November 2010

The Riverhead Free Library was closed Tuesday morning after bedbugs were detected by an insect-sniffing dog in the building.

But the dog’s sense might have been wrong, according to library director Lisa Jacobs. She said the dog was brought in as a precaution Tuesday morning and did find traces of the parasitic insect inside. However Suburban Exterminators inspected the building Tuesday and found no sign of bedbugs.

“They couldn’t find anything,” Ms. Jacobs said. “They literally tore apart a chair. They looked in all the places the dog had given a positive.”
The pest control company laid traps Tuesday to see whether or not the building was bedbug-free.

Riverhead News reports.

The Chapel Hill Town Council may move the town library into the Dillard’s anchor spot in University Mall.

Discussions began this month, and the mall owner, Madison Marquette, asked the town to consider the space last Tuesday. On Friday, the company offered to sell the town 52,000 square feet for $4 million cash, provided that Dillard’s ends its lease.

The Town Council voted Monday night to delay plans to expand the library on Estes Drive and consider the mall as a permanent location. The town staff will make a report to the council Feb. 14.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/11/23/820705/chapel-hill-gets-offer-to-keep.html#ixzz168hVHmXm

Yale Daily News: Former dean of the graduate school Jon Butler will assume the post of Acting University Librarian Dec. 1, stepping into the gap left by the sudden death of University Librarian Frank Turner GRD ’71.

Butler, whose six-year term as dean ended this June, was on leave to write a book, but has agreed to assume leadership of Yale’s libraries until a new librarian is found, University President Richard Levin said in an e-mail Monday. Turner, a history professor who had served as University provost, passed away Nov. 11 at age 66.

“We all feel, and will continue to feel for a long time, the deep sadness of Frank Turner’s passing,” Levin said in the e-mail. “I write now, however, with the very good news that Frank’s long-time colleague and friend, Jon Butler…has agreed to serve as the Acting University Librarian until a permanent librarian is appointed.”

Butler has been chair of both the American studies and history departments as well as director of the division of humanities. He has also served on several search and advisory committees related to Yale’s libraries and he chaired the search for a University librarian in 1994.

Butler is currently working on a book called “God in Gotham,” about religion in New York City.

What I want LIS students to know
Jill Hurst-Wahl: Every fall, a new group of graduate students arrives in the classroom on their way to becoming librarians and information professionals.Each group is full of energy and ideas, and ready to take on the world. Each student believes in the power of information, even before they fully realize the power that information holds. Every person is willing to make sacrifices in order to reach his/her goal. While the wide-eyed “this is awesome” attitude remains during the semester, it often becomes tempered as students attend to the details of their classes and their lives as graduate students. We’re at the point in the semester where stress and elation are hand-in-hand. The end of the semester is in sight, but there is so much to do before then! With that as a backdrop, this is what I want LIS students to know (no matter where in the world you are)…

Overview page about essays here
Fish Market 101: Why Not a Reference User Experience?
Imagination, Sympathy, and the User Experience
Why I Don’t Use Libraries for Reference Anymore
The Visibility and Invisibility of Librarians

There has been much ado lately over the release of Mark Twain’s autobiography after a century-long embargo. But with only a small portion of the material in fact never-before-published, is this merely deft brand management by Twain from beyond the grave? Writer Craig Fehrman describes the tactics behind the embargo and how it has worked well as a modern day marketing strategy.

Download MP3 here

A contentious copyright case over e-reserves in university libraries has grown a little more tense. PW has learned that the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has sent a letter to the Copyright Clearance Center protesting its role in funding an ongoing publisher lawsuit against four individuals at Georgia State University over the use of electronic course content, and urging the CCC to “reconsider its role in funding the litigation going forward.”

Full article

News from the mother country, the UK: Writers Philip Pullman, Kate Mosse and Will Self have criticised government cuts that could see up to a quarter of librarians lose their jobs over the next year. Widespread library closures are expected as councils cut their services and look to volunteers in an attempt to balance budgets hit by the coalition’s spending review.

Mosse said “frontline support for literacy” was being cut, while Pullman declared that the librarian “is not simply a checkout clerk”, and Self condemned the “crude calculus of cost-benefit analysis” involved.

North Yorkshire is considering reducing its 42 libraries to 18 over four years, while Leeds is proposing to axe 20 smaller libraries. Cornwall, Brent, Lewisham, Hammersmith and Fulham, Richmond, Barnsley and Warrington are also planning closures. In Buckinghamshire, 14 libraries could become volunteer-run; in Gloucestershire, 12 will be closed if volunteers do not step forward. Camden, Westminster, Oldham, Southampton and Cambridgeshire are among the councils whose plans include greater use of volunteer staff.

Guardian UK reports.

The drug war in México and the resulting violence in Juárez are among the top international stories of the last two years. But the crisis moves in and out of the headlines, so you have to make a commitment to follow it. Or you can sign up for the Frontera List, which several times a day blasts e-mails containing news articles, links and commentary to its 600 subscribers. Story from El Paso Inc.

It also reminds the reader, day after day, of the mounting body count in México. Molly Molloy, the New Mexico State librarian who manages the Frontera list, says it’s important to keep accurate numbers.

“It is all we can do for so many people who have died so violently, and with no attention paid to why they are being killed,” Molloy says.
It’s not unusual to see the death count rounded down by at least 200 or sometimes 500, she says. “Even though the total for this year in Juárez has passed 2,800, many reports will say ‘more than 2,500’ or something like that.”

Here’s a video piece from Grit TV on Molloy and the Frontera List:

Patti Smith won the National Book Award for Nonfiction this past week for her memoir “Just Kids,” which recounts her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe in the ’60s and ’70s. But “Just Kids” is far from her first flirtation with the written word.

Smith has actually published numerous books of poetry. And unlike other successful rock stars who have stumbled awkwardly into verse (Jewel and Billy Corgan come to mind), Smith’s work reflects that she was a poet first, and that her love affair with the art runs deep.
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.

Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max’s Kansas City. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies.

Patti Smith won the National Book Award for Nonfiction this past week for her memoir “Just Kids,” which recounts her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe in the ’60s and ’70s. But “Just Kids” is far from her first flirtation with the written word.

Smith has actually published numerous books of poetry. And unlike other successful rock stars who have stumbled awkwardly into verse (Jewel and Billy Corgan come to mind), Smith’s work reflects that she was a poet first, and that her love affair with the art runs deep.
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.

Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max’s Kansas City. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies.

From Althouse: Accepting the National Book Award to applause and cheers, Ms. Smith — clearly the favorite of the night — choked up as she recalled her days as a clerk in the Scribner bookstore as a young woman.

“I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf,” she said. “Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.”