LISNews: Librarian News

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Sarah G. pointed the way to U. of California Tries Just Saying No to Rising Journal Costs
The University of California system has said "enough" to the Nature Publishing Group, one of the leading commercial scientific publishers, over a big proposed jump in the cost of the group's journals.

Cites & Insights 10:7 (June 2010) is now available.
The 34-page issue is, as usual, PDF; each essay is also available as an HTML separate

(just click on the links, or use the highly sophisticated notational scheme, http://citesandinsights.info/vNiMx.htm, where N is the volume (10), M is the issue (7), and x is a lower-case letter indicating the article, starting with a, then b, then c...)

What's Here
Bibs & Blather...pp. 1-3

Announcing the new book Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights, 2001-2009, a 519-page 6x9 book combining all OA-related essays from C&I--free as a PDF, minimally priced ($17.50) as a trade paperback. Also a note on ALA and my rehearsals for [semi-?]retirement.

The Zeitgeist: There is No Future...pp. 3-19

You could think of this as a Making it Work Perspective on library futures, if you prefer--focusing on exclusionary vs. inclusionary thinking (OR vs. AND), The Future vs. many futures...and more.

Feedback and Following Up...pp. 19-20

Finally (and probably having missed some feedback), a little feedback--three items in all. -- Read More

Cites & Insights 10:6, May 2010, is now available at http://citesandinsights.info/civ10i6.pdf

The 32-page issue, PDF as usual, consists of two essays, each available separately in HTML form (click on the essay title):
Making it Work - Generations (pp. 1-11)

Lots of commentary about generation generalizations (gengen) and lots of commentary full of gengen--plus some discussions of cases where age, technology and culture really may interact.

Old Media/New Media (pp. 11-32)

Yes, it's been almost two years; no, I didn't give up on this theme. This roundup comes in three parts: Media in general (and specific media other than books, magazines and newspapers); magazines and periodicals (which are overlapping, not concentric, circles); and newspapers.

This issue is sponsored by the Library Society of the World, a sponsorship that will continue through June or July...after which, I'm very much looking for sponsorship.

Regular readers of Walt at Random may have noticed that I reviewed the final disc in the five-disc Spaghetti Westerns set. So why isn't there an Offtopic Perspective in this issue? Because I wanted two "real" perspectives and didn't want a 40-page issue...look for it in a later issue.