LISNews: Librarian News

I have a picture around here somewhere of several circles contained within each other of decreasing order, but I can't find it, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

But the point I tried to make with that picture is that the largest circle represents the whole of human knowledge.

And within that circle is one for Google and all search engines and their ability to find and index the available digital subset of all human knowledge.

And a smaller circle still, represents the first 10 or 20 search results for any given search that most people accept from search engines as being the best answers to their query.

And an even smaller circle stands for the persons who click on the first search result they see.

And what this is supposed to mean is that we, the collective we, have become satisfied with the right answer. Because for the most part, search engines give back pretty good results for any given search. I type in "potato" and I get some information about growing them or eating them or buying them. And that makes me feel smart.

But how smart am I if I only know what every one else knows ... about potatoes? If we all become satisfied with what search engines say are the right and best answers, then from where will the new discoveries come? Potatoes may have other powers than just to become mashes or chips or skins. But how will we ever know if we don't look past what Google tells us it can find on the Internet?

One day we may all have the exact same answer for each of our questions ... because we learned to stop looking.

[note: this is me, kidding. because I love.]

Apple's new agreement with publishers secures a 30% fee for any subscriptions generated through Apple Store apps.

And now Overdrive, the company that provides many libraries with ebooks, has announced a new iPad app for downloading ebooks from the library.

So the question is, does this Overdrive app mean that libraries need to forfeit 30% of the fines collected from overdue ebooks to Apple? That same 30% that I've been skimming for years from my job at a New York public library to pay for my Dunkin' Donuts coffee and French Cruller habit? Huh? Can't you do math?

Of course, there are no overdue fines for ebooks, you dummy. You'll believe anything.

But does any Apple app use mean that Overdrive needs to pay Apple some fee for lending ebooks based on an indirect lease agreement with publishers? Only Apple's attorneys know for sure.

Steve Jobs, I know it's a day late, but will you be my valentine?

$467 book that made it into the Amazon top 100 books.

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

Any article that has the word "kerfuffle" in it gets a mention in my blog. This one, happily, is even of interest and relevant.

Subscriptions for the Masses. Talks about Apple's just announced subscription model for content. From the New York Observer.

The kids I celebrated in my early books as “digital natives,” capable of seeing through all efforts of big media and marketing, have actually proven less able to discern the integrity of the sources they read and the intentions of the programs they use than we struggling adults are. If they don’t know what the programs they’re using are even for, they don’t stand a chance at using them effectively. They’re less likely to become power users than the used. It is our job as educators to change all this. We’re our students’ best chance of becoming media—or new media—literate. Yet our digital practices betray our own unconscious approach toward these media. We employ technologies in our lives and our curriculums by force of habit or fear of being left behind.

I regularly visit one-to-one laptop schools where neither the students nor the educators have any real sense of purpose about the highly technologized program they’ve implemented. They bring a very powerful new medium into the classroom and make it central without having reckoned with the medium’s biases.

Full article at School Library Journal

Interesting blog post at "An American Editor" blog.

It has been an ongoing frustration of mine, dealing with bibliographic information that cites the Internet and ebooks.

In the olden days, way back when I was a student, the rule was that citing a source meant it really existed and was verifiable; one couldn’t cite and have accepted “James, J. (2010, August 10). Private conversation.” But today, I guess, anything goes — at least if you are in the role of author but not in the role of paper grader; that is, I find these types of cites in academic papers knowing full well that if a student of the author submitted such a cite, it would be unacceptable.

More important, however, is that cites to web pages that no longer exist — if they ever really existed — seem to be de rigueur, and no one complains. It used to be that it was not enough to cite a source, but the source had to be reputable and accepted in the field. It was pretty hard to cite Portnoy’s Complaint as an authority on sexual mores, yet I suspect that would not be true today.

Full blog post:
http://americaneditor.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/citing-sources-in-the-age-of-the-internet-and...

Article at Library Journal
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/889183-264/selling_the_library__peer.html.csp

Excerpt:

I was just at a small informal gathering of academic library directors who were discussing a variety of things, including who was doing what about discovery layers, whether we need to revisit shared collection development, and what was going on at our libraries in the areas of information literacy and faculty development. In the course of our discussion, someone said "what's the best way to get librarians out of the library?"

What, they bring their pillows and bed down for the night? Are they staging a sit-in? No, apparently directors worried that librarians who do most of their work in the library building might not be aware of what's going on in academic departments and that, in turn, faculty whose research needs are often answered by electronic resources might have little idea what librarians do for a living—or what we could be doing to help them.

New courier system saves money compared to postal service and other carriers. It also affects lending patterns and may give a nudge toward collaborative collection development.

Full article:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/889231-264/colorado_and_kansas_libraries_collaborate.h...

New books in the Amazon Top 100 Bestselling books.

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly--and the Stark Choices Ahead

True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself -- Read More

The anniversary will probably be observed in silence.

A week from Tuesday, when the Supreme Court returns from its midwinter break and hears arguments in two criminal cases, it will have been five years since Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken during a court argument.

Interesting article in the NYT about this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/us/13thomas.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=thomas&st=cse

When I last wrote about the quest to get free phone calls forever, a number of readers wrote to point out a very sneaky trick that lets you achieve that frugal heaven — even from your cellphone. Yes, it’s a way to get free cellphone calls, without listening to an ad, without being in Wi-Fi, without using any minutes.

Full article: Pogue's Post in the NYT

Many lawyers have fantasized about putting their practice on hold and making a movie, but few actually do it.

Even fewer can say their maiden effort landed them a coveted spot at an internationally renowned film festival.

Ashland, Ore., lawyer Susan Saladoff is that rare lawyer who not only followed her dreams but has bragging rights to boot. Her 2009 film Hot Coffee will be screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

The feature-length documentary is one of 16 selected from 841 entrants for the festival's U.S. documentary competition. It largely focuses on the infamous 1994 McDonald's coffee spill case—in which a jury awarded plaintiff Stella Liebeck $2.86 million in damages after she spilled hot coffee on herself—while also exploring how and why the case has become so iconic.

Full article here.

Cites & Insights 11:3 (March 2011) is now available at http://citesandinsights.info/civ11i3.pdf

The 32-page issue (PDF, but with HTML separates in the links below) includes:
Bibs & Blather (p. 1)

Announcing preorder availability of Open Access: What You Need to Know Now, from ALA Editions.

Making it Work Perspective: Five Years Later: Library 2.0 and Balance (cont.) (p. 1-22)

The rest of the story, focusing on looking back, looking forward; balance in libraries; balance in librarians and service; and "the next Library 2.0?"--which I do not plan to cover.

Trends & Quick Takes Perspective: Forecasts and Futurism (p. 23-32)

Seven commentaries on how 2010 forecasts worked out, ten forecasts for 2011, two pieces on the perils of futurism and a few library futures.

Article about dust. Man with a 31,000 volume library is mentioned.

Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/garden/10dust.htm

From the NYT

Brian Jacques, Writer of Redwall Series, Dies at 71
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: February 9, 2011

He was a longshoreman and a long-haul trucker; a merchant mariner and a railway fireman; a boxer, a bus driver and a British bobby. But it wasn’t until he became a milkman that Brian Jacques found his métier.......Read more here

My sister's birthday is at the end of the month, and it's a milestone one.  Fortunately, she is good at sharing ideas, and posted a link to tickets for the new Glee tour that's coming to our area in June.

I'm thinking, perfect idea. I need a birthday present, I want it to be a nice one, and heck, we both like Glee. So I click on over to the ComcastTIX.com page she shares on Facebook to see what the prices were...and as you can see from the screenshot below, there's no pricing information at all.  I know when the tour is coming to our area, when I can buy tickets (at three different dates and times no less!) but not how much it's going to cost me (before the arm and leg I sign over in broker fees).

I figure, maybe there will be some information after the "buy tix" link, but nope - I just get "Could not get event information" (in really small print, no less).

-- Read More

I've been reading Alex Wright's Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, and the following quote (page 151) struck me:

[T]he Wikipedia is stirring tensions between established interests - academic scholars and publishers - and a rising populist sentiment. While Wikipedia is unlikely to spell the demise of traditional scholarship, it serves as a telling example of the power of "books about books" to challenge existing institutional systems. The Web, like the printing press, seems poised to augur long-term social and political transformations whose effects we are only beginning to anticipate. And once again, the humble encyclopedia may prove the most revolutionary "book" of all.

I remember an exercise in my Art Librarianship class where we had to compare Wikipedia with Grove Art Online. General consensus was, Wikipedia won over time for currency and accuracy. The David of reference work hath slain the Goliath of reference, at least in this case. (And Library Journal found similar results!) -- Read More

The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project has run a large-scale survey of the attitudes of researchers on, and the experiences with, open access publishing. Around forty thousands answers were collected across disciplines and around the world, showing an overwhelming support for the idea of open access, while highlighting funding and (perceived) quality as the main barriers to publishing in open access journals. This article serves as an introduction to the survey and presents this and other highlights from a preliminary analysis of the survey responses. To allow a maximal re-use of the information collected by this survey, the data are hereby released under a CC0 waiver, so to allow libraries, publishers, funding agencies and academics to further analyse risks and opportunities, drivers and barriers, in the transition to open access publishing.

More at arXiv.org.

Saw a presentation by a reenactor of Frederick Douglass. The speaker recommended two books on Douglass.

Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln

The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Academic libraries in the western part of the United States are one step closer to having a large-scale regional trust for print-journal archives. The University of California libraries announced last week that it has received a three-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to implement plans for the Western Regional Storage Trust, or West. The grant is about $700,000, according to Brian E.C. Schottlaender, the university librarian at UC-San Diego and a key member of the planning team....Read more here