February 2009

The Washington Post reports on the recent death of Helen W. Dalrymple, a Library of Congress researcher and spokeswoman. She was the co-author of several books about the library and was a leading authority on its holdings, history and mission She died Feb. 13 in Arlington VA of brain cancer.

“She was quite simply one of the nicest and noblest public servants I have had the privilege of working with,” Librarian of Congress James Billington said. “I learned about the Library of Congress from her books before I was librarian.” Throughout the 1970s, Mrs. Dalrymple worked closely with Charles A. Goodrum, who was assistant director of the Congressional Research Service and later became director of planning and development for the library as a whole. When Goodrum was asked by the Harry N. Abrams publishing company to write a history of the library, Mrs. Dalrymple became his chief assistant. “Without her,” Goodrum said yesterday, “the book couldn’t have been written.”

Story on NPR:

Google wants to give you access to its huge database of scanned, out-of-print books, but the company is going to charge for it. Robert Darnton, head librarian at Harvard University, says the deal violates a basic American principle — that knowledge should be free and accessible to all.

Full story here.

The basis behind this story has been mentioned on LISNEWS before. In the New York Review of Books, Robert Darnton, wrote a piece called Google & the Future of Books that is dated February 12, 2009.

Walt Crawford has commentary on the Google Book Settlement in the current Cites and Insights. Link to PDF.

The Denver Public library has a Library Value Calculator on their website. It was mentioned in this story about a person who decided not to buy any books for one year. (Article indicates they are a librarian)

Excerpt: There are several reasons I stopped buying books in 2008. With a young child at home, a car payment and student loans, saving money was becoming more important to me than owning “Zazie in the Metro” or “Tamerlane: Sword of Islam.” As a librarian I also saw a limit on book buying as an opportunity to enrich my professional life by experiencing the library more fully as a patron. Finally, part of me just wanted to see if I could do it.

In the comments to the article there is this comment: Thank you Denver Post, for printing an article that damages further an already damaged industry, the local book shop. While libraries have their places, we desperately need the few surviving bookshops. How about an article boosting the buying of books?

A new technique developed by scientists at UC Berkeley and University of Massachusetts Amherst may drastically increase the ability of devices to store things.
Cal officials called the technique “innovative and easily implemented,” on Thursday.
The method lets microscopic nanoscale elements precisely assemble themselves over large surfaces.
Scientists said the technique could soon open doors to dramatic improvements in the data storage capacity of electronic media.

Full story here.

Optoma EP-PK-101 PICO Pocket Projector- 4 oz. is a projector about the size of an iPod.

Mention of pico projectors on Marketplace.

Any libraries trying these out yet? Any ideas of unique library functions that could be done with these?

(Graphic: Pico projector connected to a Wii)

Over 1,000 books with 1985 or older on the copyright page have already been quarantined behind an orange curtain.

Library Director Barbara Hegr said librarians will try to determine if the edition is a printing after the copyright date, so the book may be preserved.

Full story here.

The Allensville branch of the Mifflin County library has been closed since Feb. 10 because of the putrid smell. Library employees can’t find the skunk or get rid of the odor. They say everything they’ve tried has failed.

The library located in an old schoolhouse is in a rural area that serves many Amish and Mennonite families.

A township official suspects the skunk was never in the building, but may have walked past a ventilation unit outside the library. A professional trapper is on the job.

As college sites grow to millions of documents and balloon in complexity, officials turn to Google and other vendors for help

Early this decade, the number of Web-based documents stored on the servers of the University of Florida hovered near 300,000. By the end of 2006, that number had leapt to four million. Now, the university hosts close to eight million Web documents.

“We have approximately 20,000 employees, all producing stuff, and an increasing amount of that goes on the Web,” said Christine L. Schoaff, Florida’s director of Web administration. “The Web has become the locus of institutional memory.”

Full article in the Chronicle of Higher Education

Philadelphia’s public libraries can no longer open without a guard present, according to an internal Free Library e-mail obtained by The Inquirer.
The Free Library says it’s to ensure staff and patron safety but unions and library advocates believe it’s an effort to find new ways to close libraries.

You just can’t beat this headline: Warning! Eating books could seriously damage your health
The Guardian’s Book Blog says US libraries and charity shops face a battle to hang on to their children’s classics over fears they might be too dangerous.