LISNews: Librarian News

From the New York Times:

As librarians across the nation struggle with the task of redefining their roles and responsibilities in a digital age, many public libraries are seeing an opportunity to fill the void created by the loss of traditional bookstores. Indeed, today’s libraries are increasingly adapting their collections and services based on the demands of library patrons, whom they now call customers. Today’s libraries are reinventing themselves as vibrant town squares, showcasing the latest best sellers, lending Kindles loaded with e-books, and offering grassroots technology training centers. Faced with the need to compete for shrinking municipal finances, libraries are determined to prove they can respond as quickly to the needs of the taxpayers as the police and fire department can.

“I think public libraries used to seem intimidating to many people, but today, they are becoming much more user-friendly, and are no longer these big, impersonal mausoleums,” said Jeannette Woodward, a former librarian and author of “Creating the Customer-Driven Library: Building on the Bookstore Model.”

Bookworms are choosing e-readers over hardcovers and softcovers more than ever, says a recent Pew Research Center study.

A month-long study found more Americans readers, ages 16 and older, are embracing e-readers. The number of traditional readers dropped from 72% to 67% from last year, while digital bookworms jumped from 16% to 23%.

Facebook can still track users through its "Like" function. And Web surfers' online data can still be used by law enforcement and "market research" for the employment, credit, healthcare and insurance industries. And let's not even get into denial of service attacks and cybersecurity...

That said, here are three major privacy issues that everyone should pay attention to in 2013:

1.Transparency
2.Data sharing
3.Dodgy QR codes

Shipments are expected to continue their decline through 2016, with a projected shipment of just 7.1 million units.

If these projections are to be believed, the ereader craze is flaming out as quickly as it ignited. And if you’re in the business of creating content, that’s a good thing.

This week's program episode falls on Christmas Eve. Except for the installment of Profile America for 24 December 2012, no formal content is presented. An episode of "GI Jive" is liberated from the virtual vaults of Archive.org for presentation as well as anthems of the various armed services. This constitutes the final regular episode of 2012.

NEXT WEEK the production team is taking part in the "Joint New Year's Eve Special" that will be airing on WBCQ The Planet at 7 PM Eastern/Midnight UTC with special guests such as the team behind the Ubuntu UK Podcast. The show will be a bit of a variety of content that will include Linux, dramatic readings, music, and a little library & information science. The radio broadcast will be released on the podcast feed after it concludes airing on WBCQ. As the broadcast is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License you are encouraged to record it off-air and re-distribute it online and on physical media. The producer at Erie Looking Productions, Gloria D. Kellat, is coordinating the air talent for this show.

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. Especially in light of unanticipated equipment destruction at our principal operations site this past week, gifts of replacement equipment identified here can be purchaed via Amazon and shipped to the crew for use.

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/.

After several well-publicized cases involving writers buying or manipulating their reviews, Amazon is cracking down. Writers say thousands of reviews have been deleted from the shopping site in recent months.

Amazon has not said how many reviews it has killed, nor has it offered any public explanation. So its sweeping but hazy purge has generated an uproar about what it means to review in an era when everyone is an author and everyone is a reviewer.

Full article

Since November, the Harvard Labrary—a temporary ‘pop-up’ space in an empty storefront in the middle of Harvard Square—has been a public gallery for design student projects on the future of libraries. The projects come out of this fall’s semester-long Library Test Kitchen (LTK) seminar at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. With an open door every Monday through Saturday, the Labrary invites passersby to come in, interact with the projects, or just sit and work.

Full article

The decline of books for the visually impaired is no small loss. Piece by Oliver Sacks.

Even without best sellers on the scale of last year’s Steve Jobs biography, owners of independent bookstores say sales are good, and that Kobo e-readers have been a boon.

Full article

Oxford University Press, the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, has apologized for what it called “a coincidence of the worst kind” after the dictionary’s Web site named “bloodbath” as its word of the day on Tuesday, after last week’s deadly shootings in Newtown, Conn.

Full article

See a very detailed library book cake.

Comic showing the 22 steps needed to check out an audio book at the library.

Rizal Library's Facebook status (Screen Shot At Flickr) on 20 Dec 2012, which says, "If the world does end tomorrow, I want all of you to know that I love you. If it doesn't, kindly return all overdue books on January 7, 2013""

In the first of two parts about the new realities of publishing and public libraries, Forbes contributor David Vinjamuri discusses whether the right battle is being fought:

"The solution to the current pricing problem lies in understanding that the argument publishers and libraries are having is the wrong argument. It is based on the paradigm of the printed book and as such presents a series of intractable challenges for both publishers and libraries. By changing the model for pricing an eBook, both parties could find a clear and equitable resolution to the current impasse."

They used to call it the "vanity press," and the phrase itself spoke volumes. Self-published authors were considered not good enough to get a real publishing contract. They had to pay to see their book in print. But with the advent of e-books, self-publishing has exploded, and a handful of writers have had huge best-sellers.

TV blogger Alan Sepinwall's self-published book, The Revolution Was Televised, came out just before Thanksgiving. Within two weeks he had a review in The New York Times — a positive review — by the widely read and often critical Michiko Kakutani, who also named it one her favorite books of the year. This is what book publicists and their writers dream of, and Sepinwall didn't even see it coming.

Full piece on NPR

WPRI reports: One year after donating $10,000 to Central Falls' Adams Memorial Library in Rhode Island, Alec Baldwin sent another $5,000 check to the library in response to its year-end fundraising appeal.

“I am overwhelmed with gratitude,” said library board president Bruce Kaplan. “A year ago, Alec’s donation helped us keep the doors open. This year he's helping us expand hours of operation and community programming.”

Funding for the Adams Memorial Library was cut in the wake of Central Falls' bankruptcy. It was forced to close its doors for several months in 2011, until a group of volunteers raised enough money to reopen the library.

"People have been coming in tears. Yeah. I mean one of our programming people, who does programming for children here at the library, her son was shot," Library Director Janet Woycik said Saturday afternoon, as she stood on the second floor of the Cyrenius H. Booth Library on Main Street.

"It's just unbelievable... My neighbor's grand daughter was shot," Woycik said before falling into tears.

Full article

Post discussing the philosophy underpinning Facebook, Twitter., etc, and what web users have lost by adopting it.

The Web We Lost

Earlier this month, a new version of Jeffrey Beall's List of Predatory Publishers 2013 was posted at scholarlyoa.com. Since then, faked quotes have been posted to multiple blogs, claiming that Jeffrey Beall has been trying to extort money from publishers. This is an apparent smear campaign to discredit the efforts to name predatory publishers. The criteria for listing these publishers is also posted at scholarlyoa.com.

There are no related links this week as there is no miscellany. The President's weekly address dated December 15th is replayed. A brief message relative to the situation in Connecticut is presented along with readings from Psalms and Ecclesiastes. Lighter fare will air in seven days.

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. Stephen's Silly Summation of Christmas Wishes can be found here via Amazon, as always.

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/.