LISNews: Librarian News

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.)

NISO has published a new issue of Information Standards Quarterly with a theme of The Future of Library Systems. Guest Content Editor Marshall Breeding has assembled a group of contributing authors that provide an overview of the new Library Services Platforms and share implementation experiences with specific vendors’ products.

The complete Table of Contents is below. Visit the NISO website to download the full issue or individual articles in PDF:
http://www.niso.org/publications/isq/2012/v24no4/

Bing Search Quality Insights: "Is it Swarzinegar, Swarneger, Scwarznagger or Schwartiznegar? These are just a few of more than 2,000 different ways users on Bing have typed their queries in hope of searching for “Schwarzenegger.” The aim of the Bing Speller is to correct these queries so users receive relevant web results that match their intent even when their query is misspelt. A great speller makes a search engine feel like magic to the users. In this blog my colleague Jim Kleban provides an overview of Bing Speller technology with some examples of recent improvements we just shipped in December."

The tag line for this week's episode: "Information As Weapon"

We've got a bit of an essay talking about that in connection with an awful case in Ohio. Information might want to be free, but couldn't it also be used as a weapon?

There's no miscellany this week as we thought that that would be enough to consider within the realm of preserving the knowledge ecology.

Related links:

• The Register: Anonymous turns private eye in Ohio rape case -- Releases purloined data after hacking attack
• The Plain Dealer: Protest over investigation of suspected rape turns spotlight on Steubenville
• WJW Fox8: Masked Protesters Storm Steubenville
• The Atlantic Wire: Inside the Anonymous Hacking File on the Steubenville 'Rape Crew'
• New York Times: Rape Case Unfolds on Web and Splits City
• NewsNet5: National criticism on Steubenville rape case prompts website creation
• National Post: Matt Gurney -- Anonymous bullies the wrong (presumed) Amanda Todd bully
• Slate: Did Anonymous Unmask the Wrong Guy in Its Hunt for the Man Who Allegedly Drove a Teen to Suicide?
• The Globe and Mail: RCMP dismiss online rumour about Amanda Todd’s tormentor
• arXiv: How Much of the Web Is Archived?

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.

There is an opportunity available to purchase material goods to replace some of the hardware that has died at Erie Looking Productions over the past three weeks.

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/.

The Library of Congress says it's amassed about 170 billion tweets since it began collecting an archive of all Twitter messages in 2010.
Twitter is donating its archive to the library, going back to the first one posted in 2006.

Screwy Decimal:
Based on the responses and on my own experiences, I've broken down the big librarian stressors into 5 categories. These are not exhaustive, and they totally blend into one another, and really I just wanted to capitalize on the list format that is so popular with the media these days. Forgive me for being sloppy and derivative. Also forgive me, Twitter friends, for not including every response yet. There were SO many of them, and they were all relevant (and some were downright disturbing and/or hilarious). Five hours later, I am STILL getting them, and still trying to sift through them, so I will try to add more as the day goes on. However, there were a lot of common themes that were repeated, so it's my hope that I've covered the basic idea. Feel free to add yours in the comments! (And if you're really curious, take a look at the Tweets I've "favorited" on Twitter, it shows them all.)

According to CNBC your job as a librarian is one of the least stressful professions.

It's number "9" in the top ten.

"You're working in a comfortable environment. Your job is to help people use services as best as possible. Given that environment, stress levels are low. What's the most stressful thing a librarian faces? Teenagers with a paper due and you don't have the books. It's not really your stress," says Tony Lee, publisher of CareerCast.com.

Plus, there are mandatory "quiet" rules in libraries and you're surrounded by books. Books don't talk back or criticize the job you're doing!

Hat tip to Screwy Decimal for the lead.

She read the book.

“It was disgusting,” she said, declining to label it obscene or pornographic.

She acknowledged the library has many books that deal in such detail with the very same subject matter — racism, rape, murder, sex — but for her, the pictures gave her pause.

Her decision to pull the book was the first time she had overruled her staff’s recommendation and the fifth time she had removed material from the library after a complaint.

“I call it de-selection,” she said. (Using de-selection instead of censorship is Newspeak)

Full article

The online debate has raged since Yale law librarian Fred Shapiro discovered an early reference that suggests a different origin for the phrase “the whole nine yards.”

Writing in the Yale Alumni Magazine, Shapiro said he had conducted an online search and found a variant, “the whole six yards,” in two articles published in Kentucky in 1912. He searched for the phrase after a neuroscience researcher discovered the variant in a 1921 article published in South Carolina.

Full article

See the comments to the article for smart ass comments about librarians.

From the Atlants Journal-Consitituion: "Gwinnett Commissioners needs to find a way to save library materials budget" 12:52 am January 3, 2013, by Theresa Walsh Giarrusso.

"A strong library system is obviously important for literacy and academic success but I think it’s even more important during hard economic times. For many struggling families it is the only way for them to get books, movies and music. They give up subscriptions to Netflix or buying magazines and books, and the library allows them to still have entertainment and enrichment in their lives. I hope the Gwinnett County Commissioners can put their heads together and find a way to not cut or cut less from the materials budget for the sake of the county. A strong library is extremely important to the community and cannot be undervalued!"

Read more about it: http://blogs.ajc.com/momania/2013/01/03/gwinnett-commissioners-needs-to-find-a-way-to-save-l...

Mary McConnell Bailey died as quietly as she lived. At her request, no services were held. No obituary was written. Even one of her closest friends cannot say for sure where she is buried.

The library plans to split her bequest: half for programming, materials and resources for the 87 branch libraries in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island; and half for its four research libraries, according to Ms. Geduldig.

[Thanks Elaine!]

Findings
Some 13% of those ages 16 and older have visited library websites or otherwise accessed library services by mobile device. This is the first reading in a national survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project on this subject. An earlier survey in 2009 by scholars at the University of Washington found that 6% of Americans ages 16 and older had used a mobile device to connect to a library site, so the incidence of this activity has doubled since then.1

Those who are most likely to have connected to a library site include parents of minor children, women, and those with at least some college education.

In concert with the team behind the Ubuntu UK Podcast, the Air Staff at Erie Looking Productions presented via WBCQ a New Year's Eve special broadcast via shortwave radio. Now that the show has finished being broadcast, it is being made available for download.

Download here (MP3). You can subscribe to the podcast (MP3) to have episodes delivered to your media player. We suggest subscribing by way of a service like gpodder.net. Stephen's shopping list of items to replace hardware damaged and destroyed due to adverse circumstances over the past week, which includes requiring replacement of our dead in-house server with a lower-powered Raspberry Pi at this point, can be found here where direct purchasing is possible to send the items directly to the Air Staff.

The Joint New Year's Eve Special produced by Gloria Kellat of the Air Staff of Erie Looking Productions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

This was originally found lurking in the comments today attached to a story dating from November:

Books for International Goodwill has donated over 5.7 miillion books to libraries in the U.S. and overseas. We have 150,000 news and used books in our warehosue at any one time. We would be happy to provide books to libraries damaged by hurricane Sandy, but do not have a contact. We will cover the cost of transportation (and even cover the cost of a librariian to come to our site in Annapolis, MD to pick books, if tht is feasible). If anyone has a contact to help us get this off the ground, it would be appreciated.

Steve Frantzich---President Books for Interntional Goodwill 410 721 7344

As a general matter of good practices, it is best not to leave comments on stories over 45 days old as they might not be seen by most users. If anybody wishes to contact Mr. Frantzich in this matter his contact details are shown above.

Silicon Valley visionary, pioneer of virtual reality, recants his faith in Web 2.0: "You can draw an analogy to what happened with communism, where at some point you just have to say there’s too much wrong with these experiments”

Full article - Smithsonian Magazine

Have you ever borrowed an e-book from a library? If the answer is no, you're a member of a large majority. A survey out Thursday from the Pew Internet Project finds that only 5 percent of "recent library users" have tried to borrow an e-book this year.

About three-quarters of public libraries offer e-books, according to the American Library Association, but finding the book you want to read can be a challenge — when it's available at all.

Full piece -- At the top of screen is a button to "click to listen" audio is 7 minutes 50 seconds.

This episode of "All Things Considered" had other pieces about ebooks and publishing in addition to the library one. They were:
Change Is The Only Constant In Today's Publishing Industry
E-Books Destroying Traditional Publishing? The Story's Not That Simple
Margaret Atwood's Brave New World Of Online Publishing

Piece on NPR

Sometimes "the one that got away" is a book that actually was easy to overlook. And sometimes it's something you ignore until you just can't anymore. NPR's Lynn Neary finally comes to terms with the publishing sensation that is Fifty Shades of Grey.

In the NPR piece they mention that every employee at the publisher got a $5000 bonus because of this book.

Radical suggestion: SAA should do less, not more
Kate Theimer: "So, here’s my radical suggestion, which has two parts: SAA should focus on doing less, but doing it better, and what it should focus on is providing direct, tangible services to members. For example, rather than trying to support public relations and national advocacy efforts, invest those resources in things like strengthening the mentorship program, providing better tools for job seekers, making annual meeting sessions available as free downloads, providing more active support for sections and roundtables, and developing resources to help members be effective advocates for their own archives."

Do We Still Need Libraries? is a series of opinion pieces from the New York times. See:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/27/do-we-still-need-libraries?hp