LISNews: Librarian News

It's only taken eight years for C&I to actually appear monthly--that is, for a volume to have only a dozen issues.

Cites & Insights 8:12 (December 2008) is now available for downloading.

The 22-page issue is PDF as usual (a nice compact PDF, as are all the other 2008 issues now that I've regenerated them with Acrobat 9), but you can also get HTML versions of most essays. (Most headings below are live links.)
Bibs & Blather

Advance notice of a special offer: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 will be available soon (late November or early December if all goes well), and will have an early-bird special price of $22.50 until January 15, 2009--at which point it will go to $35.00. (If there's an Amazon version, that will start out at $35.) The book will be announced on Walt at Random as soon as it's ready.

Also: News about disappearing books, notes on potential sponsorship for future research, and this warning: If you're one of the dozens (I can dream) of institutions that binds C&I, hold off--the title sheet and index will be ready in another week or two. (There will probably also be a paperback version of the whole volume.)

Perspective: Writing about Reading

The heart of the issue. An extended essay on NEA's latest sky-is-falling report--and on "stupidity and Google." -- Read More

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A conservative organization that helped start a new student newspaper at West Virginia University claims a biased school librarian confiscated a stack of the papers earlier this month for political reasons.

The Wise Library employee took 250 copies of the Oct. 14 issue of the Mountaineer Jeffersonian even though the group had permission to distribute them, according to a press release from the Leadership Institute.

WVU spokeswoman Janey Cink said Thursday that the librarian took the papers because the student group hadn't provided a rack to contain them. She added that library staff thought the issue had been resolved.

"The university certainly welcomes different opinions and wants different student voices to be heard," Cink said. "If there's any misunderstanding, that's unfortunate." West Virginia Gazette.

Cites & Insights 8:11, November 2008, is now available for downloading.

The 26-page issue (PDF as always, but with HTML versions available from links here or at the Cites & Insights home page) includes five essays:
Bibs & Blather: Books and Blogs

Mostly updated versions of Walt at Random posts--library blog books going out of print soon, a progress report on The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 (with more progress since the post) and notes on Technorati, blogs as a whole and the liblog landscape.

Making it Work: Libraries and the Social Web

Notes on aspects of social-web applications in libraries beyond blogs and wikis.

Perspective: How Common is Common Language?

An original "research" project: What happens when you try 300 everyday sentences against Google--and when you try just the first eight words of each sentence? The answers may surprise you.

Library Access to Scholarship: OA Controversies -- Read More

Sage Publications (Human Factors, Am. J Sports Med, Ed Researcher, etc) is offering free access to all of its Journals until 10/31/08.

Simply register at their site and start reading.