LISNews:

School library being eaten away by termites

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:15:14 +0000

School library being eaten away by termites
There are piles of them on the floor that need to be swept up regularly by the students assigned as library aides.

"What is that and they're like oh termite poop and they're like eeew, so it's our job to make sure everything is clean and there's lots of tiny little holes and we get duct tape and we put duct tape over the holes," says Waileia Botelho, library aide.

Printed books existed nearly 600 years before Gutenberg

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:14:24 +0000

Printed books existed nearly 600 years before Gutenberg’s Bible
It is a little-known but undisputed historical fact that Johannes Gutenberg did not invent the printing press. Though the Gutenberg Bible was certainly the first mass produced printed work, it was hardly the first printed book — nor was it even the first made using movable type. Chinese and Korean inventors had been producing printed books for centuries before Gutenberg was born.

A Library is a Kind of Chapel, All Books Are Sacred

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:08:55 +0000

All Books Are Sacred
For me, a library is a kind of chapel. Spiritual traditions are not as abstract as people think. They are not all about creeds and beliefs. They are concrete, physical, tangible and sensual. There was nothing abstract about that moment in my memory holding the heavy book painfully against my skin as I held it stiff and formal. A library is not an information center, it's a chapel for books. Your home library, as small as it might be, is also a chapel made sacred by the book itself.

What Makes a Critic Tick? Connected Authors and the Determinants of Book Reviews

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:07:17 +0000

What Makes a Critic Tick? Connected Authors and the Determinants of Book Reviews
Executive Summary:
The professional critic has long been heralded as the gold standard for evaluating products and services such as books, movies, and restaurants. Analyzing hundreds of book reviews from 40 different newspapers and magazines, Professor Michael Luca and coauthors Loretti Dobrescu and Alberto Motta investigate the determinants of professional reviews and then compare these to consumer reviews from Amazon.com. Key concepts include:

•The data suggest that media outlets do not simply seek to isolate high-quality books, but also to find books that are a good fit for their readers. This is a potential advantage for professional critics, one that cannot be easily replicated by consumer reviews.
•Expert ratings are correlated with Amazon ratings, suggesting that experts and consumers tend to agree in aggregate about the quality of a book. However, there are systematic differences between these sets of reviews.
•Relative to consumer reviews, professional critics are less favorable to first-time authors. This suggests that one potential advantage of consumer reviews is that they are quicker to identify new and unknown books.
•Relative to consumer reviews, professional critics are more favorable to authors who have garnered other attention in the press (as measured by number of media mentions outside of the review) and who have won book prizes.
..

Future of UK library secured by florist shop

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:30:19 +0000

Future of Great Missenden library secured by florist shop
The future of a Buckinghamshire library has been secured after it offered to share its building with a business.

"Partnering with a local business is not only a great way of generating income for the library and keeping the library alive with potential new visitors but enables local businesses to get more involved in what matters to the community," he said.

D.C. to cut 34 school librarians as they are a poor investment

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:27:37 +0000

D.C. to cut 34 school librarians as they are a poor investment
D.C. (District of Columbia) officials plan to cut 34 librarians from staff in the 2012-2013 school year. The move is to cut costs in the Washington school system.
Chancellor Kaya Henderson said: “We have invested in full-time librarians for the last three or four years and we haven't seen the kind of payoff we'd like”While noting that she is not disparaging librarians she said "We have pulled away from programs where we haven't received a return on our investment.” Apparently a payoff on investment would involve improved test scores.

Man Accused of Watching Porn, Stabbed in Brooklyn Public Library

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:43:44 +0000

Man Accused of Watching Porn, Stabbed in Brooklyn Public Library
A 53-year-old man was stabbed multiple times in a Brooklyn public library by another man who accused him of using library computers to watch pornography, police said.

Salman Rushdie On Censorship

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:40:08 +0000

Salman Rushdie On Censorship

Even more serious is the growing acceptance of the don’t-rock-the-boat response to those artists who do rock it, the growing agreement that censorship can be justified when certain interest groups, or genders, or faiths declare themselves affronted by a piece of work. Great art, or, let’s just say, more modestly, original art is never created in the safe middle ground, but always at the edge. Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes, disrespects sacred cows or other such entities. It can be shocking, or ugly, or, to use the catch-all term so beloved of the tabloid press, controversial. And if we believe in liberty, if we want the air we breathe to remain plentiful and breathable, this is the art whose right to exist we must not only defend, but celebrate. Art is not entertainment. At its very best, it’s a revolution.

Changes expected after outcry over book selection

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:18:08 +0000

Changes expected after outcry over book selection
"The question boils down to age appropriateness," said Abbott. "Is a seventh-grader capable of reading a book like this (“Stuck in Neutral” by Terry Trueman about a teen's struggle with cerebral palsy) and not being disturbed? Furthermore, if you assign a book like this, the next question is that should there be a classroom discussion? And what concerned me the most is that the book was given to the students; the students read the book; upon finishing the book there was a content test and that was it. No discussion, no debate over euthanasia."

Stories in your pocket: how to write flash fiction

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:14:52 +0000

Stories in your pocket: how to write flash fiction

16 May is the first ever day celebrating the art of micro-fiction. But what are the pros and cons of ultra short stories – and what's the secret of writing them? Follow David Gaffney's tips and post your own flash fiction.

More Independent Bookstores Closing

birdie — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:09:54 +0000

What is happening to our Literary Life?

Open for only five years, the owners of Literary Life Bookstore and More (Grand Rapids, MI) made a warm inviting environment from a classic brick bank; now what will it become?

Yesterday there was news of a bookstore closing in Hood River, OR , Gorge Bookstop. Both were family-owned bookstores.

Making Choices in the Age of Information Overload

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:43:37 +0000

Making Choices in the Age of Information Overload
The Internet was supposed to make us smarter shoppers. So why should we still listen to the signals that brands send us?

Does the Free Library even know what century it’s in?

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:29:01 +0000

Does the Free Library even know what century it’s in?

"The unions that represent library workers would prefer to inject fear and hysteria into the community about privatizing the system, but the reality is that the community should be getting a much higher return on their tax dollars. For instance, visit your local library and request to speak to the branch manager, who might be earning an annual salary up to $70,000, while accruing a lucrative pension package, and ask how a specific Photoshop function works? You know what they are most likely going to do: walk you over to the outdated computer-reference section to find an operating guide on Photoshop. Is this what taxpayers perceive as getting a good value on their tax dollars? You can pay someone $12 per hour to do that."

Staying Off Facebook Won't Protect Your Privacy

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:17:58 +0000

Staying Off Facebook Won't Protect Your Privacy
Stay away from social networks and people won't know who you're hanging out with or what you're doing, right? Wrong. When it comes to social networking, a recent study suggests, you can run but you can't hide.

A paper published last month in the journal PLoS One shows how researchers were able to learn about nonmembers of social networks based on information their friends posted online. Using machine-learning models, German researchers Emöke-Ágnes Horvát, Michael Hanselmann, Fred A. Hamprecht and Katharina A. Zweig were able to predict whether two nonmembers of a social network knew each other based on information shared by a mutual contact on the network.

Clearing the record on libraries for the blind

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:36:15 +0000

Clearing the record on libraries for the blind
It is more effective to handle audiobooks from one location while centralizing outreach efforts from the other.

To be clear, here is what will not change:

The Philadelphia location will not be dismantled, and there will be no reduction in Philadelphia’s extensive braille collection. It will still receive all braille books produced by the National Library Service. All titles will still be available in the Philadelphia region without interruption.

Hundreds of goats help clear brush at Reagan Library

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:34:06 +0000

Hundreds of goats help clear brush at Reagan Library

Visitors to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley will have an opportunity in the next few weeks to see hundreds of four-legged helpers of the Ventura County Fire Department doing their part to reduce the risk of wildfires.

About 900 goats are in the fields around the library, helping eat the shrubs that could be fuel for fires.

Florida Teen Starts 'Giving Library' for Homeless Kids

Blake — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:26:22 +0000

Florida Teen Starts 'Giving Library' for Homeless Kids
Fifteen-year-old Florida resident Lilli Leight wanted to help provide homeless kids in her community with access to books, so she created a "giving library" at a Miami homeless shelter. To staff the library, she formed a teen book club to encourage her classmates to volunteer. Her effort won her the National Book Foundation's Innovations in Reading prize, which recognizes individuals and institutions for developing ways of instilling a lifelong love of reading.

What does your email address say about you?

Blake — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:55:19 +0000

What does your email address say about you?
Key Takeaways:
•Here’s our stereotype: older people (as defined by a propensity to still be using AOL, Yahoo or ISP email) are the “truth through proof” heard; they’re listening and ready to learn about your service, but they’re not ready to jump right in (whether that means purchasing quickly or telling their friends). However, once you’ve sold them, they are often the most loyal users in your database, so don’t discount them!
•We wish more people would sign up for Savored with work email addresses – it’s abundantly clear to us that people welcome the delicious distraction of dining reservations while punching the clock.
•Quite a few people still have/use Juno email accounts. Wow.

The Greatest Threat to Amazon May Just Be Libraries

Blake — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:42:10 +0000

The Greatest Threat to Amazon May Just Be Libraries
Instead of turning the members of its community away for an eBook that is already borrowed, the library is ideally situated to sell them the eBook they wished to read, right when they wished to read it. There is nothing stopping a library from becoming an eBookseller. This capability is available from all of the major library solution suppliers who are equally well versed in eBook technologies and the publisher-required DRM necessary for them to be sold directly to consumers.

'50 Shades' another brick in the wall between fans and critics

Blake — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:07:43 +0000

'50 Shades' another brick in the wall between fans and critics

While the erudite have derided the best-selling books as poorly written and unimaginative, fans of the soft porn/romance novels don't care about sentence structure, believable dialogue or character development. Not everybody wants a daily dose of Dickens or the latest Robert Caro book on LBJ.

"This stuff we consider 'bad' is considered bad if we look at it in terms of the criteria set for old-fashioned art," says pop culture expert Robert Thompson of Syracuse University. "We also have to recognize that some of this stuff that is 'bad' is really good at being 'bad.' Therefore the word 'bad' kind of ceases to have any kind of meaning."

An Inconvenient Truth About E-books

Blake — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:05:02 +0000

An Inconvenient Truth About E-books
As we rush headlong into e-books, we’re not considering how our libraries will migrate forward in time, protecting personal and institutional investments. Paper books are readable by anyone who’s literate, but e-books require a reader, and DRM ensures that there will be difficulties in the future. Worse, there are several different file formats and different DRMs used by Apple, Adobe and Amazon.
The net effect is that our collections have to be considered temporary and expendable at the whim of the retailers, and our ability to pass books on to heirs or colleagues becomes limited in a fashion that hinders human knowledge.”

Librarian That Needs Advice? Ask The Boss of You

Blake — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:40:03 +0000

Need Advice? Ask The Boss of You

Are you a librarian, library student, someone in the information biz or someone that stumbled upon this blog by some horrible accident when looking for a dominatrix?

Do you have a problem? Issue? Concern? Need advice? Especially one related to the weird world of libraries?

Well, it’s your lucky day! I HAVE ANSWERS.

I mean, they might not be the right answer, but at least I’ll give you my honest opinion. I’m pretty bossy and not scared to tell people they’re wrong. This has been a fabulous asset to my personal life, as one might imagine.

So management issues, patron issues, career woes…send them on. Also, let’s face it, there’s a certain personality type that is drawn to library/info science work and that personality type doesn’t always co-exist well in the modern world. What I’m saying is, your problem doesn’t even have to be directly work related. I can tell you what you’re doing wrong in all areas of your life!

Just don’t ask me grammar questions because I’m from Appalachia and can’t talk for shit.

You can even ask your question anonymously. Part of the deal is that I’ll post the questions and answers here, of course, so come up with a cute name to sign your email with so I don’t have to make up a name for you.

Ready? Okay, awesome. Send your problems to bossofyoublog AT gmail DOT com

Library Scented Perfume

Blake — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:37:09 +0000

In the Library: Smell Like You're In The Library

In the Library is a warm blend of English Novel*, Russian & Moroccan Leather Bindings, Worn Cloth and a hint of Wood Polish

*The main note in this scent was copied from one of my favorite novels originally published in 1927. I happened to find a signed first edition in pristine condition many years ago in London. I was more than a little excited because there were only ever a hundred of these in the first place. It had a marvelous warm woody slightly sweet smell and I set about immediately to bottle it.

Google vs. Bing - what's the difference?

Blake — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:13:28 +0000

Google vs. Bing - what's the difference?
And that's the biggest case against switching to Bing. If you're never really going to escape Google - and if Bing is pretty much exactly like Google - what's the point? Yes, Google and Bing are functionally identical. But Bing will need a lot more than parity with the most-popular search engine in the land if it wants people to switch en masse.

Pride & Prejudice Is Top Book Brits Lie About Reading

Blake — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:08:03 +0000

Pride & Prejudice Is Top Book Brits Lie About Reading
When it comes to literary classics, Brits are a nation of book bluffers according to the latest research from the Lindeman’s Wine & Book Club, which has revealed 71% of Britons lie to their friends and family, claiming to have read books they haven’t really in order to keep face.

Fear of being perceived as stupid has been cited as the most common reason for the ‘book bluffing’ phenomenon.