May 2010

Texas likes to boast about its size, but the Big D Dallas Library is getting slapped with fewer open hours…once 44 per week, now 24.

As city officials try to handle a devastating $130 million budget gap next year, one of the major cuts is likely to be to at the city’s libraries. Discussed at this afternoon’s City Council quality of life committee briefing were details on just how bad it may get.

If proposed cutbacks are implemented, the downtown central library will cut its hours from 44 to 24 per week. The library would be closed Monday through Wednesday, open from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

The cuts would eliminate the equivalent of 96 full time positions. But that’s not all. Funding is also in jeopardy for neighborhood libraries. The city is hoping to find money to prevent it, but branch library hours could be cut from 40 to 20 hours per week. This would eliminate the equivalent of another 88 full time positions. Dallas City Hall Blog.

May 18, 2010 Hood River OR County voted not to support the formation of a new Library District. Measure 14-37 was defeated: 46 % voted yes and 54% voted no. As a result, there is no funding to continue library operations and Hood River County Library closes its doors to the public on July 1, 2010.

Branches at Cascade Locks and Parkdale were established in 1912, the same year that the Women’s Club received the Carnegie grant to build the Hood River building. This Library system has been in continuous operation for 98 years.

The first time proved to be the charm for the Scottsboro Alabama Public Library. With the help of librarian Karen Chambers in Woodville, Scottsboro Public Library Director Nancy Gregory applied for a grant.
“I wouldn’t even had known about it if it wasn’t for Karen,” said Gregory.

Gregory’s application paid off as she learned earlier this week the Dollar General Literacy Foundation has awarded a $3,000 summer reading grant to the Scottsboro Public Library.

“We are very excited,” said Gregory. “It’s just amazing that they are sending us that much money.”

Dollar General Chairman and CEO Rick Dreiling said the summer reading grant aims to help libraries and nonprofit organizations with the implementation or expansion of summer reading programs.

“The Dollar General Literacy Foundation is inspired by the work Scottsboro Public Library is doing to help children continue their education and improve their literacy skills during the summer,” said Dreiling.

Story from The Daily Sentinel.

The shift is taking place…from acquisition, to access reports the Globe.

Facing an unprecedented budget crunch, the Harvard University cancelled print copies of more than 1,000 journal titles last year in favor of online subscriptions. And they’re is turning toward other universities to collaborate and share acquisitions, all while trying to maintain its libraries’ stature in an increasingly digital world.

“We need to worry less about buying everything, and instead ensure that we have access to these materials,’’ said David Lamberth, a divinity school professor who is overseeing a group tasked with reinventing Harvard’s libraries. “The real issue is giving present and future scholars the ability to find what they need to find.’’

Students can now sit in their dorms and order books directly from their computers to be delivered within 24 hours to the library of their choice from the Harvard Depository, a high-density storage facility where a forklift is required to fetch books from 30-foot shelves. In some cases, students can avoid the library altogether; materials can be downloaded or the library will scan relevant book chapters and e-mail them.

The Web is a teeming commercial city. It’s haphazardly planned. Its public spaces are mobbed, and signs of urban decay abound in broken links and abandoned projects. Malware and spam have turned living conditions in many quarters unsafe and unsanitary. Bullies and hucksters roam the streets. An entrenched population of rowdy, polyglot rabble seems to dominate major sites.

People who find the Web distasteful — ugly, uncivilized — have nonetheless been forced to live there: it’s the place to go for jobs, resources, services, social life, the future. But now, with the purchase of an iPhone or an iPad, there’s a way out, an orderly suburb that lets you sample the Web’s opportunities without having to mix with the riffraff. This suburb is defined by apps from the glittering App Store: neat, cute homes far from the Web city center, out in pristine Applecrest Estates. In the migration of dissenters from the “open” Web to pricey and secluded apps, we’re witnessing urban decentralization, suburbanization and the online equivalent of white flight.

Full article in the NYT

George Washington’s library book returned 221 years late
A library book borrowed by the first U.S. president, George Washington, has been returned to a New York City’s oldest library, 221 years late. “A few days after learning of the situation, staff at Washington’s home in Virginia, Mount Vernon, offered to replace Vattel’s “Law of Nations” with another copy of the same edition,” the library said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina is telling the state Department of Revenue to back off on a request for “constitutionally protected private information” of Amazon.com customers.

In a letter Thursday to Revenue Secretary Kenneth Lay, the group says it will join an existing lawsuit brought by the online retail giant if the department “persists in its demand” for North Carolina customers’ names and addresses.

Full article here.

WAYNE NJ — Hundreds gathered at the State House Annex in Trenton recently to oppose Gov. Chris Christie’s proposal to cut 74 percent of funding for the state library system, an action many believe will be nothing less than devastating.

Library patrons from across New Jersey voiced their concerns over the proposed cuts via 60,000 orange postcards hand delivered the day of the rally including 5,000 from the Wayne Public Library and its Preakness branch. Employees from the Valley Road location joined forces with over 650 people who filled the annex courtyard to help spread the message that “libraries matter.”

“I feel we needed to do our part because these cuts being proposed would be disastrous,” said Doreen Shoba, head of the reference department at the Wayne Public Library.

Included in the cuts would be the elimination of all statewide library programs and services. New Jersey stands to lose roughly $4.5 million in federal funding leaving clientele severely impacted. Amongst the biggest losses will be access to electronic databases such as RefUSA and EBSCO, as well as the statewide interlibrary loan and delivery service. Many libraries including Wayne could also lose access to the Internet as well.

Miss Manners advises Gentle Reader on how to handle the Nosy Librarian who reads the titles of her borrowed books out loud.

A new bibliographic guide to academic literature compiled by two Texas Tech University librarians shows that Michael Jackson’s influence stretched beyond pop culture into the halls of academia.

Their list of scholarly papers and peer-reviewed articles, culled from more than 100 databases for a special issue of The Journal of Pan African Studies, found the King of Pop referenced in psychology, medical, chemistry, mass communications and even engineering journals.

Yet “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’: MJ in the Scholarly Literature: A Selected Bibliographic Guide” merely scratched the surface of scholarly content related to Jackson, noted Texas Tech Associate Librarians Susan Hidalgo and Rob Weiner. They called the breadth of Jackson’s influence truly astounding.

“I was surprised by a lot of what I read – I just thought I knew Michael Jackson,” said Hidalgo, also head of access services for the Texas Tech University Library in Lubbock, Texas.

Hidalgo and Weiner said they avoided works they deemed sensationalist, saying such literature would defeat the purpose of honest investigation.

Instead, they focused on peer-reviewed or scholarly works with unique Jackson content that might shed light on the way people view larger-than-life celebrities – including one of the most sensational and contentious figures ever to grace the cover of a tabloid.