LISNews: Librarian News

Walter Skold writes "PRESS RELEASE & WEB SERVICE http://www.4freadom.org/CRKPrR.html Librarians Launch Two New ServicesTo Recommend Cuba Books for the YoungIncludes Open Forum for Librarians, Students and Parents October 1, 2006 — Two new book review and online discussion groupshave been launched for teachers and students that will highlight the bestbooks and resources on Cuba for young people. "As a way to celebrate banned books weeks all year we are proud to lauchboth Cuba4Kids and YACUBA," said Walter Skold, the co-chair of FREADOM,the library group which is sponsoring the new project. -- Read More

shambolic57 writes "As described in the Sydney Morning Herald ,
the Library at the University of New South Wales has been caught using that great collection weeding device--the dumpster--to store bound volumes of discarded journals. Of course this raises all sorts of issues which are too briefly touched on in what is essentially a filler article. I guess the lesson is don't discard, donate to libraries in greater need than yours or build a bigger stack facility."

chile sent over An Op-Ed by James Solomon Benn who writes about the policies of Indianapolis library head Linda Mielke, causing important books and collections are being sold off. Much of the library's holdings are being replaced by commercial videos and DVD's to attract more patrons. He says this is a horrible practice. "We should never play down to an audience, but rather educate and bring audiences up to a higher level of expectation. The dumbing down of America through our failing schools, the defunding of arts programming and the dismantling of our institutions is a travesty."

An Anonymous Patron sent over this one:
On 25 April the British Library published a consultation document: "The British Library's Content Strategy - Meeting the Knowledge Needs of the Nation". This sets out the Library's proposals for what information resources we should collect and connect with, in order to meet the needs of UK research, both today and in the future.

Our strategy has been developed in response to the rapid pace of change in scholarly communications and also in response to the Library's recent integration of its major catalogues which puts us in a position for the first time to be able to consider our collection as a unified entity.