November 2010

Kathy DeGrego’s T-shirt lets you know right away she isn’t an old-school librarian. “Shhh,” it says, “is a four-letter word.”

That spirit of bookish defiance has guided the makeover of the suburban Denver library system where DeGrego works. Reference desks and study carrels have been replaced by rooms where kids can play Guitar Hero. Overdue book fines have been eliminated, and the arcane Dewey Decimal System has been scrapped in favor of bookstore-like sections organized by topic.

More from the LA Times.

OCLC Research Launches YouTube Channel
View “OCLC Research Shorts” produced by staff from the laboratories of OCLC Research that feature some of our current work or recent findings.

For a fresh, succinct view of what OCLC Research staff are up to, check out the new OCLC Research YouTube Channel. http://www.youtube.com/oclcresearch

Three videos are currently available:

1.Born Digital, which asks the question, “What does ‘born digital’ mean to you?” and provides some thoughtful answers.
2.Roy’s Treehouse #1: Up in the Clouds, in which Roy Tennant provides a quick example of how cloud computing can make you more effective.
3.Greening ILL Practices, which provides an overview of green packaging and shipping practices covered in the OCLC Research report.
New videos will be made available regularly. We encourage you to subscribe to the OCLC Research YouTube Channel to stay up to date on the latest offerings.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A bomb threat targeting Ohio State University was e-mailed to the FBI Tuesday morning, prompting the school to evacuate four academic buildings, including the main library. An initial search turned up nothing out of the ordinary, officials said.

The threat was in a message received Tuesday at FBI headquarters in Washington, said Paul Bresson, an agency spokesman based there. Campus police said they were alerted at 8:19 a.m. Tuesday that the threats involved the William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library and three laboratory buildings.

“This is still in our assessment a threat, and there have been no suspicious package or devices found at this time,” university Police Chief Paul Denton said at a news conference.

Authorities did not identify the source of the bomb threats at Ohio State, one of the nation’s largest universities, with more than 56,000 students at its main Columbus campus. The FBI’s Bresson declined to provide information about where the e-mail appeared to come from or whether the bureau believed the threat was real.

More info & photos from the CBS local affiliate.

They did the right thing.

The Washington County Public Library thanks all who voted for the library system’s 1-mill, five-year levy on the Nov. 2 ballot. By voting yes, voters affirmed the importance of their libraries’ services to themselves and to their communities.

As a lifelong resident of Washington County, I had faith in the citizens of our county; but I certainly did not take anything for granted during this election since library services were at stake. We recruited some of the county’s outstanding citizens to lead our levy effort: Rick Peoples, Dave Combs, and Emerson Shimp. I would like to send special thanks as well to all our supporters, volunteers, library trustees, Friends of the Library groups, staff, and loyal patrons who together assured our levy’s success. The library levy was vital to help maintain library operations. Everyone benefits.

Justin J. Mayo, librarian
Washington County Public Library

From the NYTimes: The shelves were stocked with books. The maple benches were grouped like shin-high honeycombs across the beeswax-colored floor. The Book Hive at P.S. 9 and M.S. 571’s joint facility on Underhill Avenue seemed to have everything. Everything, that is, except a librarian.

After years of planning, The Book Hive opened on Nov. 12, only to promptly shut its doors. The library, which services two Prospect Heights schools sharing the same building, will remain inactive until the schools hire a librarian, a daunting task in the age of slashed budgets and shared services.

“That’s what is so surprising about this whole thing,” said parent Karen Fein, 42. “I mean they were willing to get a half a million dollars to construct this library and outfit it beautifully, and now we don’t have a librarian.”

The Book Hive was constructed with $500,000 in city funding obtained through the offices of Borough President Marty Markowitz and Councilwoman Letitia James. The staff went to work, converting a neglected temporary classroom back into a library.

Transgibberish is recent terminology gaining currency in the library world. It is a broad term encompassing and transcending many existing concepts. Because transgibberish is not a library-centric concept, many in the profession are unsure what the term means and how it relates to libraries’ instructional mission and to other existing ideas about various literacies. Transgibberish is such a new concept that its working definition is still evolving and many of its tenets can easily be misinterpreted. Although this term is in flux, academic librarians should watch developments in this new field to continually assess and understand what impact it may have on the ways they assist and interact with their patrons and each other.

Article on transgibberish here.

Article in the LA Times: In Jordan, a bookstore devoted to forbidden titles

“There are three no-nos,” the owner of Al Taliya Books explains with a big smile. “Sex, politics and religion. Unfortunately, that’s all anyone ever wants to read about.”

Saw this over at EarlyWord. I am linking to them and you can follow their link to the article because they make a few good side comments with their link.

Looking for more book content for your e-reader or mobile device? Publishers large (HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and small are offering digital galleys to book reviewers and librarians through NetGalley. Registration is required, but is quick, simple, and free. Browse galleys by publisher or genre; download galleys in ePub or Kindle format.

In the past week, I’ve gotten galleys of new books by David Foster Wallace, David Vann, Günter Grass, and Linda Sue Park. Each publisher handles DRM differently, but every book I’ve requested so far has had a 60-day expiration date. Reviews aren’t required. If you do decide to do reviews, NetGalley suggests emailing publishers with a link to your reviews as a courtesy (whether you post them on your blog, to GoodReads, to a review publication, etc).

Nice!

NetGalley

Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism
Even more amazing has been the flood of selfless generosity on Reddit. The upvoting system has encouraged the Reddit community to be brave. As a general rule, Redditors are not mocked or scoffed at for offering advice and support to one another. The result has been an unprecedented swell of uncontrolled, unmitigated, and often unsolicited help and succor. From using software prowess to help clean up family photos to donating thousands of dollars to an individual’s cause, the Reddit community has come out in force time and again to help one another. Here are 25 of the most incredible examples of that unique brand of Reddit altruism.