LISNews: Librarian News

John Scalzo worked hard to assemble a collection of video games for an unnamed library and wrote a fantastic article for Gaming Target about the experience. The ground rules were simple: no mature games like Grand Theft Auto and no Simpsons games (d'oh!). Anything else available from the library's approved vendor was, you should pardon the expression, fair game. See what he picked and why in the full article. (Via Kotaku)

William Lamb writes "Last night the 77th Annual Academy Awards gave out the film industry's most coveted prizes in 21 different feature film categories. These categories range from Special Effects to Acting and Writing. Each year librarians check to see which award winners they own, which are available that they do not own and when other award winners will be released on DVD.

To make that task easier, we've compiled an easy-to-use list of all 12 award winning films in feature film categories. We have listed the films alphabetically by title, included the award(s) won by each film and the best information currently available for the DVD release of each film.

View the list"

Daniel writes "In an article called Thought Police at the Library, Lew Rockwell columnist Gail Jarvis speculates why his local library did not accept his purchase recommendations:

"We know how political correctness has "cleansed" various organizations, but the damage it has done to public libraries has largely escaped notice. To illustrate how PC has imposed its censoring dictates on these essential facilities, I will use the Beaufort County Public Library in Beaufort, South Carolina. No doubt, it is well representative of other public libraries."

If you stick with the article, you'll find some possibly valid criticisms of how libraries are wedded to mainstream review tools to evaluate possible purchases. I have not read the books in question."

Anonymous Patron writes "News Out Of Iowa on Charles Loftsgard. When his family cleaned Charles Loftsgard's apartment after his death, the task proved monumental. The 70-year-old bachelor had accumulated thousands of volumes.

Loftsgard's family donated the collection --- an estimated 10,000 books --- to the Elgin Public Library.

"We don't know if he read all the books," said Karol Helgerson of West Union, his younger sister. "But as far back as I can remember, he was always reading, and I could never touch his books.""