LISNews: Librarian News

Kingman Daily Miner tells the story:

Former Mohave County (AZ) Library Director Danielle Krol said she wanted to expand services for the public and bring better pay and more opportunities for library employees, but was fired by the Board of Supervisors before she had a chance to get the ball rolling.

But with every trend, however modest, you have to wonder, why now? Is it possible that book browsing is already strange and unusual enough to be considered material for art? Everyone agrees that the future of publishing is electronic, with words beamed to us instantaneously. But in that case, what will happen to all of the books beside the book—and the places that store them? When they’re gone, where will we randomly stumble on the knowledge we didn’t even know we wanted to know?

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/03/the-art-of-browsing.html

Innovative Interfaces said yesterday that it has decided to pull the case that it and sister company Skyriver Technology Solutions filed in 2010 in Ohio. Instead, the company said it would integrate Skyriver’s operations into Innovate and would focus on competing with OCLC and working with OCLC as a potential collaboration partner.

This grand challenge would require librarians, information scientists, telecommunication experts and specialists on space flight. The lessons learned could be applied to earth-bound libraries and could re-envision how libraries are connected to each other and to the resources that they use. It could also impact other industries and how they communicate or share information. The work could place libraries and librarians front and center in a number of communities because we would need to be involved in creating the solution.

"Looked at the right way, Wikipedia can be a big help in making online readers aware of their library’s offerings. One of the things we spend a lot of time on in libraries is organizing information into distinct, conceptual categories. That’s what Wikipedia does too: so far, their English edition has over 4 million concepts identified, described, and often populated with reference links. And Wikipedia has encouraged people to add links to relevant digital library collections on various topics, through programs like Wikipedia Loves Libraries and Wikipedian in Residence programs. But while these programs help bring some library resources online, and direct people to those selected resources, there’s still a lot of other relevant library material that users can’t get to via Wikipedia, but can via the libraries that are near them."

Smash Pictures now has responded to the lawsuit with a counterclaim, and it's quite scintillating.

"On information and belief, as much as 89% of the content of the allegedly copyrighted materials grew out of a multi-part series of fan fiction called Masters of the Universe based on Stephenie Myer's (sic) Twilight novels. On information and belief, this content was published online between 2009 and 2011 in various venues, including fanfiction.net and the person website of Ericka (sic) Leonard. On information and belief, much or all of this material was placed in the public domain."

Publishing houses have a well-worn relish for sweeping change, or at least for plugging it on the covers of the works they put on the bookshelves. Just run a search for “books changed America” or “books changed world.” In 2005, Ben Yagoda wrote a New York Times essay on this lack of originality in book labeling, titled “The Subtitle that Changed America.”

Library Wars: Romantic Comedy That Kicks Ass
"When I told my two teens that I could get one manga by using my awesome powers at GeekMom, they both said, “Library Wars! Library Wars! Library Wars!” We had been checking them out from the library before, but it’s a popular series and we often had to wait. Viz Media graciously gave me seven volumes, and then I had to wait for my kids to go through them again before me. Library Wars: Love & War, written and drawn by Kiiro Yumi, is based on the original (non-manga) series by Hiro Arikawa. I did short updates on the series through Comic Book Corner awhile back, but decided it deserved a longer review. It’s that good"

Following the White House officially coming out and saying that mobile phone unlocking should be legal, the Librarian of Congress has issued what feels like a passive aggressive response, basically saying that their job is not to consider the public policy, but just to follow the specific rules under the DMCA.

The results of the annual VIDA Women in Literary Arts survey, which compares the number of female and male authors featured in major literary publications, were released yesterday. The study found a strong preference for male authors in 2012, as in recent years. The New York Review of Books (89 reviews of female authors in 2012 to 316 of male authors), the London Review of Books (74 female authors to 203 male) and the Times Literary Supplement (314 female authors to 924 male authors) fared especially ill. (NPR wasn't included in the survey, but has been criticized for gender bias in author coverage in the past.) Major female authors like Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult have been vocal in recent years about the sometimes rapturous media coverage of white male authors like Jonathan Franzen.

Deleting accounts you've created on Facebook, MySpace, AOL, and elsewhere on the Web isn't always easy. Here are the details on leaving 23 services behind.

I thought you might be interested in this new video and article for Reason.com on Tom Tryniski, who has digitized 22 million old newspaper pages and is getting 6 million views per month on his website (beating the Library of Congress 2 to 1).

http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/03/05/amateur-beats-gov-at-digitizing-newspape

A U.S.-based publishing company says it is dropping at least one of its lawsuits against a McMaster librarian after scholars across North America came to his defense.

Edwin Mellen Press (EMP) had filed two lawsuits against Dale Askey and McMaster University, claiming a total of $4.5 million in damages.
Edwin Mellen PressIn the first filing, submitted in June of last year, the company alleged that statements Askey made in a Sept. 2010 blog post, while he was working at a Kansas university, were both “false” and “defamatory in its tone and context.”

Troubles for Jonah Lehrer, journalist wunderkind turned plagiarist and disgraced author, will not abate.

On Friday night, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which published all three of Mr. Lehrer’s books, confirmed that after an internal fact-checking review of his second book, “How We Decide,” it would no longer offer it for sale.

The publisher stopped selling his third book, “Imagine,” last summer after an investigation revealed that it contained fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan.

It's common knowledge that Harvard's libraries house the country's second largest book collection. To those of you unimpressed by shelves upon shelves of dusty tomes, these more eccentric acquisitions may pique your interest. We at Flyby have compiled a list of the quirky, the bizarre, and the questionably useful relics found in Harvard's libraries.

Not your average librarian Far from the soft-spoken, matronly librarians of yore, Savannah-born Carolyn Goolsby on paper seems more like a character from a fantasy novel than the approachable Fort McMurray Public Library director she is.

A world-record setter for weightlifting, a crafter of homemade mozzarella and beer and a former Jeopardy champion — yes, Alex Trebek is as nice as he seems — Goolsby could be a contender for most interesting person in the world.

The proud owner of a red Swingline stapler (the sign of a true Office Space fan), she holds a masters in Library Science from the University of Maryland and a bachelors in Music and Voice Performance with a double major in Theory and Composition, Goolsby says she is professionally in her ideal position.

Great grandparents love telling stories about treks to one-room school houses on 20-below mornings.

But as far as we know, only one great grandma is still making the trip.

At age 89, Ruth Boldan is still a volunteer librarian at the under-heated, over-stuffed 1890s school house that is now home to the Hazel Dell Library.

Of about 250 bundlers who raised more than $500,000 — counting couples or business associates as one unit — 21 were from Chicago or the suburbs and none were from Obama’s native state, which has been publicly angling for the library. The University of Chicago is waging a covert bid. See the list of Obama’s Illinois super-bundlers at the end of the column; the fourth-quarter list had no local surprises.

This week's program is brief as it propounds an alternative in a providing support in a particular case and provides some news briefs.

Related links:

• LISNews: Dale Askey Support Facebook Page
• Canadian Government Offices in the U.S.
• PCMag.com: Barnes & Noble Founder Wants to Buy Retail Business, Dump Nook
• The Atlantic: The Enduring Myth of the 'Free' Internet
• CBC News: Hands-free calls impair drivers' brains, study suggests
• Duke University Libraries: New Library Service: Digitize This Book

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Sydney Australia will be getting a new library; library as learning space, meeting space and playing space.