LISNews: Librarian News

The reason why publishers won't supply ebooks to public libraries is because libraries insist on having marc records and their own catalogues.

[continues here:

http://www.goodlibraryguide.com/blog/archives/2013/01/the_reason_why_2.html ]

Libraries are LOUD... For rich people, that’s not a problem. They live in spacious homes, glide along in hermetically sealed cars, book weekends in restful spas, dine in restaurants where the nearest table is 6 feet away. Quiet is one of the sweetest luxuries they’re able to afford. But most rich people don’t use libraries. For the rest of us, refuge from this cacophonous world is getting harder and harder to come by. Let’s hope librarians are listening to all the patrons asking them not to take it away.

Front page of the NY Times today (below the fold) and home page of the NY Times website features a story by the architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, suggesting that the New York Public Library's plan to remove the stacks from the central building and design a massive new circulating library in that space is a plan that doesn't make sense. Rather than focus on criticisms of how the move to greater off-site storage will hamper researchers or to snotty complaints from researchers that the hoi polloi will sully their temple, Kimmelman looks at the budget and doubts that it can be kept from ballooning.

San Francisco Animal Care & Control has been relying on public contributions and occasional Chronicle donations of old newspapers to line animal cages and catch waste from puppies who don't know how to take their business outside yet. But Thursday, an animal control van parked at the San Francisco Public Library was loaded with two 32-gallon recycling bins full of old newspapers from the library as part of a new program to ensure that the shelter has a consistent stream of paper.

"This most likely will take care of 100 percent of our newspaper needs," said animal care supervisor Eric Zuercher.

How's that for a happy subject? "While bookstores are failing, libraries are thriving"... But libraries afford the valuable loan aspect of book reading. In this digital age, some people still want to hold physical books, not tablets, but that doesn’t mean people actually want to buy a print version. Paper versions that only occupy a house for a week, though, are much more likely to be taken home and thus libraries continue to survive in an increasingly online world.

Interesting question on shrinking shelf space at book stores... how will that impact us? How will shrinking shelf space impact publishing?

However, the shelf space is shrinking.
It is hard to see these lost shelves being replaced by others and therefore the volume of print itself may have to shrink further. Some believe that a direct marketing approach will replace the High Street and to a degree it is true, but unfortunately the biggest direct marketer today is Amazon. The one that knows more about your book buying habits, tastes, dislikes and your disposable income is only one click away. Many direct marketers merely only handle the marketing and throw the fulfilment over to – yes, Amazon.

Park School librarian Laura Amy Schlitz on Monday joined a select group of authors to be twice honored with one of the nation's top prizes for children's literature. - 9030z8e

Full article

Data is being collected about your reading habits. That information belongs to the companies that sell e-readers, like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. And they can share — or sell — that information if they like. One official at Barnes & Noble has said sharing that data with publishers might "help authors create even better books."

Full piece

Mali Islamists torch hub of Islamic learning in Timbuktu library.

Fleeing Islamist extremists torched a library containing historic manuscripts in Timbuktu, the mayor said Monday, as French and Malian forces closed in on Mali's fabled desert city. Ousmane Halle said he heard about the burnings early Monday.

"It's truly alarming that this has happened," he told The Associated Press by telephone from Mali's capital, Bamako, on Monday. "They torched all the important ancient manuscripts. The ancient books of geography and science. It is the history of Timbuktu, of its people."

The mayor said Monday that the radical Islamists had torched his office as well as the Ahmed Baba Institute — a library rich with historical documents — in an act of retaliation before they fled late last week.

Timbuktu, long a hub of Islamic learning, is also home to some 20,000 manuscripts, some dating back as far as the 12th century. Owners have succeeded in removing some of the manuscripts from Timbuktu to save them, while others have been carefully hidden away from the Islamists.

The destructions recall tactics used by the Taliban in 2001 when they dynamited a pair of giant Buddhas carved into a mountain in Bamiyan province. Around the same time, the Taliban also rampaged through the national museum, smashing any art depicting the human form, considered idolatrous under their hardline interpretation of Islam. In all, they destroyed about 2,500 statues.

Andrew pointed the way to today's "Minimalism with an Exception" comic from Wasted Talent... "Someday I will live in a library that is also a maze (so I have lots of walls for art). It will look like a castle from the outside and treehouse from the inside, all the exterior walls will be giant windows. It will have a reading enclave, an art studio and a machine shop. Also it will be on an island with chickens and goats. This is all going to happen when I am a zillionaire."

The Asturias Academy in Quetzaltanango, Guatemala is looking for a School Librarian for the 2013 academic year. The ideal candidate has Spanish language skills and experience/interest in school librarianship. This is a volunteer position. A stipend of up to $2400 is available to the successful candidate to help cover living costs in Guatemala, provided by Librarians Without Borders (www.librarianswithoutborders.org). Working alongside the school’s permanent librarian, the volunteer librarian will be responsible for planning library activities for students ages 4-18, in addition to maintaining the library. Duties include: keeping records of books borrowed and returned, building a collection “wish list” for further expansion, leading library instruction sessions for students, working with Librarians Without Borders to set up a circulation system, and working with teachers to incorporate the library into classroom activities. The volunteer librarian will also help train the permanent librarian to lead the management and operations of the library. For a full job description and application instructions, please visit the Librarians Without Borders' website.

This week's episode talks about the ethics of information handling, promulgates a reading of a new open source license that could be used in LIS realm software projects, and provides a brief news miscellany.

Related links:

• Associated Press: Ohio judge weighs whether to keep rape trial open
• Reuters: Lawyer for accused Ohio rapist blames online group for notoriety
• copyleft-next
• The text of copyleft-next 0.1.0 as presented
• France24: France orders Twitter to identify racist users
• Scott Ott, a local Republican politician in eastern Pennsylvania
• PJ Tatler: Government-Approved Islam Books Coming to Library Near You
• British sociologist Dr. Tiffany Jenkins
• The Scotsman: Tiffany Jenkins -- Libraries are on a slippery pole
• Censored Genius: Libraries, Chasing the 1%

Download here (MP3) (Ogg Vorbis) (Free Lossless Audio Codec), or subscribe to the podcast (MP3) to have episodes delivered to your media player. We suggest subscribing by way of a service like gpodder.net. Items that can be purchased to ameliorate our equipment damage can be acquired here via Amazon which would then be sent directly to us upon purchase.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/.

Letter to the editor by person kicked out of library because the library was having a private party.

The bronze statue of a young boy dreamily gazing into the sky as he reads from a book in his lap was discovered missing on Thursday morning.

The statue has been stolen before and recovered.

Full article

Big Data is pushing into the humanities, as evidenced by new, illuminating computer analyses of literary history.

Full article

Emily Lloyd:...is the name of a brief slide deck & guest post I have up at Tame The Web, a kind of part two to an earlier guest post on tweeting libraries. I've embedded the slide deck below, too--please set it to full screen if you decide to view it.

I spent a lot of time on Twitter last year, not as myself, but as my library system*. This deck covers some of what I learned. I strongly urge tweeting libraries (and nonprofits, and small businesses, etc) to follow their patrons. Many don't. It's too big a missed opportunity not to mention.

The world is full of data — and that's a problem. We have to find a place to store all those digital photos, tax records and unfinished novels. British scientists have demonstrated a possible solution: They've stored all of Shakespeare's sonnets on several small stretches of DNA.

Full piece

And because I am who I am, it got me thinking about great movie library scenes that already exist. At first, I thought the list would be pretty short, but you know what? Hollywood loves a library. Some combination of ambiance, seclusion, hidden knowledge, and the sheer beauty of shelves upon shelves of books make libraries a fantastic film setting.

Here are my sixteen favorite:

Results of a recent Pew Research Study are reported in Publishers Weekly.

The singular most important finding in the latest Pew study, Library Services in the Digital Age, is that libraries—in the opinion of most Americans—aren’t just about books. 80% of U.S. residents say that lending books is a “very important” service, but they rate the help they get from reference librarians as equally important. And nearly the same number, 77%, reported that free access to technology and the Internet is also very important. This triumvirate—books, help, and technology—runs through the entire report.

Could the library brand—historically bound to book borrowing—be undergoing a transformation? In the last major study of users, OCLC’s Perception of Libraries, 2010, patrons were asked to associate the first thing that came to mind when they thought of libraries. And for 75% of the respondents, the answer was books. While Pew didn’t play the same association game, it seems that Pew’s users have a more nuanced take on the library’s role.

The Pew study is based on landline and cell phone interviews conducted in English and Spanish, with a nationally representative sample of 2,252 people ages 16 and older. It could be that the study tapped into a younger demographic who make greater use of library technology. Or perhaps the recession, which has forced millions to rediscover libraries, was a catalyst for users to take fuller advantage of what the library offers.

Copy of the results of this latest study here. According to the authors "Patrons embrace new technologies – and would welcome more. But many still want printed books to hold their central place."

Piece on NPR: New Reading Standards Aim To Prep Kids For College — But At What Cost?

Atlantic article about David Coleman, one of the major people behind Common Core