June 2009

From the LA Times: Owners of Los Angeles area bookstores (some no longer in business) recall encountering the late pop star perusing their shelves.

A few years ago, Doug Dutton, proprietor of the former Dutton’s Books in Brentwood, was at a dinner with people from Book Soup, Skylight and other area bookstores. “Someone mentioned that Michael Jackson had been in their store,” Dutton said by phone Thursday, “And everybody said he’d shopped in their store too.”

“I’ve always wondered if there was a library in Neverland,” Doug Dutton mused. Indeed there was — Bob Sanger, Jackson’s lawyer, told LA Weekly that Jackson’s collection totaled 10,000 books.

What happens to a book published posthumously? It seems a life can be written, edited, rewritten and reedited long after the author’s death.

This is what’s transpiring with Hemingway’s posthumous memoir of his early days in Paris, “A Moveable Feast.” Along with portraits of other famous ex-pats (F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein), it provides a heart-wrenching depiction of marital betrayal.

Much married, Hemingway’s fourth and final wife Mary was the one who edited the first edition of “A Moveable Feast,” published by Scribner in 1964 (she became his widow upon the authors death in July 1961). She created a final chapter that dealt with the dissolution of Hemingway’s first marriage to Hadley and the beginning of his relationship with his second wife, Pauline, building some of it from parts of the book he had indicated he did not want included.

Early next month, Scribner, now an imprint of Simon & Schuster, is publishing a new edition of the book, what it is calling “the restored edition,” and this time it is edited by Seán Hemingway, a grandson of Hemingway and Pauline. Among the changes he has made is removing part of that final chapter from the main body of the book and placing it in an appendix, adding back passages from Hemingway’s manuscript that Seán believes paint his grandmother in a more sympathetic light.

What happens to a book published posthumously? It seems a life can be written, edited, rewritten and reedited long after the author’s death.

This is what’s transpiring with Hemingway’s posthumous memoir of his early days in Paris, “A Moveable Feast.” Along with portraits of other famous ex-pats (F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein), it provides a heart-wrenching depiction of marital betrayal.

Much married, Hemingway’s fourth and final wife Mary was the one who edited the first edition of “A Moveable Feast,” published by Scribner in 1964 (she became his widow upon the authors death in July 1961). She created a final chapter that dealt with the dissolution of Hemingway’s first marriage to Hadley and the beginning of his relationship with his second wife, Pauline, building some of it from parts of the book he had indicated he did not want included.

Early next month, Scribner, now an imprint of Simon & Schuster, is publishing a new edition of the book, what it is calling “the restored edition,” and this time it is edited by Seán Hemingway, a grandson of Hemingway and Pauline. Among the changes he has made is removing part of that final chapter from the main body of the book and placing it in an appendix, adding back passages from Hemingway’s manuscript that Seán believes paint his grandmother in a more sympathetic light.

“I think this edition is right to set the record straight,” said Seán Hemingway, 42, who said Mary cut out Hemingway’s “remorse and some of the happiness he felt and his very conflicted views he had about the end of his marriage.”

The Tulsa City-County Library system has restructured its top leadership positions by eliminating daily management duties for its chief executive officer, who will continue receiving the same compensation package and work from home up to two days a week.

The library commission approved moving library and business day-to-day operations from Chief Executive Officer Linda Saferite to Chief Operating Officer Laurie Sundborg.

The move has raised questions among library staff while apparently affecting employee morale, according to interviews conducted by the Tulsa World.

If delivery trucks driving around Johnson County emblazoned with ads for peculiar businesses prompt some double-takes, they’re doing their job.

Benjamin Button’s Diaper Service?

Kafka’s Pest Control?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s Pharmacy?

No, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are not entering the CVS-Walgreens War.

Four literary themed trucks are part of a new ad campaign for the Johnson County Library. Officials hope the trucks will spark interest and bring even more readers to their doors.

Full story here.

A multinational team has developed powerful algorithms that beat the accuracy of Netflix’s movie-recommendation engine by more than 10 percent, qualifying for a $1 million prize.

Full story in the NYT

Hopefully someday libraries will be able to use some of these technologies to help our patrons to find books as well as movies.

Library and Archives Canada has put a moratorium on buying paper documents and books for its collection.
Doug Rimmer, assistant deputy minister of programs and services at Library and Archives Canada, told CBC News this week the moratorium is temporary and only applies to items it buys. It will still acquire documents other ways, including gifts and donations, websites and government records.

The National Library of Scotland told a staff member to remove Saltires from his desk as they may intimidate non-Scottish workers, an MSP has learned.

SNP MSP Christine Grahame said the instruction to remove the flags was issued by the library’s director of customer services.

Ms Grahame described the policy as an “unacceptable slur” on Scotland’s national flag.

The library said the worker’s display of flags had been “excessive”.

The compilation, called Twitterature, will comprise abridged versions of classic novels, written in the style of Tweets – short messages sent via the social networking service.

Its authors, US students Emmett Rensin and Alex Aciman, have been commissioned by the publisher Penguin to write the book which will hit shelves later this year.

Tim Walch, director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum, delivered the following remarks June 17 to Hoover Park staff at a picnic to mark the 75th anniversary of the creation of the National Archives and Records Administration.

It’s clamp down time at the Seattle Public Library. The Board of Trustees voted unanimously Wednesday to impose overdue fines on previously exempt childrens books and English-as-a-second-language materials, charge a $5 fee for interlibrary loans and limit the number of materials a user can check out and place holds on.

Fines on previously exempt materials, which will remain exempt until changes start Oct. 15, are expected to bring an added $36,000 in annual revenue. City Librarian Susan Hildreth said the decision was not done to raise revenue, but to help staffers maintain their workload and keep materials in circulation.

The Seattle PI article goes on to quote some library users who are very unhappy about the proposed changes.