October 2005

Dot’s Mobile Library

A charming 2003 profile (Real Audio required) of librarian Dorothy Metcalfe, who has been driving the bookmobile around Nidderdale in North Yorkshire in the UK for the last 34 years. From the excellent BBC program Home Truths, and introduced by the late, great John Peel.

Simmons College Receives Grant For Future Vietnamese Librarians

Atlantic Philanthropies, based in Bermuda, has donated $1.8 million to provide education for 25 Vietnamese library students, leading to their acquiring advanced degrees in one of the oldest and largest graduate schools of library science. Simmons College , devoted to diversity programs, has been at the forefront of educating Vietnamese librarians for the past twelve years.

Story from PR Newswire .

Library Transformation Complete – from Foreword

Cortez writes The Mercantile Library of New York has been transformed into the first center in the U.S. to be devoted entirely to the art of fiction.

The Library, one of the oldest cultural institutions in the city, houses one of the best collections of fiction in the country.
In celebration the library will host an awards ceremony on November 8 at the Century Club.

The first annual Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction will be given to Nan Talese of Doubleday. Author James Purdy will receive the 2005 Clifton Fadiman Medal for Excellence in Fiction. The Center for Fiction is also debuting The Art of Fiction Series, which brings authors to the library to read from their books and talk about the importance of fiction, reading, and the writing life. In conjunction with the changes, the Library’s Writing Studio is also moving to a better location within the building. The Studio is the only literary work space in the country entirely dedicated to writers of fiction.

Membership libraries have a long and distinguished history: see here
and here.

Unearthing Books Embedded in Pop Culture

gsandler writes Here is a
story from the New York Times about Simon
and Schuster’s
efforts to find pop culture books. "Much of the publishing world was in Frankfurt last week for the annual book fair, but for the publisher Jennifer Bergstrom, it was a place she chose to avoid.
“I would rather go to the Aspen comedy festival,” she said. As the publisher of Simon Spotlight
Entertainment
, a fledgling imprint at Simon & Schuster devoted to pop culture for readers age 18 to 35, “That is how we scout for material,” she said…”Ninety percent of our authors are first-time authors, and most of them have platforms in other media,” Ms. Bergstrom said recently. “And what we decide to publish is greatly affected by our publicity department – who we can get on ‘The Daily Show’ or who might be great on a radio tour.”(Registration is required by the NY Times web site.)”

Keeping Pace With Google: DVDs Are Not The Answer

It keeps clicking for me, and the good news is it seems to be clicking with some other folks as well. So I think this should raise a question. This is a simple question, though it’s 800+ words long: With whom does this need to click for it to matter? Does it need to click with the ALA? The directors of the ACRL libraries? If I’m wrong, and this is yet just one more “end of the libraries” time, then our profession live through it just fine. If you agree with me, who should we being trying to convince we’re right? Let me explain a little what I’m talking about here.

Like Karen, Gandel’s “Wrong Train?” gave me a couple new clicks:

1. This is another “end of the libraries” time when some people are very worried.

2. We are nodes. We are a small piece of a huge information industry that we used to have a monopoly on.

It keeps clicking for me, and the good news is it seems to be clicking with some other folks as well. So I think this should raise a question. This is a simple question, though it’s 800+ words long: With whom does this need to click for it to matter? Does it need to click with the ALA? The directors of the ACRL libraries? If I’m wrong, and this is yet just one more “end of the libraries” time, then our profession live through it just fine. If you agree with me, who should we being trying to convince we’re right? Let me explain a little what I’m talking about here.

Like Karen, Gandel’s “Wrong Train?” gave me a couple new clicks:

1. This is another “end of the libraries” time when some people are very worried.

2. We are nodes. We are a small piece of a huge information industry that we used to have a monopoly on.
1. This is yet another “end of the libraries” time:
Sometimes I forget I’m one of the new kids around here, and my grasp on history is tenuous at best. Most people in leadership positions in our profession have been around for decades. This gives them a much better long term view. They have years of experience and a feel for how things used to be. They’ve also been hearing gloom and doom for years. I have little to base this one, but this could be one reason many of the people who really drive our profession are just not engaged in this issue. In the past year we have Gorman and that guy from Indiana dismissing blogs and Google as an inferior product worthy of our collective scorn. More recently, Gorman spent his luncheon talk at LITA on Bibliographic control on the Web. Showing the librarians love for a precoordinate world, he also showed me he doesn’t get it. It’s important to note here I didn’t see his talk, so I can only go on what I read. Did he really talk about a new renaissance in cataloging?

Gorman suffers from what my experience has shown to be a common trait among librarians that have years of experience: a strong need for control. The need to take information and cram it into subjects, the precoordinate way of thinking. And there’s nothing wrong with that, or at least there hasn’t been anything wrong with that way of thinking for the past couple centuries, but it may be time to think different and see where it leads us. In any case, while it matters a great deal what the ALA is focusing on, it also matters what John Q. Public is thinking.

The CEO Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library was just quoted as saying “Google is replacing the professional librarian, she has said. Libraries must stock best-selling books and DVDs to keep pace.” That same Article quotes an ex-city councilman as saying “Looking ahead to the information age, this is just not the way people get their information,” he said of the library’s store of books. Is he right? Maybe, maybe not, but unless we’re out there fighting to make sure our side is heard, libraries won’t be the way people get their information in the future. Are we happy becoming a free replacement for Blockbuster video, or do we want to be in the information business in 20 years? Are we really keeping pace with Google by offering more DVDs? What happens with most people start using digital cable to get their movies?

So while I’m well aware that I haven’t been around long enough to understand how things used to be, I’m not sure that’s really a hindrance in this case. I really don’t know for sure this really isn’t just yet another “end of the libraries” time created by people who don’t know any better. BUT, I’m as sure as I can be that we’re in a different place and time now, and our profession is in big trouble moving forward, and I think it has little to do with Iraq, and much to do with Google.

2. Libraries are nodes:
It may now be necessary to us a completely different way of thinking about the environment we are now working within. The new way goes something like this: we are just part of a larger group of collaborative being who will all work together and bring order to chaos by using tools like Wikis. In my mind the jury is still out on the Wiki future, but I am quite certain the days of central authority control are quickly moving into the past.

The times have changed. Gandel quotes Kobulnicky as saying libraries are now buying “collections” of electronic material put together by others, I’d add we aren’t buying anything, we’re simply renting access time. We are no longer collecting and preserving, but like he wrote, we are simply negotiating for limited access. Gandel writes “Even the reference function of libraries facing increasing challenges from the Web” I think he both makes and misses an important point there. Allow me to rewrite his idea for great impact: Librarian’s most important functions are being replaced by the Web. While this may be alarmist and over the top, I again ask you to think about what they web will be like in 5 or ten years. Do people think the web is replacing libraries? Whether or not they’re right, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy if enough of them think it. Gandel again: ” As the Web continues to develop and expand, creating a vast array of information hubs, the question to be asked is: Will libraries be key nodes on this information network?” There was a time when we were THE place to come for information. That time has passed, and we can no longer operate like we are a monopoly.

Library Sells Books, Buys Computers

News from Portland (OR) State University about library book sale proceeds funding computer upgrades.

David Dillard, who posted this story to DIG_REF, commented:

Is it just me or is there a touch of ironic humor about this particular
fund raiser? Kind of right up there with using library card catalog cards
as scrap paper for library clients.

Of course, book sale items are usually weeded titles anyway, and new computing and licensing expenses can be hard to add in to an already tight but traditional library budget.

P.R. expense for library raises some questions

Bernie Sloan should get credit for noticing a good quote in This IndyStar.com Article. While it focuses mainly on The Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library and the $40 million in cost overruns and then another $60k for “marketing.”
The interesting part, for me at least, is how the article looks at libraries. “Public libraries nationally are cutting staff, feeling the Internet heat and facing competition from bookstores and film rental outlets.”

Former County Auditor and former City-County Councilman Curt Coonrod: “Looking ahead to the information age, this is just not the way people get their information,” he said of the library’s store of books. “That’s true even today, let alone 20 years from now, when the bonds are still outstanding.” Although he adds, Libraries remain as popular as mother and apple pie to the public. “We were all brought up to think that libraries are good things — and they are,”

Even library CEO Linda Mielke: “Google is replacing the professional librarian, she has said. Libraries must stock best-selling books and DVDs to keep pace.”

Driving second-hand book shops to the Internet

Cortez writes “While I can understand the financial reasons, I’m going to miss them when they’re gone: New hi-tech world of bookshops, from BBC News.

Artist and antiquarian Graham Ovenden has spent a large part of his adult life rummaging in bookshops. Between the leaves of old books, he has found 19th century treasures like the earliest known photo of Lewis Carroll and the letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. “Rossetti’s handwriting was quite broad and really rather handsome,” he said. However, the joy of coming upon a real treasure or merely whiling away an afternoon pottering in an old bookshop may some day be confined to the history books.”

Just don’t write off brick-and-mortar bookstores completely. If nothing else, they’ll survive the way that art galleries do today.