September 2006

Yakima, WA: Police catch the vandals who trashed the Richland Public Library.

Some people were really upset when they found out the library had been vandalized. Five teenage boys allegedly broke in and trashed the place. When concerned citizens found out who they were, they immediately went to police.

Walking into the Richland Public Library you’d never know three days ago it looked like a huge mess. It took volunteers and library staff two days to clean everything up. Wednesday police arrested the culprits. And librarians were pleased to hear it.

EducationGuardian.co.uk: How many books written in seemingly obscure languages are misfiled and languishing unfindable in libraries? Joyce Flynn’s experience at Harvard suggests the answer is: a lot.
Flynn, a researcher in Celtic languages, discovered some common mishaps that no one discusses much.

Sometimes, cataloguers and shelfers did strange things with books written in foreign languages. They mangled the catalogue listings, and tucked the books away on the wrong shelves.

Here’s the website for the conference, which will take place in Boston from October 20-22, 2006. You may attend in person, or virtually, and you are also invited to present a paper. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for consideration before or after the conference in the fully refereed International Journal of the Book (but hurry, deadline for the final round in the call for papers (a title and short abstract) is tomorrow, September 30th!).

Here’s the list of main speakers:
* Jason Epstein, On Demand Books; formerly Editorial Director, Random House
* Sven Birkerts, Author of ‘The Gutenberg Elegies’
* John Cole, Director, Center for the Book, Library of Congress
* Sara Nelson, Editor-in-Chief, Publishers Weekly
* Jan Constantine, General Counsel, The Author’s Guild
* John Morse, President, Merriam-Webster
* Helene Atwan, Director, Beacon Press
* Bob Young, Founder and CEO, Lulu.com
* Angus Phillips, Director, Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, Oxford Brookes University, UK
* Ed Morrow, Northside Bookstore, Vermont, and former President of the American Booksellers Association

Where is Miss Manners when we need her most?

An article from Lehigh (PA)University’s Brown and White and another from Fort Hays (KS) State University about how students, and others, are using and abusing cell phones for texting in class, cheating on tests, chatting in the library, etc. etc.

From CNET News, an article about information illiteracy, search tools and librarians, telling us what we already know, that as Chris Sherman,executive editor of SearchEngineWatch.com says “There’s a problem with information illiteracy among people. People find information online and don’t question whether it’s valid or not.” Gary Price’s Resource Shelf, LII and several other worthy resources are mentioned.

Florida students read aloud together for record books: Gov. Jeb Bush joined hundreds of thousands of Florida middle-school students Thursday to try to set a new world record for people reading aloud at the same time.

Brother, Can You Spare a Terabyte?: The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) is making available more than 400 TB of disk space and even more archival tape space for academic and scientific data in search of a good home. With 18 PB of archival storage, it just didn’t seem nice not to share (for a modest fee, of course).

SDSC was founded in 1985 with a $170 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Since then, SDSC has served the supercomputing needs of more than 10,000 researchers at 300 academic, government and industrial institutions in the United States and around the world.

TheEastern Hills Journal – Fairfax,OH has a nice report on Sister Dorothy Englert, librarian at All Saints School, recently celebrated her Golden Jubilee — 50 years — as a Sister of Charity with a special Mass and gifts. The school and parish celebrated her Jubilee after the liturgy Sept. 7.

Read all about it, it being Garrison Keillor’s new bookstore in St. Paul, MN, “Corner Books” opening on November 1. Although he intends to play an active role in the store, Keillor isn’t planning on leaving the shores of Lake Wobegon. “His first dedication is to A Prairie Home Companion,” said Chris Livingston, who is coordinating the opening of the store.

Keiller found his new manager, Sue Zumberge, through an ad in craigslist. Zumberge says of the store, “It’s going to be great,” she said. “From my conversation with Mr. Keillor, it sounds like it’s going to have a real Midwest flavor. There will be a wide selection of fiction, with a concentration of Midwest writers. It will really have the flavor of a neighborhood bookstore.”

We already know whodunnit (Edward Forbes Smiley III) and what he did (stole more than $800,000 dollars worth of rare maps)…but this report tells us how much time he’ll serve…three and a half years, not enough for some people.