LISNews: Librarian News

Borders Group is "honoring America's teachers" by giving a 25% discount on regularly priced books, CDs, DVDs, gift and stationery and cafe items for classroom or personal use from tomorrow, September 26, through Tuesday, October 2.

Current and retired teachers, librarians, professors, homeschoolers and other educators are eligible for the Educator Savings Week. As part of the event, Borders is donating $50,000 to its literacy partner, First Book, which provides reading material to children whose families can't easily afford books.

Borders is holding receptions for educators at its superstores on Friday, 4-8 p.m. For more information about Educator Savings Week, go to Borders Media.

Questia Media Inc. has made its online library of more than 5,000 classic books free to the public.

Here's the company line..."We have a treasure trove of material we wanted to share with the world," said Tim Harris, chief executive of Questia. "These are some of the greatest and most influential books ever written. We felt that only giving our paid subscribers access to these books is a disservice to the Internet community as a whole. Now everyone can read them."

BizJournals reports.

The Ohio-based Online Computer Library Center Inc. has become the sole shareholder of the European library network it has worked with for 30 years.

OCLC said Tuesday is purchased the remaining 40 percent of shares in OCLC Pica Group BV, a European supplier of library software and services. OCLC in 2000 purchased 60 percent of the shares in Pica, a Dutch library service provider that later became incorporated as OCLC Pica Group in 2002.

Somebody writes "Linux.com: The open source movement and libraries have a lot in common, not the least of which is the belief in free and open access to ideas and information. Yet, until recently, libraries have been slow to switch to open source software. Libraries have highly specialized software needs because the library community has developed its own complex standards and protocols to facilitate things like interlibrary loan, meta data sharing, and federated searching. Until recently, lack of commercial support made implementing open source unfeasible for libraries without an IT staff. Also, open source alternatives weren't perceived as scalable or feature-rich enough to handle the complex needs of most libraries. Now, commercial support has facilitated new levels of collaboration between libraries through sponsored development."