LISNews: Librarian News

TechCrunch reports that a Chinese blogger was beaten to death by the Chinese government officials for the crime of....attempting to record a protest on his mobile phone. The Chinese government seems to be acting quickly to detail those involve in the attack.

30 Library Technology Predictions for 2008: Steven Abram says he rarely does this formally but he was in the mood this year! Here's a few things, in no particular order, that he thinks will happen in 2008 that might/will have an impact on our little library world.

25. Blockbuster will begin its death throes in earnest in 08. Libraries need to discuss why and what they need to learn from this.
26. 2008 will see some cool - almost ready for primetime - uses of integrated e-paper in portable devices, readers, and wireless signs, etc.

Can you connect This Story By Seth Godin to libraries?

Marketers of all stripes face the same challenge. Your current customers want nothing but the old stuff, but the new customers don't know you exist, so they can't speak up.

Jesse Hauk Shera (1903-1982) was a faculty member at the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago and later dean of the library school at Case Western Reserve University. Shera and his contemporary Margaret Egan are credited for defining and advancing the concept of social epistemology and, in particular, its role as a theoretical foundation for librarianship. (1) They defined the concept as “the study of those processes by which society as a whole seeks to achieve a perceptive or understanding relation to the total environment – physical, psychological and intellectual.”(2) In addition, Shera was also responsible for early research in library and bibliographic automation.(3) In the past decade or so after the beginnings of the ‘digital age’ and ‘information revolution’, I find solace in the fact that it is librarians who are responsible for initially asking the question ‘how do we collectively know things,’ especially in the context of ‘what do we do?’ That such questions emanated from library practitioners indicate, to me, an informed awareness of the dynamic nature of intellectual communication. -- Read More