LISNews: Librarian News

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar. 28, 2013-- Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Goodreads, a leading site for readers and book recommendations that helps people find and share books they love.

“Amazon and Goodreads share a passion for reinventing reading,” said Russ Grandinetti, Amazon Vice President, Kindle Content. “Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world. In addition, both Amazon and Goodreads have helped thousands of authors reach a wider audience and make a better living at their craft. Together we intend to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike.”

“Books – and the stories and ideas captured inside them – are part of our social fabric,” said Otis Chandler, Goodreads CEO and co-founder. “People love to talk about ideas and share their passion for the stories they read. I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity to partner with Amazon and Kindle. We’re now going to be able to move faster in bringing the Goodreads experience to millions of readers around the world. We’re looking forward to inspiring greater literary discussion and helping more readers find great books, whether they read in print or digitally.”

“I just found out my two favorite people are getting married,” said Hugh Howey, best-selling author of WOOL. “The best place to discuss books is joining up with the best place to buy books – To Be Read piles everywhere must be groaning in anticipation.”

Following the acquisition, Goodreads’s headquarters will remain in San Francisco, CA. Founded in 2007, Goodreads now has more than 16 million members and there are more than 30,000 books clubs on the Goodreads site. Over just the past 90 days, Goodreads members have added more than four books per second to the “want to read” shelves on Goodreads. -- Read More

The Cuyahoga County Public Library Board is making plans to abandon the historic Telling Mansion Library in South Euclid-Lyndhurst, Ohio and to replace it with a new, more expensive facility further from the center of the communities it serves.

Do you think an historic building can be a 21st century library? The people who live in this community think so, but read this interesting case study and decide for yourself?

Via MediaBistro GalleyCat: A Chicago Public Library patron wrote a book about his relationship and proposed in the library last weekend. As you can see by the lovely photograph in the story, she said yes.

Where in the library would you get engaged? Here’s more about the library marriage proposal, the most romantic use of the stacks we’ve ever seen.

Jason and Molly both love books and libraries. So Jason decided the library was the perfect place to pop the question… after he wrote a story about how they met, had it illustrated and bound into a book, and then placed on the shelves in the Thomas Hughes Children’s Library. He and Molly “found” the book on Saturday and we are happy to report she said YES! Congratulations to you both – we wish you a long, happy, and book-filled life together!

Libraries & Peeps, inseparable. What is your library doing with Peeps this week?

NYT article discussing the Supap Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc case.

Excerpt from article:
More profoundly, the decision might even hasten the near-demise of print — spurring publishers into a digital world where they can license their books rather than sell them, adding some bells and whistles while gaining some protection from the first-sale clause.

Full article

Inside a Catholic convent deep in St. Augustine's historic district, stacks of centuries-old, sepia-toned papers offer clues to what life was like for early residents of the nation's oldest permanently occupied city.

These parish documents date back to 1594, and they record the births, deaths, marriages and baptisms of the people who lived in St. Augustine from that time through the mid-1700s. They're the earliest written documents from any region of the United States, according to J. Michael Francis, a history professor at the University of South Florida.

A national digital library endowment: More details, an FAQ, and an invitation to librarians and others to help shape the proposal

Full piece here

Fabian Scherschel at The H Online presents a feature comparing alternatives to Google Reader for those looking to replace it in their daily lives.

Lynne O’Brien, director of academic technology and instructional services at Duke University, said the “rapid uptake” of MOOCs had taken many people by surprise. As she put it, “These courses don’t seem to fit anything of the model that we have for how to do online education well.” She’s been hearing from instructors that “the process of preparing courses for this environment made them rethink” how they teach their on-campus courses. “Faculty have said it’s a huge amount of work but that it’s also a wonderful opportunity,” she said.

seattlepi.com: Welcome to The Richie Perez Radical Library, a new library created by the Rebel Diaz Arts Collective. The library, which was named for a South Bronx educator and activist who died in 2004, features "works by influential thinker-agitators, such as Angela Davis and Malcolm X, with writings by hip-hop luminaries including KRS-One, the RZA and Jay-Z."
The collective partnered with Bluestockings, an independent Lower East Side bookstore, to gather 300 mostly donated books to get things started.

No, this isn't a report from CiL2013, just a Theater Review From The NYTimes...
The production could stand to borrow a page from Addie: In matters of importance, you have to know when to throw caution to the wind. “Happy Birthday” runs through April 13 at the Beckett Theater, 410 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 239-6200, telecharge.com.

Worries about the effect of libraries on the book trade are not new. But digital devices, which allow books to reach readers with ease and speed, intensify them. As Brian Napack, president of Macmillan, a big publisher, put it in 2011, the fear is that someone who gets a library card will “never have to buy a book again”.

Internet use is now so ubiquitous in the U.S. that not having access or online literacy can create major hurdles. As part of the NewsHour's series on broadband technology and its effect on society, Hari Sreenivasan explores the so-called digital divide with Vicky Rideout of VJR Consulting and former FCC official Karen Kornbluh.

Full piece here.

A new book documents the murders, murderers and capital punishment overseen by the highest court in the U.S. Jeffrey Brown talks with veteran journalists Martin Clancy and Tim O'Brien about their new work, "Murder at the Supreme Court," about some of the most notorious crimes and subsequent penalties.

Interview with authors here.

Were we really expecting a different outcome? Several months after Google bought Frommer's to bolster its location efforts, Skift hears that the iconic travel guide maker has completely stopped publication of print editions as its focus swings to the online realm.

Full article

Will this have any impact on your library? What do you think of this move by Google?

A standoff over financial terms has prompted the bookstore chain Barnes & Noble to cut back substantially on the number of titles it orders from the publishing house Simon & Schuster, raising fears among other publishers, agents and authors that the conflict may harm the publishing industry as a whole.

Full article

This week's program starts off with a brief essay talking about the disintegration of having a coherent "popular culture" in the United States then turns to the strange case of the Harlem Shake in Oxford. After that the episode wraps up with a news miscellany.

Related links:

• Jim Geraghty: How Do We Win Arguments in a Fragmenting Culture?
• LISNews: Sad Harlem Shake Story
• The Huffington Post: Claypso Nash, Librarian, Fired For Harlem Shake Video Filmed At Oxford University
• The Independent: Oxford university students call for sacked librarian to be reinstated after Harlem Shake at St Hilda's College -- Students fined after recording of viral dance track appeared on YouTube
• The Daily Mail: Oxford University librarian is SACKED after students do the Harlem Shake in her prestigious library
• The Telegraph: Oxford University librarian sacked after students perform Harlem Shake dance and post recording on YouTube -- An Oxford University librarian has been sacked after a group of students recorded a version of the viral dance hit the Harlem Shake in her library and then posted it on YouTube.
• Public Libraries News (which discusses public library closures in the UK)
• Voices for the Library (library advocacy group in the UK)
• Bruce Schneier: The Internet is a surveillance state
• Michael Geist: Federal Librarians Muzzled Under New Code of Conduct
• The Annoyed Librarian: Creeping Canadian Totalitarianism
• The National Post: Digital divide persists in Canada, both in access and Internet fluency
• John C. Dvorak: Put Google Reader Into the Public Domain
• The Travelin' Librarian: 7 Ways Librarians Can Participate in Open Access/Source/Education Communities

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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 Verge asks: "What if best-selling albums had been books instead? That's the question graphic designer Christophe Gowans asked for his new collection, The Record Books. Gowans took album titles and artist names and constructed a fictional backstory behind each. The full collection is up on Gowans' site"

Author of "Living and Dying in Brick City" on PBS Newshour

Just in time for the tournament, Bookreporter.com has some book brackets.

"As the NCAA brackets were announced we decided to have some fun with the lineups. While everyone was searching stats and scoring potential, we naturally looked at the selected schools another way, as bookworms are apt to do.

We researched alumni and faculty from each school --- as well as some notable facts. From there we culled a list of authors --- and their books --- and chose one to represent each school on our version of the “bracket.”"