September 2011

What are the toughest questions tossed at reference librarians?
I asked the city librarian about the system’s struggles in an interview for a local news website. The story appeared earlier this month, and it didn’t take long for cranky online commenters to descend. And then I got to wondering. Never mind Dewey and his decimals. What are the most difficult questions that reference librarians have ever had to answer?
I decided to ask them. Here’s what librarians from across North America had to say via email:

Defining ‘Library’
We are now engaged in acts of social reconstruction. Just as digital networks have forced us to deeply question the role of publishers, they also force us to reconsider the role and purpose of libraries, which developed in the modern era around the presumption of the Industrial Age book right along with publishing. A library fills many needs in its community; it is an after-school day care and gaming center, an employment hall and meeting space, offering shelter and privacy. It has also been a place with shelf upon shelf of CDs, newspapers, magazines, and books. Indeed, our understanding of libraries is so bound up in the physical world that their presumptive value has most often been measured through a single proxy: how many books they hold.

Do Book Ratings Belong in Library Catalogs?
“To me it feels like a violation of public library philosophy. I have less of a problem when the rating is average or high because I assume it encourages patrons to check out a book they are already considering. But when patrons see a low rating on a book in our catalog, especially a rating not attributed to an individual patron, it appears that our library is bad-mouthing the book…and that discourages, rather than promotes, literacy.”

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

–The Great Gatsby
Chapter 3

Over at Attempting Elegance, Jenica Rogers is “Feeling Pointy“:

“I am, professionally and personally, livid; I do not appreciate condescension, eradication of librarians’ professional expertise, or sidestepping of questions that are completely valid in a consumer-seller relationship in which a carefully delineated accreditation relationship is also involved. Our vendors seem to think that going straight to the faculty is going to benefit them, but I don’t understand their logic in sidestepping librarians. We’re the ones with the budgets. We’re the ones they have to work with. Yes, our faculty are influential, key stakeholders and partners, and are the source of our research agenda and teaching and learning needs, but still: How is undermining and alienating the librarian middleman going to help business?

Anger and bewilderment aside, I’m caught between the proverbial rock and hard place — I must support the faculty and students who rely on the research materials published by the ACS. But I must also strive to manage the budgets, resources

from the the-public-domain-is-expensive dept

The Federal Court’s PACER system is really quite misguided. It’s the system that the federal courts use to distribute judicial records (court filings, rulings, etc.), but rather than making that info available to the public, it’s basically locked up behind a paywall, and it costs people 8 cents per page to download documents. Well, it did cost 8 cents per page. They’ve just announced that they’re jacking up the fees to 10 cents per page, and that can add up pretty quickly when accessing a lot of court documents or some rather long filings or rulings.

Full article

To Defeat Terrorists, Start Using the Library
It seems terrorists, too, are susceptible to the syndrome known as Too Much Information.

The revolution in information technology has opened a new vein of intelligence collection and analysis that in many instances can prove more useful than traditional forms of spycraft. In the world of espionage, information and the clandestine means of gathering it are both treasured. “Open source” intelligence, by contrast, is a commodity with little inherent value. Instead, the capacity to organize and analyze these public streams of information becomes a key asset. This represents a drastic shift, with far-reaching implications for intelligence agencies.

Iowa man lands in jail for overdue library books
A Newton man who didn’t return overdue books and CDs to the city’s public library for months landed in jail on a theft charge. He was charged with third-degree theft on Aug. 20 after he failed to return items worth $770, police said. He checked out 11 books and six CDs, including a box set, in January. He was charged after repeated efforts to get him to return the items.

Please tell me someone is actually planning a “Topless Foam Party For Millenials @ Your Library” party!

University of Western Ontario (UWO) librarians are still on strike.