May 2009

If you had the choice, what type of facility would you like adjoining your library?

Award-winning architect Moshe Safdie, who designed Salt Lake City’s showcase Main Library, has “great concern” with Mayor Ralph Becker’s proposal for a cop shop on the downtown cultural block, calling the resulting arrangement a “fundamental transformation for the worse.”

Safdie — along with fellow library architects Steve Crane and Mark Johnson — suggested that a “museum or performing-arts building” might work on Library Square, but warned that “a police station and emergency operations center is hardly a complementary use to the public life of the park.”

The Library Board voted Tuesday to oppose placing a police headquarters a book’s throw from the capital’s cultural icon. The board argues the cop complex — to be funded by a $125 million bond if voters approve it in November — is “incompatible” and poses a philosophical threat to the freedom-of-speech nature of Library Square.

Executives at major news companies from The New York Times Co. and The Associated Press on down are arriving at the consensus that they will simply have to find a way to charge people who read their articles online.

But it’s not such a simple sell.

In Denver, after the Rocky Mountain News was shut down, a group of several dozen former staffers joined a new Web site called InDenverTimes. They would cover investigative news, sports, features and the arts. In essence, they intended to create something approximating a newspaper experience, online, without a print equivalent.

An Experiment For $5 Per Month

Excitement built as they were convinced they could make a go of it with less than a fourth of the Rocky’s old circulation, at a fraction of the cost. All they needed were 50,000 people willing to pay $5 a month.

Fewer than 3,000 people signed up.

Full story on NPR (Audio available approx. 7:00 p.m. ET)

As seen on Identi.ca:

1. segphault: I’m really enamored with the Google Wave concept. It’s a federated communication system with an open protocol! http://is.gd/ImYj
2. alphakamp: @segphault I really dont see why/what they are doing, isnt this essentially what !omb is? why do this but drop jaiku?
3. segphault: @alphakamp: Wave isn’t a replacement for OMB. It’s a completely different kind of communication. Lots of potential for integrating the two.
4. alphakamp: @segphault ah now that makes sense, glad someone could interpret better than I can, #googlewave

Available reporting:
PCMag Digital Network
WebWare/CNET
PC World

Story on NPR:

Have you ever had that frustration of walking into a bookstore, looking for a specific book, and being told it’s out of print or not in stock?

One company wants to put an end to that. In a move some are calling the most significant step in publishing in the last 500 years, a New York company is trying to make books available on demand, printed out locally, rather than centrally as they always have been.

On Demand Books has installed a trial machine in a central London bookstore. It’s called the Espresso machine, but it has nothing to do with coffee beans. This baby’s grinding out books.

See additional text and listen to 4 minute audio piece at NPR.

Published in conjunction with the PEN American Center, Burn This Book is a powerful collection of essays that explore the meaning of censorship and the power of literature to inform the way we see the world, and ourselves.

More info here.

ALA Director for Membership Development John Chrastka is preparing a search for a new Director of the Berwyn (IL) Public Library. He posed the following question to facebook users: “What is your best interview question for potential new library directors?” Responses were unusually creative and even entertaining…

Jaime Corris Hammond – One of your librarians has stolen one of your other librarians’ pie. What do you do?

Rose Mungovan Hoffman – Why do you think YOU are the *best* candidate for the job?

Eric Odeen – A plane full of librarians crashes on the US-Canada border. Where do they bury the survivors?

Nick Buron – Putting aside how staff is allocated now, what is the best way to allocate your staff to serve the public.

John Amundsen – What is your favorite Replacements song? If they reply, “Bastards of Young,” hire him or her immediately, on the spot.

Lori Reed – How do you balance the need for competing priorities in this economy where library budgets are being slashed?
and – Do you think it is beneficial for a director to work the circulation desk?

Daniel Kraus – “What kind of puppy are you going to give me?”

Janet Swan Hill – How soon can we put a masseuse on staff?

Liz Danforth – “Express your views on the comparative role of paraprofessionals and professionals.”

Bruce Alan Wilson – How are you going to explain to the mayor and city council (or the county commission, or whatever body funds the library) why the library needs more money in these tough economic times?

ALA Director for Membership Development John Chrastka is preparing a search for a new Director of the Berwyn (IL) Public Library. He posed the following question to facebook users: “What is your best interview question for potential new library directors?” Responses were unusually creative and even entertaining…

Jaime Corris Hammond – One of your librarians has stolen one of your other librarians’ pie. What do you do?

Rose Mungovan Hoffman – Why do you think YOU are the *best* candidate for the job?

Eric Odeen – A plane full of librarians crashes on the US-Canada border. Where do they bury the survivors?

Nick Buron – Putting aside how staff is allocated now, what is the best way to allocate your staff to serve the public.

John Amundsen – What is your favorite Replacements song? If they reply, “Bastards of Young,” hire him or her immediately, on the spot.

Lori Reed – How do you balance the need for competing priorities in this economy where library budgets are being slashed?
and – Do you think it is beneficial for a director to work the circulation desk?

Daniel Kraus – “What kind of puppy are you going to give me?”

Janet Swan Hill – How soon can we put a masseuse on staff?

Liz Danforth – “Express your views on the comparative role of paraprofessionals and professionals.”

Bruce Alan Wilson – How are you going to explain to the mayor and city council (or the county commission, or whatever body funds the library) why the library needs more money in these tough economic times?

Carrie Gardner – why is the sky blue?

Nanette Perez – what would you do for a klondike bar?

Necia Parker-Gibson – well, you’ve got a cannibal, a goat and an anteater on one side of the river….

Kerry Ward – Will you place your hand on the Library Bill of Rights and pledge undying allegiance to the ALA Membership Director?

Jeff Croke – How fast can you replace the Dewey decimal system with a system that actually makes sense to the average library user?

Doug Dawson – A bookmobile leaves the Harold Washington branch of the Chicago Public Library at 9:17 AM on its way to Berwyn with ILL materials. How long before it is stuck at a dead stop in a traffic jam on the Eisenhower?

Elisa F. Topper – You have been kidnapped by aliens and are being taken to another planet–what 2 items would you take with you? (Real question from another director) and – Also another question (I was once asked in an interivew)–what was the last movie that you saw? (Can also be book read). Hesitated to answer–The 40 Yr Old Virgin! (movie)

John Chrastka – personal favorite from my interview here at ALA was: how comfortable would you be working with so many women?

Jenny Reiswig – No way, someone asked you that? I hope you answered “well I can only comfortably hold two in my lap at one time.”

Paul V. Higdon – HAHAHAHAHA. tHAT’S GREAT.

Tina G Johnson – IF should be the case, . . . would you work during your lunch? 🙂 LOL

Anne Heidemann – What’s the best piece of criticism you’ve ever received and how has it helped you? What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in the last six months?

If you are interested, or know a good candidate for a happening suburban Chicago departmental library, send that CV this way. The search is in progress through June 15.

Twitter’s co-founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, kicked off this year’s D: All Things Digital conference, run by The Wall Street Journal.

Twitter founders said they did not want to sell the company and saw themselves running it five years from now. “We’re building Twitter and building an innovative company,” Mr. Stone said. “We are 100 percent into Twitter.” Mr. Williams, Twitter’s chief executive, said he was modeling the firm after Microsoft and Apple and was willing to navigate tough times to build a long-term business.

The pair endorsed a few options, like giving companies and heavy users enhanced features for a fee. This could include charging them to get introductions to new followers. The founders also suggested that for a fee they would embrace the challenge of trying to authenticate a company or person’s identity (…as in “is ‘Dunkin’ Donuts’ the Dunkin’ Donuts”?).

An attorney for a former Lynn MA library board member with a spotty attendance record argued yesterday that his client had no obligation to attend board meetings in order to earn pension credit.

The attorney made the argument to the Lynn retirement board, which is attempting to rescind the pension of 60-year-old Linda Bassett of Marblehead, and recover about $20,000 in payments she has received.

Bassett applied for a pension in 2002 based in part on her volunteer service on the Lynn public library Board of Trustees in the 1980s. But records checked by the Globe last month showed that she last attended a meeting in March 1984, even though she claimed credit through September 1986, two years and five months after her last meeting. Boston Globe reports.

The Mansfield City Schools Board of Education approved administering mandatory drug tests for administrators and support staff during its meeting Tuesday night. The rationale is that the measure will save the district $90,000 annually in worker’s compensation premiums.

The board also approved abolishing the positions of the high school athletic secretary and reducing 4 full-time librarian paraprofessionals to part-time. Video and blurb here.

Alice Munro is today, 27 May 2009, announced as the winner of the third Man Booker International Prize.

The Man Booker International Prize, worth £60,000 to the winner, is awarded once every two years to a living author for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage. It was first awarded to Ismail Kadaré in 2005 and then to Chinua Achebe in 2007.

Best known for her short stories, Munro is one of Canada’s most celebrated writers. On receiving the news of her win, she said, ‘I am totally amazed and delighted.’

More information at the Man Booker website