October 2011

Let’s make our libraries indispensable!
So – here’s part of the recipe. (I’m not claiming to have thought of everything.)
•Pack libraries with books.
•Open when people are around.
•Have fast internet connections and computer-literate people at hand to help.
•Bring in lots of tables and chairs.
•Open loos in libraries.
•Associate epub books and Kindle books with books in their traditional form so people can switch seamlessly between them.
•Provide comfortable places to sit and read.
•Install coffee and lunch shops. (Experience of libraries which have already done this shows how the atmosphere can be lifted.)
•Employ cheerful, friendly librarians – who are not only able to show you where books are but tell you what’s in them. My current expectation when I walk into a library is that the people behind the counter (note where they are!) will conform to old-fashioned stereotypes of defensive doctors’-receptionists – and their politeness is so, so . . . detached. They don’t seem to be enthusiasts!
•Abolish fines. Books will be handed back in the end. Some of us just like to hang on to them longer than others and stop borrowing when fines top the price of buying.

The Digital Death of Copyright’s First Sale Doctrine
As the transition from physical to streaming or cloud-based digital distribution continues, further divorcing copyrighted works from their traditional tangible embodiments, it will increasingly be the case that consumers do not own the information goods they buy (or, rather, think they’ve bought). Under the court’s decision in Vernor, all a copyright owner has to do to effectively repeal the statutory first sale doctrine is draft a EULA that (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions. Sad to say, it’s about as easy as falling off a log.

Get It Loud In Libraries focuses on playing noisy, energetic, contemporary music in libraries; places that are relaxed, traditional and very, very quiet. Does not sound very promising does it? If we were to list the public places where we would host a gig, the library would be down near the bottom alongside the local police station. Yet this project has been a runaway success in the UK, hosting gigs across the country and boasting an impressive catalogue of acts including Adele and Chipmunk. To find out why it has been so successful we interviewed its creator, Stewart Parsons.

ACM opens another hole in the paywall
Unlike some newspapers, which are suffering badly in the Internet age, major nonprofit scholarly publishers such as the ACM are in good financial health, with a diverse array of activities and revenue sources: membership dues, conferences, refereed journals, magazines, paid job-advertisement web sites, and so on. Still, there is a lot of experimentation about how to survive as a publisher in the 21st century, and this appears to be the latest experiment.

It will be 200 years since Charles Dickens birth next year, but this week the city of Portsmouth will pardon author Carl Roberts for his book ‘This Side Idolatry’ which was banned from Portsmouth libraries for its criticism of the Dickens.

Ross Solly spoke to Dom Kippin, Literature Development Officer, from the Portsmouth City Council about the book on 666 ABC Canberra Breakfast.

About 35,000 attend Texas Book Festival, with new lit crawl
After months of organization, one gala, two days of programming, a brand-new lit crawl and about 35,000 attendees, the Texas Book Festival drew to a close Sunday with panels on genre fiction and American history, with a few cultural stars thrown in as anchors.

“Honestly, it’s not as difficult to draw a crowd to an event with Paula Deen or Molly Shannon as the star,” festival literary director Clay Smith said Sunday. “I measure success by seeing full panels by those lesser-known writers, and I think we had a good number of those this year.”

Booksellers Through the Ages
Stories from around the New York City, including adventures in fabric stores and the subways.

Cleveland-based WOIO reports:

AKRON, OH (WOIO) – Akron Police have arrested a man for Child Enticement after he tried to get her name, become “secret friends” with her.

The video of the report embedded below identifies the accused as a staffer from Akron-Summit County Public Library:

Zines, small do-it-yourself publications that originated in the 1930s, are enjoying a comeback among the Web-savvy.

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SLJ spoke to Lauren Myracle about how she dealt with being nominated as a 2011 National Book Awards finalist—only to withdraw her name days later after the award sponsor admitted to making a mistake.

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