Good Librarian, Bad Librarian is an amusing little story:
“This past weekend, we were once again at the Rainier Beach library with Little Miss Seattlest. We were once again headed towards the circulation desk having stocked up on picture books. LMS was chatty. And another librarian leaned towards us.
“Excuse me,” she said, and we got ready to say that we were already in the book club. “I’d like to remind you about library voices.” Oh. No book club.“
July 2007
Unknown Substance Sickens People at Ann Arbor Library Branch
As reported by The Ann Arbor News, The Detroit News and the AP, up to 25 people were sickened by an unknown substance late last evening both at a Krogers Grocery Store and at the Westgate Branch of the Ann Arbor (MI) District Library. Investigations are ongoing, and the library has also issued a statement on the event.
WIRED: Second Life hype vs. reality
John Gehner writes “According to WIRED contributing editor Frank Rose, “Once you put in several hours flailing around learning how to function in Second Life, there isn’t much to do. That may explain why more than 85 percent of the avatars created have been abandoned. Linden’s in-world traffic tally, which factors in both the number of visitors and time spent, shows that the big draws for those who do return are free money and kinky sex … And even when corporate destinations actually draw people, the PR can be less than ideal. Last winter, CNET’s in-world correspondent was conducting a live interview with Anshe Chung, an avatar said to have earned more than $1 million on virtual real estate deals, when Chung was assaulted by flying penises in a griefer attack.””
Library trustees: The badges stay
I’m not quite sure what to make of This One from Illinois where Crestwood Public Library Board trustees have decided to keep their controversial police-like badges despite outcry from angry taxpayers who have accused trustees of wasting money on the credentials they rarely use.
In lieu of ditching the badges, the library board Monday adopted new procedures for using them. Among the rules: Trustees have to keep their badges in a safe place and can’t let friends borrow them.
“When we did this, we felt it was a perk,” board president Clyde Petersen said, adding that he didn’t think spending $600 of district money on the five-pointed stars and leather holders would create such strife. “I don’t think it’s wasteful.”
LibraryThing: A Social Cataloging Web Site
Video of presentation by Tim Spalding, the founder of LibraryThing.
Here is the overview of the program at the Library of Congress site.
The Library of Congress presents a program in its “Digital Future & You” series featuring LibraryThing, a social cataloging and social networking Web site.
Speaker Biography: Tim Spalding is the founder of the social cataloging website, LibraryThing. Before starting LibraryThing, he was a graduate student in Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan, worked for Houghton-Mifflin publishers in Boston, and as a freelance web developer and web publisher. He lives in Portland, Maine, with his wife, HarperCollins author Lisa Carey.
Above was the direct link to the video. This link goes to the LOC page and has the synopsis and also has a link to the video.
Wilkes-Barre evicts man, claims books are fire hazard
John Puchniak quite literally lives in a sea of books.
He reads constantly except when he’s haunting bookstores, libraries and, when he’s able to get there, the Philadelphia bookstore that he co-owns. He filled his house with about 3,000 texts until it was repossessed by the bank, which agreed to move them all to an apartment Puchniak rented on North Main Street specifically because there was plenty of storage space.
For about a month and a half, though, Puchniak has had to shuttle his papery world to the Red Carpet Inn on Kidder Street because his apartment was condemned after city code enforcement officers said the books were a fire hazard. Here’s The Scoop and it includes a picture of his place.
The Latest in Bootleg…Guess What?
First it was bootleg designer handbags, perfume, jeans, videos and DVDs, now books, or to be specific…Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, bootlegged in an English version by Chinese pirates. The softback copy of Rowling’s novel, cleanly printed on slightly rough paper, costs 40 yuan ($5.30) — 30 after bargaining — while a legitimate copy sells in local bookstores for 210 yuan for a British edition and 218 for the U.S. version.
Reuters reports on pirates successful attempts to siphon off a bit of the Harry windfall.
For Public Library, a Trove of New York Times Records
Disputes about printing confidential national security information have flared in recent years, but this particular letter is dated July 11, 1916, and was sent by Newton Baker, Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of war. It is part of a vast collection of personal letters, financial documents, confidential reports, photographs and more, more than 700,000 pages in all; that The Times has donated to the New York Public Library.
Follow up: not so mono-sectarian town of Ave Maria
Fang-Face writes “Harkening back to a story posted to LISNews back in 2005, an Associated Press article about the town of Ave Maria was posted to the First Amendment Center web site on 25 July. Despite Catholic feel, developers say Fla. town will be inclusive. It seems all the hoo-rah about the town being mono-sectarian was just a big misunderstanding.
Still, I wonder what the public libraries in this town will look like in terms of collection development.”
US Senators call for universal Internet filtering
A site called Press Esc Says US senators made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children at the end of a Senate hearing for which civil liberties groups were not invited.
Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Vice Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) both argued that Internet was a dangerous place where parents alone will not be able to protect their children.
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