest here

I wanted to write a railing piece about the new Harper Collins twenty-six checkout limit on ebooks, but Friday I had to finish a day of work and take my wife out for a date night before I could sit down to write.

This has given me the opportunity to read the reactions of librarian-bloggers. The reactions fell into two camps. The largest group was the" believers", those who saw ebooks as a means of library renaissance on the foundation of digital content. The other group was the "skeptics". These, I include myself in this group, were willing to incorporate ebooks into the library collection, but did not put all of their trust into the format for the salvation of libraries. -- Read More

From the Wall Street Journal

By AMIR EFRATI

Google Inc., long considered the gold standard of Internet search, is changing the secret formula it uses to rank Web pages as it struggles to combat websites that have been able to game its system.

The Internet giant, which handles nearly two-thirds of the world's Web searches, has been under fire recently over the quality of its results. Google said it changed its mathematical formula late Thursday in order to better weed out "low-quality" sites that offer users little value. Some such sites offer just enough content to appear in search results and lure users to pages loaded with advertisements.

Read more...

By Jennifer Howard in the Chronicle of Higher Education

Social media have become serious academic tools for many scholars, who use them for collaborative writing, conferencing, sharing images, and other research-related activities. So says a study just posted online called "Social Media and Research Workflow." Among its findings: Social scientists are now more likely to use social-media tools in their research than are their counterparts in the biological sciences. And researchers prefer popular applications like Twitter to those made for academic users.....More here.

Opinion piece in the Chronicle Review by David Rothman, who is a writer and founder of TeleRead, a Web site devoted to news and discussion of e-books and related topics. He is also a cofounder of LibraryCity.org, an informal, nonprofit group working toward a universal national digital-library system. He clearly has some skin in the game.

It's Time for a National Digital-Library System
But it can't serve only elites

By David H. Rothman

William F. Buckley Jr., my political opposite, once denounced the growing popularity of CD-ROM's in student research. Shouldn't young people learn from real books?

I disagreed. Why not instead digitize a huge number of books and encourage the spread of book-friendly tablet computers with color screens and multimedia capabilities? ....Read the rest here

I clearly have too much time on my hands. It's not even Friday and here's another video about the new product called BOOK, with english subtitles, so you can watch it with the sound off....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhcPX1wVp38

Abstract:
Intellectual property law has long been justified on the belief that external incentives are necessary to get people to produce artistic works and technological innovations that are easily copied. This Essay argues that this foundational premise of the economic theory of intellectual property is wrong. Using recent advances in behavioral economics, psychology, and business-management studies, it is now possible to show that there are natural and intrinsic motivations that will cause technology and the arts to flourish even in the absence of externally supplied rewards, such as copyrights and patents.

Download full PDF here

Social media is an important technological trend that has big implications for how researchers (and people in general) communicate and collaborate. Researchers have a huge amount to gain from engaging with social media in various aspects of their work.

This guide has been produced by the International Centre for Guidance Studies, and aims to provide the information needed to make an informed decision about using social media and select from the vast range of tools that are available.......More here.

By Viva Sarah Press
February 21, 2011

A Weizmann Institute scientist says clues to the history of pollution can be found in old books - but not in the written word, rather in the paper itself.
Prof. Dan Yakir of the Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research in the Faculty of Chemistry found the paper in library collections of old books and newspapers contains a record of atmospheric conditions at the time the trees that went into making the paper were growing. Yakir says he has traced the effects of atmospheric pollution from burning fossil fuel going back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.....Read more here.

Funny cartoon from The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/

Who knew? It's not Friday but these are fun to watch.

Organizing the bookcase -- love the soundtrack!

The Amazing Stop Motion Bookshelf

Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society has set up a planning wiki as a place to get input from the public about the Digital Public Library of America initiative. It's in the early stages but will be interesting to watch and participate.. Check it out here.

As the popularity of smartphones continues to grow, the challenge, on a global scale, may only get greater.

Full article

This study, conducted by the Library Resource Guide (LRG) — in conjunction with Unisphere Research, the market research division of Information Today, Inc (ITI) — in October and November 2010 among libraries listed in ITI’s American Library Directory, reveals current spending patterns for public, academic, government, and special libraries and projects budget and other spending trends for 2011.

From Information Today. You will need to register to download the report.

Download here

From the Scholarly Kitchen Blog

With the recent surge in library e-book sales, serials aggregators are racing to add e-books to their platforms. ProQuest’s recent acquisition of ebrary and JSTOR’s expansion into current journals and e-books signal a shift from standalone e-book and e-journal aggregator platforms to mixed content gateways, with e-books and e-journals living cheek by jowl in the same aggregation..... Read more.

The defunct satirical publication that launched a thousand magazine careers and dodged a thousand lawsuits is now available digitally — thanks to Google.

One minute piece on NPR

Searchable archive of Spy Magazine on Google

was from the game Masterpiece. One of the characters in the game of bidding and bluffing at purchasing art masterpieces or forgeries is Millicent Friendly, a librarian, "shy and unassuming, but reputed to have a mean temper." And she's a spinster. Surprise.
Grrrrrrrr.

Trespass: A History Of Uncommissioned Urban Art

Graffiti and unsanctioned art—from local origins to global phenomenon

In recent years street art has grown bolder, more ornate, more sophisticated and—in many cases—more acceptable. Yet unsanctioned public art remains the problem child of cultural expression, the last outlaw of visual disciplines. It has also become a global phenomenon of the 21st century.
Made in collaboration with featured artists, Trespass examines the rise and global reach of graffiti and urban art, tracing key figures, events and movements of self-expression in the city's social space, and the history of urban reclamation, protest, and illicit performance. The first book to present the full historical sweep, global reach and technical developments of the street art movement, Trespass features key works by 150 artists, and connects four generations of visionary outlaws including Jean Tinguely, Spencer Tunick, Keith Haring, Os Gemeos, Jenny Holzer, Barry McGee, Gordon Matta-Clark, Shepard Fairey, Blu, Billboard Liberation Front, Guerrilla Girls and Banksy, among others. It also includes dozens of previously unpublished photographs of long-lost works and legendary, ephemeral urban artworks.

I loved Michael Stephens' Office Hours column this week, "Seek a Challenge:"

Coasting, in library school and in our jobs, is not an option. Sending students who have coasted through their LIS program to your library to coast perpetuates this problem. I can tell which students are merely sailing through their program, just as I can tell when a professor has “checked out” of his or her own job.

Students—are you doing the bare minimum in your LIS program? Are you turning in “good enough” papers that show no excitement, curiosity, or passion for librarianship? Or are you going above and beyond the expectations of your teachers? You get what you bring to your program.

The onus for change lies with both students and LIS faculty. Students should provide constructive evaluations of their learning experience. Faculty should respond with curricular changes and updated course offerings as quickly as possible. Library school administration should enable these conversations about change in an open, transparent process. LIS programs must be nimble and quick if they are to survive in the current economy. -- Read More

As people stop telling the time using their wristwatches and use their mobile phones instead, a new genre of device takes up the vacant real estate on their wrists.

Article mentions the wrist watch being used as a "third screen" to present information.

Full article