LISNews: Librarian News

The Nando Times has yet another great library Story.This one on how in the past few years, libraries have become more aggressive about promoting themselves.

With publishers ever-nervous about the future of reading, libraries offer a large, dependable market. According to the most recent statistics available from the Book Industry Study Group, public libraries bought close to $700 million worth of books in 1997 and are projected to spend almost $900 million by 2002. And because libraries have a mission to buy books that are useful, and not just popular, they accept titles mainstream stores avoid.

\"Publishers depend on libraries for midlist titles,\" said Marcia Purcell, director of Random House\'s department of library promotion. \"The same is true with first-time novelists. Some bookstores are reluctant to take a chance on a first novel. Libraries are willing.\" -- Read More

Finally a Story that admits the web is not going to shut down libraries.

\"It soon became clear that libraries are far from the tar pit - that, in fact, as both Reid and Keith Lance, director of Library Research Services for the Colorado State Library, noted: This idea so many people have, about libraries declining in the age of the Internet, is just wrong. Libraries, in fact, recognized the competition that technology presented and have offered it themselves. -- Read More

The Citizens\' Stamp Advisory Committee, a group of independent citizens appointed by the Postmaster General to review more than 40,000 suggestions for stamp subjects received by the United States Postal Service each year, recommended a commemorative stamp for issuance on the Library\'s Bicentennial date, April 24, 2000. Ethel Kessler, the designer of the breast cancer stamp issued on July 29, 1998 by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Postmaster General William Henderson, has designed the Library\'s Bicentennial commemorative stamp, as pictured here on the Library of Congress Website -- Read More

A special commission here in NY is calling for a rethinking of the way libraries across the state are paid for. New York should contribute far more state funds to local libraries and base the allocation on need, according to the Regents Commission on Library Services, which for the last 18 months has been looking at ways of improving the state\'s vast library system. Read the story at The Times Union, Albany. -- Read More