September 2010

A tale of eccentric heirs, Zionist claims, a cat-infested apartment and a court fight the author would have understood all too well. Lengthy (ten page) history and explanation of all the players in the disposition of the works of Franz Kafka; article by Elif Batuman in the Sunday New York Times Magazine.

From The Bookslut, Jessa Crispin:

I try to get away from the damn thing, but it keeps coming at me. A friend visiting announced he had finished it on the airplane — did I want a look? There were emails, blog posts, multiple reviews in the same venue. And then, on vacation, in another country and in another language, there it was, in the Viennese bookstore window where I stopped to tie my shoe: FREIHEIT von Jonathan Franzen. It appears that everyone in the world is being stalked by Jonathan Franzen right now.

My proclamation that I was not going to read Freedom was beginning to make me look like a dick. Just read it already. What’s the big deal? It’ll take a few days, and then you will be a participant in the cultural zeitgeist, the document of our era, the book that made books relevant again. (At least, the book since Twilight. Or Harry Potter. Or the last Franzen, Corrections.) After all, the Guardian called it the book of the century. Surely you have to read that.

But no. Not in Vienna, not in New York, not on the plane, not in a box with a fox whatever the f*ck, no. So just shut up about it.

Read entire article here.

@Roncharles (Washington Post) tweets: “Totally Hip Video Book Reviewer dons bacon, admits errors, loves Danielle Evans’ short story collection BEFORE YOU SUFFOCATE YOUR OWN FOOL SELF.” Here’s the video book review and the written review.

For some time now, academic librarians have been resorting to Netflix to plug shortages in their media holdings. In fact, they have been thoroughly above-board about it; even the distinguished journal Library Trends ran an article about “Netflix in an Academic Library” last winter; author Ciara Healy wrote in the abstract that “Netflix turned out to be an excellent, cost-effective solution.” The other week, an acquisitions librarian at Concordia College in New York blogged about the blessing of her institution’s double eight-disc-at-a-time subscription, which she wrote saved her library $3,000. Though one commenter wondered “how you got this past legal for your university,” she responded that there had been “no legal repercussions.”

Full story here. Next line in story is – Whoops. Turns out Netflix isn’t actually cool with libraries using the service and doesn’t want early adopting librarians to be encouraging others to do so.

After spending decades in the outer reaches of eBay, Atari is about to receive some long-denied academic respect.

The University of Calgary is compiling a video game collection that will combine the best of Atari with PC gaming and even include newer consoles, like Wii and Xbox.

For Jerremie Clyde, a librarian with the university, the collection will help academics regard interactive media as worthy as film and fiction for serious study.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pioneering+pals+poised+scholarly+consideration/3558907/story.html#ixzz10GkVfV59

A former librarian will spend 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to theft and forgery charges.

Story here.

BANNED BOOKS WEEK September 25 – October 2, 2010.

Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982. The challenges have occurred in every state and in hundreds of communities. Click here to see a map of book bans and challenges in the US from 2007 to 2009.

Post your plans & or activities in a comment below please.

FCC to fast track fiber to schools and libraries
A big component of the Federal Communication Commission’s national broadband strategy is to turn “anchor institutions”—schools, libraries, and government buildings—into 1Gbps hubs of community access for high speed Internet. The agency took that agenda one step further on Tuesday by announcing that schools and libraries will soon be able to use E-Rate funds to obtain access to unused fiber-optic connections around the country, sometimes known as “dark fiber” lines.

“With these fiber networks, schools and libraries can provide students and communities with cutting-edge connectivity, while at the same time saving millions of dollars by bypassing more expensive options,” the draft proposal explains.

Bedbugs are having a heckuva comeback. Nearly eradicated in the 1950s, new limitations on pesticides have made killing them much more difficult.

And now…they’ve been found at the library, triggering the massive cleanup of an entire library system. They were discovered in Urbana, Frederick County MD at one of the state’s newest libraries.

“I think it’s ridiculous. How can someone get bedbugs in the books?” said one man. A librarian who used to work in the hotel industry spotted the pests in two children’s books left in the book drop Friday.

Right now, the contaminated books are in the back of a truck, baking in the sun in the parking lot. Once the inside of the truck reaches 120 degrees, the critters should die. But the sun and containment aren’t the only remedies. All eight Frederick County libraries have been sprayed with pesticides, which concern some patrons.

Story here and here.

Interesting analysis from Philip Nel’s blog Nine Kinds of Pie:

When I posted news of my “Censoring Children’s Literature” course last month, several people (well, OK, one person …maybe two) expressed an interest in hearing more about the course. So, given that Banned Books Week is coming up next week, here’s an update. Having lately been examining two versions of Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle (1920, 1988) and three versions of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964, 1973, 1998), we’ve been addressing this question: Do Bowdlerized texts alter the ideological assumptions of the original? The answer is more complicated than you might think.

Blog entry here.