November 2011

It’s Not About Libraries, It’s About Amazon

The Penguin move should be seen not as corporate verdict on libraries, but as a reaction to Amazon’s entry into the library market. When Overdrive was distributing content to libraries on their own platform, the publishers were able to view Overdrive, and libraries in general, as a counterweight to Amazon. But the extension of Overdrive lending to the Kindle flipped libraries into the Amazon column. That’s the best way to understand the Penguin decision, though you won’t see them saying that.

Tips and Traps When Buying for the Aspiring Book Collector.
But there are almost as many ways into the field as there are collectors. The obvious first step is to collect a favorite author—though, unless your pockets are very deep, think hard about who that is. Writers who were commercially successful may have had larger print runs, but also tend to attract more people who specialize in their books. And if you like Graham Greene, John Dickson Carr, Philip K. Dick, Ed McBain or P.G. Wodehouse, remember how prolific they were.

This fine is not so fine
Lorain Public Library patron Caprice Anderson got a big surprise at the main library Wednesday.

It was a bill for $322 in late fees. But she said she hadn’t been to the library in months and she never checked out the items for which her card was used.

“I’m actually a frequent book reader, but I normally buy my books,” said Anderson, 27, of Lorain. “I was going to go to the library and find something I haven’t read. That’s when I found out my card was used.”

Anderson doesn’t know who used her library card, and filed a police report after coming across the staggering late fees.

Libraries borrowing marketing ideas from bookstores
“It’s standard operating procedure,” said Pat Losinski, director of the library system. “Our mission and our drive is to make materials relevant to our customers. We’re going out of our way to show customers that we’re aware of their investment.”

Rochester Public Library: Beginning was anything but smooth
Buffalo had one. And Syracuse had just gotten $200,000 from the Carnegie Foundation to build a new one.
So it was not easy for Rochesterians to accept the fact that their fair city, famed near and far for the quality of its industrial products, was entering the 20th century without a municipal library to its name.
Especially when the Chamber of Commerce in 1903 surveyed the seven leading institutional libraries in the city (such as the one at the University of Rochester), and found that their total collection of books numbered only 180,000 — barely one book per resident, writes former city historian Blake McKelvey.
“Rochester is disgraced,” former alderman Devillo Selye declared in 1904. Mayor James G. Cutler agreed.
So what did the city do about it?

The future of information access, part 1 and The future of information access, part 2… from Jill Hurst-Wahl. Earlier this month, Sean Branagan, who is the director of the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship in the Newhouse School of Public Communications, asked that she guest lecture in his class on the topic of the future of information access. The class is seeking input from a wide variety of industries on what the future may hold and its impact on communications (e.g., news). In her 1.5 hour lecture, she spoke about the following ideas, some of which are evident in today’s environment…

Book by author Robert Levine – FREE RIDE: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back

Review by Jeffrey Rosen in the NYT

Excerpt: “The real conflict online,” Levine writes, “is between the media companies that fund much of the entertainment we read, see and hear and the technology firms that want to distribute their content — legally or otherwise.” By delivering content they don’t pay for, or selling content far below the price it cost to create, Levine says, information and entertainment distributors like YouTube and The Huffington Post become “parasites” on the media companies that invest substantially in journalists, musicians and actors; the distributors drive down prices in a way that sucks the economic lifeblood out of those who create and finance the best achievements of our culture. The result is a “digital version of Wal-Mart capitalism,” in which free-riding distributors reap all the economic benefits of the Internet by cutting prices, and culture suppliers are forced to cut costs in response. This dynamic, Levine argues, destroys the economic incentive to create the kinds of movies, television, music and journalism consumers demand, and for which they are, in fact, quite willing to pay.

TAMPA — The family of the young woman raped and brutally beaten outside the Bloomingdale Regional Public Library in 2008 is suing the people who designed and built the library.

The lawsuit, filed earlier this month, says the after-hours book drop outside the library was “inherently dangerous,” created a “latent hazard” and posed an “undue risk” to patrons required to get out of their cars in an area hidden from view to deposit books.

The attack survivor, at the time an 18-year-old East Bay High School senior, pulled up to the book drop the night of April 24, 2008, as she spoke with a friend on the cell phone. The library was closed. The friend heard the young woman say she saw a “weird guy” sitting on a bench, and then heard a door chime.

More from Tampa Bay News.

Penguin reverses course for now on Kindle lending
One of the country’s largest publishers, Penguin Group (USA), is temporarily restoring libraries’ ability to loan their e-books for Amazon.com’s Kindle – but only through the end of the year.

PTFS/LibLime Granted Provisional Use of Koha Trademark in New Zealand
PTFS/LibLime is prepared to transfer the trademark to a non-profit Koha Foundation with the provision that the Foundation hold the trademark in trust and not enforce it against any individual, organization, or company who chooses to promote services around Koha in New Zealand. PTFS/LibLime encourages a direct dialog with Koha stakeholders to determine an equitable solution for the disposition of the trademark that serves the best interests of the libraries who use Koha.