LISNews: Librarian News

"The New York Public Library, like many libraries throughout the country, is so strapped for cash, they're cutting back services. But guess how much money the guy who runs the library earned last year?" Get the scoop from Inside Edition.

First reported a few days ago, the pundits are now adding their 2 cents.

This from Dan Gillmor at Salon: When America's book publishers wrested control of e-book prices from Amazon earlier this year, I expected two results. First, prices would go up. Second, I'd buy fewer new Kindle books. I got that part right.

What I didn't expect, however, was that publishers would be so incredibly foolish as to start raising e-book prices to the point that they were close to, and in a few cases above, the hardcover prices. Here's a non-literary term for this policy: nuts.

I've been keeping loose track of this trend for months, and had noticed that some hardcover books were getting close to the Kindle prices. Then the barrier fell, as the New York Times reported this week, when at least two books actually were more costly to read on Kindle devices than the actual physical book.

How did this happen? It's a classic Traditional Media vs. the Digital Age story. The key players are Amazon, the major book publishers and Apple.

On facebook? Please join our campaign to get the top pop culture book-loving maven of our time to PROMOTE LIBRARIES by joining "Oprah, Libraries Need You!".

The group, created as the result of a dream that Marilyn Johnson (author of 'This Book is Overdue') had in which she spoke to Oprah about libraries and Oprah agreed that they needed support (vivid dreaming MJ!) is ONE WEEK OLD and already has close to 1,000 members.

Please add your name to the ranks and invite all your friends. It won't cost you a penny and who knows, maybe it'll result in an overwhelming wash of love and money from Oprah's coffers.

If you have a story about your library that will help to support the cause, please post it on the wall and keep posting. Don't be shy. Thank you!!

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — A private company, Library Systems & Services, in Maryland, has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system.

The basic pitch that the company L.S.S.I. makes to cities is that it fixes broken libraries — often by cleaning house.

Now the company, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy.

A $4 million deal to run the three libraries here is a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation. But in an era when outsourcing is most often an act of budget desperation — with janitors, police forces and even entire city halls farmed out in one town or another — the contract in Santa Clarita has touched a deep nerve and begun a round of second-guessing.

Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort — and maybe not even then?

The company is majority owned by Islington Capital Partners, a private equity firm in Boston, and has about $35 million in annual revenue and 800 employees. Officials would not discuss the company’s profitability. -- Read More