LISNews: Librarian News

Further musings on Sunday's LISNews story about stolen books:

A recent New York Times article about book thefts has the online community atwitter about one mysterious Boulder author accused of feeling a little too entitled to the fruits of his labor.

In taking a national snapshot of the shoplifting problem, the Times story cut to Boulder, where "one writer was even busted stealing his own books." The Times, which didn't name the author, talked to Christopher Ohman, who was manager of the Boulder Book Store at the time.

"I think he felt somewhat entitled to the copies," Ohman told the Times, conceding that the author's alcohol problem might also have led to the attempted theft.

"In some ways, I can kind of understand that logic," he said. "I mean, it's a commonly held misconception that authors get as many copies of their books as they want, and that's not always the case."

Scott Foley, who is now the floor manager for the Boulder Bookstore, wouldn't disclose the name of the thieving author but said his attempt to swipe his own tome has become an infamous story told during security training for new bookstore employees.

Speculation as to the identity of the thief is engaged in on Gawker.

Edit: Moved the image to a server with higher transfer and bandwidth.

People whose old books, CDs, DVDs and video games are collecting dust on their shelves will soon have another way to resell them on the Web.

On Monday, Glyde, a start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., plans to introduce a Web site intended to make it simple for people to buy and sell used media products.

The company, which will be challenging formidable giants like eBay and Amazon.com, is the brainchild of Simon Rothman, who worked at eBay from 1999 to 2005 and was the primary creator and executive in charge of its automotive site, eBay Motors.

Full article in the New York Times

Two weeks after an online book price war broke out among giant retailers, the three stores involved—Walmart, Amazon and Target—are limiting the number of copies their customers can buy.

The limits will stop other booksellers from scooping up cheap copies in large quantities and reselling them.

Full story in the Wall Street Journal