LISNews: Librarian News

An armed man robbed the Kittitas Public Library of about $20 in cash and also took the librarian's wallet.

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Brooklyn Public Library's New Logo Misspells 'Brooklyn'

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Chris Meadows at TeleRead referred to the recent suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz as a gross miscarriage of justice. Law professor Orin Kerr digs into the basis of the charges that were filed against Swartz while law professor Ann Althouse questions the end result of the situation while noting that something does not add up.

McDonald's has launched a two-year children’s books campaign, committing to "hand out more than 15 million books by the end of 2014” through a £1 book offer on its Happy Meal boxes.

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Article from 1979 to show that there is nothing new under the sun.

NPR had a piece that was titled - What Should We Be Worried About In 2013?

Some of the discussion is about information literacy.

Excerpt:
Many worried about the impact of technology on individual minds and human relationships. My own entry was among them, raising the concern that fast and efficient access to information isn't always better access to information. Thanks to features of human psychology, effortless information retrieval can engender illusions of knowledge and understanding.

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The future library is the brainchild of Bexar County (TX, San Antonio area) Judge Nelson Wolff who got the idea while while reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs.

“It's not a replacement for the (city) library system, it's an enhancement,” says Wolff who also happens to be a book collector. The library hopes to secure at least $250,000 to acquire the first 10,000 titles. There will also be 100 e-readers available for checkout.

“We wanted to find a low-cost, effective way to bring reading and learning to the county and also focus on the change in the world of technology...It will help people learn,” said Wolff.

artist's conception of how it might look

This week's program deals with Wikipedia hoaxing, an Internet icon, and a miscellany of brief items.

Related links:

• The Daily Mail: The war that never was: Most elaborate Wikipedia hoax ever as 4,500 word article on 'Bicholim Conflict' - a fictitious fight for Goan independence - fooled site for FIVE YEARS
• Yahoo News: War is over: Imaginary ‘Bicholim Conflict’ page removed from Wikipedia after five years
• PC World: Fake Wikipedia entry on Bicholim Conflict finally deleted after five years
• The Register: Anger grows over the death of Aaron Swartz -- Internet prodigy hounded to suicide claims family
• Althouse: "Prosecutor as bully."
• Threat Level: Aaron Swartz, Coder and Activist, Dead at 26
• EFF Deeplinks: Farewell to Aaron Swartz, an Extraordinary Hacker and Activist
• Reuters: Internet activist, programmer Aaron Swartz dead at 26
• BoingBoing: RIP, Aaron Swartz
• PCMag.com: Family of Aaron Swartz Blames U.S. Attorney's Office in Statement
• Legal Insurrection: Sad irony in Aaron Swartz case
• Patterico's Pontifications: EXCLUSIVE: Attorney for Aaron Swartz: Prosecutors’ Arguments Were “Disingenuous and Contrived”
• New York Times: Failing to Close the ‘Digital Divide’
• It's Not About the Books: Mission creep – a 3D printer will not save your library
• PCMag.com: FCC Chairman Wants to Ease Wi-Fi Congestion
• The Verge: JSTOR begins offering free yet limited access to its online academic library
• Public Libraries News: Discovery, warmth, knowledge, dreams, welcoming … what’s your five words to describe public libraries?
• Voices for the Library: Concern over loss of Arts Council England Libraries post
• Megan McCardle: Is Barnes and Noble Next?

Download here (MP3) (Ogg Vorbis), 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. The list of hardware sought to replace our ever-increasing damage control report can be found here and can be directly purchased and sent to assist The Air Staff in rebuilding to a more normal operations capability.

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/.

This volume collects four sharp philosophical essays by Ilan Stavans on the acquisition of knowledge in multi-ethnic environments, the role that dictionaries play in the preservation of memory, the function of libraries in the electronic age, and the uses of censorship. In the second part of the volume, Verónica Albin engages Stavans in a series of four conversations in which he expounds on the arguments he developed in the essays.

Sign and circulate til January 27 if you agree!.

Please tell the Obama Administration that librarians are important to us and that one should be present in every school.

Certified school librarians are trained to guide students through different forms of information, teach them how to navigate various technologies and, of course, help them to discover great literature and to foster a love of reading.

Studies have shown (e.g. Pennsylvania School Library Project) that students in schools with a full-time librarian have better outcomes than students in schools with no librarian. Although links may not be posted here, more research can be found with a simple google search.

Unfortuanately, many schools are eliminating librarians as a cost saving measure because their positions are not mandated by the state or federal government.

Aaron Swartz helped create RSS, a now ubiquitous format, and later became known for his efforts to make many Internet files available free online.

At 14, Mr. Swartz helped create RSS, the nearly ubiquitous tool that allows users to subscribe to online information. He later became an Internet folk hero, pushing to make many Web files free and open to the public. But in July 2011, he was indicted on federal charges of gaining illegal access to JSTOR, a subscription-only service for distributing scientific and literary journals, and downloading 4.8 million articles and documents, nearly the entire library.

Full article

In his introduction to participants at the 5th Rizal Library International Conference (RLIC), which was held at the Ateneo de Manila University last 25-26 October 2012, Jose M. Cruz, SJ, likened knowledge to drinking water at the bottom of a well. Libraries, he says, are "the buckets that allow us to draw the water from the well." More...

The News-Herald reports librarians claiming increased activity at their agencies in Ohio's Lake and Geauga counties due to ebooks and ereaders as well as other technologies.

The indefatigable team at The Star Beacon reports that the embattled Ashtabula Area City School District is cutting library staff and more to keep the district financially solvent as the school year continues and an emergency operating levy request goes on the May Primary ballot for district voters to decide. The pseudonymous comments bear reading as to examples of hurdles any public agency faces in seeking funding to offset rising costs and declining budgets.

Is there anything Public Library programming can't do? JS Online has the story of a unique exhibit at the River Falls Wisconsin Public Library.

"A library is an unlikely place to see a 1934 Harley or Honda crotch rocket.

In fact it's a good bet the term "crotch rocket" is rarely uttered inside the quiet, hallowed halls of a book repository.

But the public library in the western Wisconsin community of River Falls is currently a great place to see a small but comprehensive exhibit of vintage motorcycles for free, no library card required."

scholr.ly: Research, fine-tuned.
The first users in the early days of the Internet were professors and academics who shared their research and resources with unprecedented ease and speed. But nowadays, there is a dearth of lovingly crafted tools made for those who first popularized the Internet.
[VIA]

Some old-school types have mixed feelings about the push to diversify. "I hope the library doesn't turn into something that is a type of cooking-class meeting place with computers attached and no books," says Michael Gorman, former president of the American Library Association and university librarian emeritus at California State University, Fresno.

"If it appeals to youth and the youth are using the library... good luck to you," Mr. Gorman says, "though personally I would pay good money not to attend a standup comedy evening or a hog butchering."

[ See Also! ]

Abe Books:
Ever wondered what is the collective term for a group of bookstore cats? We think it should be catalog. Incidentally, a clowder is the term for a group of ordinary cats and a kindle (yes, really) is a group of kittens. AbeBooks asked some of our booksellers to describe the cats that inhabit their bookshops and we now have a gallery of fine felines. Cats and literature have mixed well for a long, long time from T.S. Elliot's Practical Cats to Edward Lear's Pussy Cat and Dr Seuss' Cat in the Hat. Take a tour around these wonderful bookish cats, their owners and their bookstores. If you have a bookstore cat that should be featured in our 'catalog', send details and a picture to bookshopcats@abebooks.com.

The Wall Street Journal has a front page story, January 7, 2013, "Check These Out at the Library: Blacksmithing, Bowling, Butchering To Draw Crowds, Some Facilities Offer Much More Than Books; Expanding the Tool Selection." by Owen Fletcher.

Public libraries have long served as gathering places and offered a range of nonliterary programs. And those who predicted their demise "have been proved wrong," says historian Wayne Wiegand, emeritus professor of library and information studies at Florida State University.

Community-focused activities at libraries aren't new developments, he says, but rather "repetitions of what happened in the past."

Librarians say they are increasing the number and variety of programs they offer—and people seem to be responding.

Attendance at public library programs rose 29% from 2004 to 2010, as overall visits to libraries also rose, according to the most recent survey by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Read more about it at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324677204578187901423347828.html?mod=WSJ_hp_Ed...

I probably said it would be out the first week of January 2013, but it was ready, so...

Cites & Insights 13:1 (January 2013) is now available for downloading at http://citesandinsights.info/civ13i1.pdf

The issue is 40 pages long.

The "online edition," designed for faster downloading and easy reading on most e-devices larger than phones, is also available; it's 77 pages long.

I'm now consistently creating the PDFs directly in Word, which means they may be somewhat larger but willhave bookmarks for all article headings.

This issue includes the following essays--also available as HTML separates at http://citesandinsights.info, although this may be the last issue for which that's true (see the first essay for details)

The Front pp. 1-4

Of books and journals: notes on my forthcoming (or here now?) ALA Editions book, changes in other recent books, the annual edition of C&I--and the results of the reader service. Ends with a straightforward challenge: If you want HTML separates to continue, you'll need to contribute to C&I.

Intersections: Catching Up with Open Access 1 pp. 4-40

The first half of a roundup on Open Access covering portions of the last couple of years. This half includes citations and commentary on advantages, colors & flavors, repositories, mandates, problems, PeerJ, history, philosophy and miscellany, ethics, tactics and strategies, and scholarly societies. (The second half will appear in the February 2013 issue.)