Over at The London Review Of Books Thomas Jones Takes A Look At Books and blogs. He says if they’re doing their jobs properly, are as different as two kinds of published text can be. For one thing, creating a book takes many months, not to say years, and the process requires the participation of a whole chain of people besides the writer: commissioning editors, copy-editors, typesetters, proofreaders, printers, distributors, booksellers etc. A blogger can have an unedited post up on the web and available to readers within minutes of the idea popping into his head.
January 2008
Old book stalls’ numbers shrinking in Pakistan
The Daily Times In Pakistan says The number of old books stalls, used to be an attraction for students, literary persons and scholars, is shrinking in the city as most of the vendors have shifted to other businesses due to various reasons.
Last call to vote on The 10 Non-Librarian Blogs Librarians Should Read In 2008.
It’s never a bad idea to take a step away from the library world and see what else is out there. No doubt we could learn a thing or two from other professions. That’s what this list is all about.
Is there a blog we should be reading that’s NOT written by a librarian or FOR librarians? How will that blog help us do our jobs as librarians better? What things do we need to know about? What’s the most interesting, useful or entertaining site you follow outside of the LIS World?
You don’t need to send me a complete list of 10, just one or two of your favorites will be just fine. Let me know why you think other librarians should be reading your favorites. Leave a comment below, or hit the Form. I’ll post the final list on Monday!
Shareaholic: Share, bookmark and e-mail web pages
Over on my twitter feed msauers shared a link to Shareaholic a nifty little browser thingy that makes it easy for you to submit the web page you’re on to your favorite sharing or bookmarking service, including: digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, google bookmarks, magnolia, mixx, reddit, stumbleupon, tumblr and twitter. You also have the option to e-mail the web page directly to a friend. Shareaholic also lets you know how many times the web page you’re on has been dugg or saved to del.icio.us. (Works with Firefox 2.0+, Flock and Songbird on PCs and MACs)
Writers’ digital row with library
The Beeb Reports Scores of writers are refusing to let their works be scanned for an online archive at the National Library of Wales because they are not being paid. The library aims to gain permission to digitise the contents of 90 journals, published since 1900, from the publishers. Some 600,000 pages of Welsh literary works, including poetry, translations and reviews, will be put online.
Union: School fails accountability test: fires ill librarian
The NYSUT says librarian Angela Page has filed a $2 million lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the Liberty (NY) school district.
“I was a resource person, not a babysitter,” Page said. “I can still do the same services I did before as a virtual librarian.”
Leno Out Of Court; Imus In Court Over Books
Book company sues Imus for $4 million: FlatSigned Press said sales of its books flat-lined after U.S. radio personality Don Imus insulted them on his former show. The company, which paid for an ad on the Imus show, said sales took a dive after the shock jock slammed one of its books.
Editor settles copyright suit with Leno, NBC and others: – A humor editor who published books of jokes by Jay Leno and other comedians without their permission has apologized and agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.
YA Librarians Honor Sci-Fi Writer, Stir Hornet’s Nest
The Young Adult Library Services Association presented its annual Margaret A. Edwards Award to science-fiction writer Orson Scott Card last week, paying tribute to the ways in which his novel Ender’s Game and its follow-up Ender’s Shadow fulfill the Edwards Award mandate of “helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world.” (No mention, sadly, of Speaker for the Dead, the immediate sequel to Ender’s Game.) Card’s selection kicked up some controversy, however, due to his extreme views on homosexuality. As School Library Journal, which co-sponsors the award, summarizes the debate, “If a well-known author writes and speaks about gays and lesbians in a way that many interpret to be anti-gay, should he be given an award that honors his outstanding lifetime contribution to writing for teens?”
Opinion: Tackling Information Overload With Knowledge Navigators
As CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, I oversee the medical libraries. These have always been clean, well-lighted places for books. But with the advent of Web 2.0 collaboration tools, blogging, content management portals, on-demand publishing and digital journals, libraries of paper books are becoming less relevant. By the time a book is printed, the knowledge it contains may be outdated. So, libraries need to become clean, well-lighted lounges for digital media staffed by expert knowledge navigators. In my institution, the librarians have thinned the book collection, migrated paper journals to digital media and indexed digital knowledge resources to support our search engine optimization efforts.
We’ve replaced the libraries with an information commons, and the Department of Medical Libraries has been retitled the Department of Knowledge Services. Librarians are now called information specialists. Here are a few examples of how they turn data into knowledge:
Archivist: I Stole Papers to Pay Bills
A state archivist was charged Monday with stealing hundreds of artifacts — documents representing “the heritage of all Americans,” according to the history buff who found some of them on eBay — to pay his household bills.
Daniel Lorello, 54, is accused of taking the rare items from the New York State Library, including Davy Crockett Almanacs, Currier and Ives lithographs and the 1865 railroad timetable for Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train. Authorities believe he hawked them for tens of thousands of dollars, using much of that to pay off his daughter’s credit card debt.
“This crime is especially repugnant, because it’s dealing with historic documents,” state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said. “It’s literally stealing the legacy of the state of New York page by page.”
Full story here.
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