LISNews: Librarian News

Are Public Libraries "Permanently F***ed?" Maybe Not
You probably won't learn much from this one, but that headline was too good to pass up.
"Perhaps the disgruntled librarians are hiding out in some sub-basement, smoking cigarettes and fidgeting with their switchblades," she says. "Maybe later they'll have a dance-off. Maybe librarians are simply the most optimistic people on the planet. I leave it for a better person than me to decide."

(Via the great and powerful librarystuff.net)

Vermont resident hopes to start private library
That left Dolly F.H. Stevens, who said she was the head of the library, in an interesting dilemma. The long-time Athens resident had asked friends and acquaintances to donate their unwanted books in an effort to help the 117-year-old library thrive. Following the town's vote on March 6, Stevens attempted to give the volumes back to their original owners but it didn't work.

"They just donated them back," she said in a telephone interview, adding that she had initially received 4,000 books, which have been stored in the closed Athens Elementary School building. She said after Town Meeting that she was ending her fight to save the public library.

Blind patrons sue Philadelphia Free Library over Nook e-Readers
With the assistance of the National Federation of the Blind, four blind patrons of the Free Library of Philadelphia—Denice Brown, Karen Comorato, Patricia Grebloski, and Antoinette Whaley—have filed suit (case number: 12-2373) against the library because they cannot access one of the library’s programs for which they are eligible. The Free Library of Philadelphia has instituted and announced plans to expand a program in which free NOOK Simple Touch e-readers, which are manufactured and sold by Barnes & Noble, are loaned to patrons over the age of fifty. Unlike some other portable e-readers that use text-to-speech technology and/or Braille to allow blind people to read e-books, the NOOK devices are completely inaccessible to patrons who are blind. The library’s conduct violates Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Annealing the Library
What if a public library could fund a blogger of urban architecture to cover in detail all proceedings of the city planning department? What if it could fund a local historian to write an open-access history of the town? What if school libraries could fund teachers to develop open-access courseware? What if libraries could buy the digital rights of copyrighted works and set them free? What if the funds were available right now?