May 2012

This week’s episode contains a telephone interview discussing the digital divide in John Lennon’s hometown of Liverpool and a news miscellany.

Direct Download: Ogg Vorbis Audio

Related links:
LISEvents: 4th QQML2012 International Conference
LISEvents: InPACT 2012 – International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends
LISEvents: eBUG Conference 2012
LISEvents: Crimea 2012
LISWire: Gale Digitizes Popular 20th Century Weekly For Students and Scholars
Dan Lynch
Seven Streets: Liverpool is getting left behind online
An Amazon List
The Star Beacon: Kingsville celebrates tradition while helping library
Reuters: Pakistan blocks Twitter access over “blasphemous content”
Agence France-Presse: Pakistan restores Twitter after block over Prophet cartoons
Voices For The Library: Reflections on the Arts Council Consultation Workshop
Stop the privitsation of Public Libraries
Ars Technica: WiFi’s future: faster, smarter, and fewer cables
Electronic Frontier Foundation: Hey ITU Member States: No More Secrecy, Release the Treaty Proposals
Electronic Frontier Foundation: EFF Joins Coalition Denouncing Secretive WCIT Planning Process
LISNews: Room for Debate: Threat or Salvation for Library?
New York Times: Seizing the Future or Renouncing Its Past? — Should the New York Public Library go forward with its plan to consolidate two branches into a renovated version of its main building?

LISTen: An LISNews.org Program — Episode #198 by The Air Staff of Erie Looking Productions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

The New York Public Library’s $300 million plan to sell its Mid-Manhattan branch and the Science, Industry and Business Library and consolidate them in a renovated main building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street continues to generate criticism. Opponents, hundreds of scholars and others who have signed a petition to block the plan, have said it would undermine its mission as a research center because millions of books would be moved to a storage facility in Princeton, N.J. But library officials say the move is vital to saving the two branches, would have little effect on research and would bring in more users. Should the library go forward with the plan?

Read the discussion

From The Verge,
“As the publication world is dragged, kicking and screaming, into the digital world, a lot of complex issues come up. One of the most important, especially for librarians and archivists (not to mention students of history looking to the future), is the question of preservation…The problem, says Barbara Galletly reporting for Digital Book World, is that the foundation for such a transition has not been properly laid, digital preservation is a largely chaotic, random affair right now, and the metadata itself is unstable.”

The curious case of the librarian and the detective

When Colin Campbell Ross was sent to the gallows at the Old Melbourne Gaol in 1922, few would have guessed his name would be cleared by a humble librarian more than 80 years later. Kevin Morgan was the librarian, historian and author whose book, Gun Alley, was instrumental to Ross receiving a pardon in 2008 for his wrongful conviction for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl in a Melbourne alley. To coincide with the release of a new edition of Gun Alley with an epilogue detailing Ross’s pardon, Morgan yesterday launched a second book, Detective Piggott’s Casebook, based on a detective’s scrapbooks he discovered researching the Gun Alley case.

California Schools hiring fewer librarians
California is issuing fewer credentials for public school service positions such as librarians, school nurses and administrators, and its schools are employing fewer service staff, according to a recent report by the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

The commission issued 11 percent fewer service credentials between the 2006-07 and 2010-11 school years. The number of people employed in service positions declined 9 percent during the same period, according to the report.

https://unglue.it/
Unglue.it is a service provided by Gluejar, Inc. It’s a place for individuals and institutions to join together to liberate specific ebooks and other types of digital content by paying rights holders to relicense their works under Creative Commons licenses.

What does this mean?

Book-lovers and libraries everywhere can join together to set books free.
Authors and publishers get the compensation they deserve.
Books that are out of print, not available as ebooks, or otherwise hard to enjoy will be available for everyone to read, share, learn from, and love — freely and legally.

Are Libraries Doomed?

“Our librarians will find a way to make life better for us. Their working in a library building as we know such is doubtful. There won’t be a library for us to go to. We’ll be ordering e-books and other media from them by computer. They’ll send them to us by computer. Will do everything by computer. Probably we’ll never see a librarian face to face. In fact, the process may be automated. I’m optimistic. I’m all for progress. But I’m glad I won’t see this progress. I treasure my memories of my good times in public libaries big and small, near and far. Good times beyond count.”

How mobile networks are policing the web — badly
While the British government considers forcing internet providers to censor the web, it turns out that many European mobile operators are happily acting as censors themselves already — and mistakenly blocking lots of legitimate sites along the way.

The Millionaire Authors’ Club
You think writers live in garrets? Think again. Carl Wilkinson introduces the Millionaire’s Club, an exclusive band of authors whose books have sold more than a million copies.

Residents speak up about ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ at Library Board meeting
The furor and debate over the removal of the erotic novel “Fifty Shades of Grey” from Brevard County Public Libraries’ shelves continue to be a page-turner.

While board members and the library services director said they appreciated input from four people who spoke in favor of the book’s return and one who supported its removal, they did not talk about giving “Fifty Shades of Grey” space again at the 17 Brevard County Public Libraries branches.