March 2011

The New York Times is again playing with online subscriptions. A new model unveiled today gives you 20 article views a month before you hit a paywall. Other online papers have tried to charge for access with limited success. It’s been interesting to watch the news models and industry develop over time.

Book: Everyday Information: The Evolution of Information Seeking in America

All day, every day, Americans seek information. We research major purchases. We check news and sports. We visit government Web sites for public information and turn to friends for advice about our everyday lives. Although the Internet influences our information-seeking behavior, we gather information from many sources: family and friends, television and radio, books and magazines, experts and community leaders. Patterns of information seeking have evolved throughout American history and are shaped by a number of forces, including war, modern media, the state of the economy, and government regulation. This book examines the evolution of information seeking in nine areas of everyday American life.

Book: Everyday Information: The Evolution of Information Seeking in America

All day, every day, Americans seek information. We research major purchases. We check news and sports. We visit government Web sites for public information and turn to friends for advice about our everyday lives. Although the Internet influences our information-seeking behavior, we gather information from many sources: family and friends, television and radio, books and magazines, experts and community leaders. Patterns of information seeking have evolved throughout American history and are shaped by a number of forces, including war, modern media, the state of the economy, and government regulation. This book examines the evolution of information seeking in nine areas of everyday American life.

Chapters offer an information perspective on car buying, from the days of the Model T to the present; philanthropic and charitable activities; airline travel and the complex layers of information available to passengers; genealogy, from the family Bible to Ancestry.com; sports statistics, as well as fantasy sports leagues and their fans’ obsession with them; the multimedia universe of gourmet cooking; governmental and publicly available information; reading, sharing, and creating comics; and text messaging among young people as a way to exchange information and manage relationships. Taken together, these case studies provide a fascinating window on the importance of information in the past century of American life.

Zediva’s secret is so outrageous, you may think it’s an early April Fool’s prank. But it’s no joke.

At its California data center, Zediva has set up hundreds of DVD players. They’re automated, jukebox-style. You’re not just renting a movie; you’re actually taking control of the player that contains the movie you want. The DVD is simply sending you the audio and video signals, as if it were connected to your home with a really, really long cable.

Full article

College & Research Libraries Goes FULLY Open Access
“In spite of economicuncertainty, I am pleased that ACRL has endorsed full open access in practice for its primary research journal. The intellectual value of open access, I believe, justifies its cost. Now the content of our journal will be freely available online to all around the world. Those of us involved in the production
of College & Research Libraries applaud its move to open access, but we are well aware of the financial challenges we face with our scholarly journal.”

Ex-Revere library official charged with embezzling at least $200k from city
The former director of the Revere (MA) Public Library has been indicted on charges that he embezzled at least $200,000 from the city to buy items he kept for himself or that he resold for profit on eBay and other venues.

Library staffers and patrons across Japan sent in photos and reports.

From Galley Cat: If you want to help, the Authors for Japan site just launched yesterday, as writers and publishing professionals have donated some great prizes to raise funds for earthquake and tsunami relief in Japan. We also created a Twitter list of writers living in Japan.

Also, here’s disaster relief information from the Japanese version of Save the Libraries

Up in Northfield MN, home of Carleton College (my son’s alma mater), the students, staff and faculty are mourning the passing of a campus favorite, Toff the cat.

A lovely obit and tribute to his fourteen years is found in Book Tryst.

Toff’s late-night study habits resulted in a run-in with campus security on at least one occasion. According to the campus crime blotter, officers responded to a motion detector alarm tripped at the school’s library around 3 a.m. The commander’s official report outlines the cold, hard facts,”I began a search of the Libe only to locate the suspect on the second floor. Looking into the uncaring, unfeeling eyes of the suspect, I realized that Toff really has an attitude towards Security.”

The private sector can often reformat government information in ways that help consumers, workers and companies.

Full article in the NYT

March 14 story in the NYT

Imagine the perfect library book. Its pages don’t tear. Its spine is unbreakable. It can be checked out from home. And it can never get lost.

The value of this magically convenient library book — otherwise known as an e-book — is the subject of a fresh and furious debate in the publishing world. For years, public libraries building their e-book collections have typically done so with the agreement from publishers that once a library buys an e-book, it can lend it out, one reader at a time, an unlimited number of times.

Full article here.

Our culture’s reluctance to hit the delete button has economic costs. Plus, all that data is hard to access.

Full opinion piece in the NYT