LISNews: Hawkish On Libraries Since 1999

The website for Library World Records, the Guinness Book of World Records for libraries and books is now back online.

Library World Records is fascinating book first published in 2004 after research work began on the book in 2002. The book was further extensively updated in a second edition in December 2009. Library World Records provides hundreds of intriguing and comprehensive facts about ancient and modern books, manuscripts and libraries around the world.

A much bigger brand new 3rd edition of the book is being researched at the moment and further details of this brand new edition will be revealed on this website around winter 2012.

Link:
http://www.lwrw.org.uk/Page1.htm

Godfrey
BSc, MSc.
London, Britain.

 http://www.pl.sg/suggestabook

The public libraries in Singapore (under the National Library board) are holding a "Fill our Shelves, Suggest a Book!" contest from now until 1 July 2012.

They appear to be using the crowdsourcing platform Uservoice.com that allows users to sign-in and vote and comments on submissions by others.

As I write this I estimate there are about 1400 submissions (70 pages of submissions, 20 entries per page), of course quite a few are duplicates or suggestion for books the library already owns (e.g Hunger Games Series). The top recommended title right now is "The Dragon Book of Verse" and has over 50 votes.

Prizes will be give for Top 3 Recommenders (most number of suggestions submitted online) and Most popular title in each category (suggested title with most number of votes)

I am a academic librarian, so I was curious to see which academic libraries have done the same using this or similar platforms like Getsatisfaction. -- Read More

Carla Tracy, director of the Thomas Tredway Library at Augustana College in Illinois writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Shortly after I began my career as a librarian, the Web made its appearance to the general public. Even with the broad scope afforded me through my educational background, I didn't believe the Web would amount to much. I could not imagine that this unimpressive resource would shake the very concept of the library as it had been known for hundreds of years.

The shaking hasn't stopped yet. College librarians are faced with the challenge of expanding digital media and study space while reducing print media. That reduction includes withdrawing books from the shelves, which, in effect, means selling, recycling, giving away, storing off-site (for those who can afford it), discarding, or shredding texts. Suddenly college librarians, among the world's greatest lovers of books, are viewed in certain corners as book destroyers.

If a library is a growing organism, then I've felt the growing pains keenly on our campus these last few months. In leading our library staff through an effort to remove certain books used only once in the past 25 years, if at all, I stand at the head of a series of events that inadvertently sent part of a reprint collection, written in classical Chinese, to the recycling center.

More from Chronicle.com.

...Cornell University Library recently released a statement saying that they will no longer do business with publishers who refuse to let the library disclose the price they pay for what they get from those publishers: “It has become apparent to the library community that the anticompetitive conduct engaged in by some publishing firms is in part a result of the inclusion of nondisclosure agreements in contracts.

Full blog at Closedstacks.com
http://www.closedstacks.com/?p=3288