LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

We are six librarians working in academic, public, and school libraries across the United States. In addition to essays by its founders, In the Library with the Lead Pipe will feature articles by guests representing special libraries and archives, as well as educators, administrators, library support staff, and community members..

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is intended to help improve our communities, our libraries, and our professional organizations. Our goal is to explore new ideas and start conversations; to document our concerns and argue for solutions. Each article is peer-reviewed by at least one external and one internal reviewer.

They posted the first article today, What Happens in the Library…

The Tech Static, a new technology book review outlet for librarians launching this November, is seeking regular reviewers for technology-related titles. Please be comfortable with technology and with the prospect of reviewing guides to technology-related topics. Experience with collection development in this area, or with newer technologies, library tech support, or other technological background a plus. These reviews are intended to assist (primarily public and academic) libraries with collection development in this area.

Interested? Email rachel@thetechstatic.com with the following information:

The Tech Static, a new technology book review outlet for librarians launching this November, is seeking regular reviewers for ebooks and prepublication ebooks. Please be comfortable with technology and with the prospect of reviewing guides to programming languages and other technology-related topics, as well as with reviewing materials in electronic format. Experience with collection development in this area a plus.

Interested? Email rachel@thetechstatic.com with the following information:

1) Your name, job title, and employer
2) A paragraph or two about your relevant background
3) A short (~100-word) sample review of any technology-related title.
4) Whether you’re comfortable reviewing unfinished prepublication ebook versions of upcoming titles, or only full ebooks.

Visit The Tech Static at http://www.thetechstatic.com. Please distribute widely.

Thanks!
Rachel

From Nexgenlib list comes this news:

Good afternoon colleagues,

I recently started a new position as a cataloging librarian for a library services and staffing company headquartered in Wilton, CT -- I am located in lovely Fort Wayne, IN. One of the benefits of the position is my ability to telecommute from home. One of my first actions in my new position was to look for resources for telecommuting librarians and a place to be able to network and have discussions with other telecommuters
on a regular and ongoing basis.

Currently, there is no place for such exchanges to take place. I am pleased to announce the creation of TelecommutingLibrarians, a new electronic list that

I hope will help address this need.

PURPOSE:

This list is intended to provide a forum for discussion of ideas and issues related to telecommuting in libraries and for current or future telecommuters and the challenges faced by working in a non-traditional work environment.

We welcome subscription and participation by all. We believe that this list will be of particular interest to those already telecommuting but everyone is welcome.

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE :

If you would like to subscribe to the new list, please visit the list website:
http://groups.google.com/group/telecommutinglibrarians?hl=en
The list is unmoderated.
We hope to see you there soon!

Hope this becomes a good list for all telecommuting librarians!

The Columbus Metropolitan Library has been rated the best library system in the nation as ranked by the Hennen's American Public Library Rating. It is the 3rd time since 1999 that they have been ranked #1 and they have been ranked in the top 4 every year since 1999. Here's a link to the article.

Congrats to Columbus Metropolitan Library!

edit and update:
From Tame the web

NOTE: American Libraries reported an error in the rankings this year:

American Libraries has discovered an unfortunate error that invalidates the results of Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings published in the October 2008 issue of the magazine of the American Library Association.
Thomas J. Hennen Jr., author of this independent study, discovered after the issue was mailed that the figures used in compiling the statistics were the same as those used in 2006.
The new numbers will be posted on the HAPLR website. The corrected tables will also appear in PDF format as soon as possible on the American Libraries website, as well as in the November issue of the magazine.

The well known Librarian's Internet Index (LII) has merged with IPL at Drexel. As many are aware of, and as mentioned in the notice below, LII has had their funding cut by 50% the last two years. The merger with Drexel allows ILL the opportunity to continue sharing of sites.

This notice appeared in their last weekly e-mail:

LII IS NOW ADMINISTERED BY IPL
This week the editors received a press release announcing LII's merger with the Internet Public Library (IPL). IPL is a huge and wonderful Web portal hosted by Drexel University and maintained by a consortium of colleges and universities with programs in information science. It has solid funding and a paid staff augmented by graduate students in library and information studies programs, allowing it to maintain and improve the database's content and aesthetics with new skills and technical tools.
As you may know, in the last two years LII's funding was cut by 50%. Consequently, we had to reduce the number of sites we add each week, halt improvements to the browsing structure, and generally do less of everything. IPL will give LII's years of work continued life and value and we think they'll do a terrific job. The LII editorial staff and the newsletter will continue through April 30, 2009. We will share news with you as it becomes available; for more information, please contact IPL or Linda Crowe at

This was the e-mail they sent to subscribers:

Here's the scoop from Library Thing...they have three potential jobs to fill.

* Hacker. We're looking for PHP hacker. JavaScript genius and library-data experience. We hope we get two of those.
* Graphic designer/user-experience guru. Experience designing for data-rich sites like LibraryThing a must.
* Brainy, overworked assistant. Smart, flexible, organized, relentless—willing to do both high-level (strategic analysis) and low-level (send-out-these-CueCats) work. The job is non-technical, but you need to be super-comfortable around computers.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to Abebooks, Amazon, Booksense or the independent bookseller of your choice. (Longfellow Books? Books Etc.?) You can split it between them. You don't need to buy books with it (but why do that?).

To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up with a resume and etc.—or they mention your name in their email ("So-and-so told me about LibraryThing"). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it on someone's blog, we hope you'll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary (birdie will take a small percentage, and thanks you in advance).

Contact Tim Spalding (tim@librarything.com) for more information, or to send a resume.

Over at LISWire ( http://liswire.com/ ) - The Librarian's News Wire we have now posted over 200 releases. You can subscribe to one of our mailing lists Right Here. (Really! It works now after being broken for several weeks.) You can grab the main LISWire RSS Feed Here. There are a bunch of other feeds you can subscribe to listed Right Here.

If you haven't been following along - here's some of what you missed:
Ingram Digital launches three IT-focused collections from IGI Global for MyiLibrary
Hill Library Trends Newsletter Highlights Trends in Libraries, Business, and Technology
Harvard's Stuart Shieber To kick Off Columbia University Libraries Speaker Series
J. David Bavousett Joins LibLime as Implementation Specialist
Call for Nominations for the Velma Moore Award for 2009
Grand Rapids Public Library Goes Live With Evergreen
National Weather Center Library Chooses Evergreen
Springer survey uncovers additional facts on eBooks use
Big Country Library System Selects Koha ZOOM
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Note from birdie:

If you are a library supplier or have news to post to the library community, register to submit your releases. The more posters, the more readership, and so forth. Unlike a few unfortunate news sources that are struggling, LISWire is headed up up up and wants to have you along for the ride!!

Several writers of notable books have donated "marked up" copies of their book, and they are being auctioned for First Books (www.firstbook.org). The authors have marked up the books with several notes and comments in the margins of the book with random thoughts and observation. More details on the auction can be found here.

The first book up for bid is "Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian" by Scott Douglas. Bidding starts at 5 dollars, and all money goes to First Books.

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.