August 2012

The upswing in self-published books has spawned an industry in which paid reviewers praise them. Todd Rutherford used to make $28,000 a month. Article in the NYT.

Full article

Budget cuts will shut the Seattle libraries for a week, but a group of hardcore readers is organizing a “People’s Library” to fill the void.

The People’s Library [ http://duetobudgetcuts.wordpress.com/ ] wants to provide reading material, kid’s activities, and Internet access to the public while the libraries are out of service.

Organizer Yates Coley tells Ross and Burbank she and her friends thought up the idea about a week ago upon learning of the library furlough from Aug. 27 through Sept. 2.

School librarians do more than shush students – they help teachers with reading curricula, encourage kids to read outside of school, and they’re proven to be linked to high student achievement.

If they have the time.

About 73 percent of the commonwealth’s public schools have taken part in a study that reveals school libraries are hurting for funding and resources.

By the time the libraries realize how badly they’re in hock to you, their faculty will depend on all your journals, and the libraries will have no choice but to cough up the money for your extortionate fees.

But you’re losing sleep when libraries complain about your journals’ prices. Relax. Librarians are whiners. All fuss and bother; no action.
What are they going to do? Cancel the journals you acquired? Imagine the hue and cry from the faculty who rely on them. Most librarians won’t contemplate such action, devoted as they are (poor, well-meaning saps) to the needs of faculty and students. You think they’ll band together with other libraries and mount a boycott? If they can’t bring themselves to disappoint faculty and students at their own institutions, how can they imagine disappointing those they serve at multiple institutions?
I suppose it is theoretically possible that the Association of Research Libraries or the Association of College and Research Libraries (yes, they are two different institutions, thus making my point about libraries’ inability to coordinate on this or any other movement) might someday make noise about a boycott. If so, just make some noise in return about the unfortunate possibility of a lawsuit alleging restraint of trade.

In building partnerships with libraries in Kansas, Denver and, just announced today, California, e-bookstore Bilbary is attempting to create a new e-books sales channel through libraries.

Bilbary has built a series of links on library websites that take patrons to the Bilbary site where they can buy e-books. The library who referred the patron gets 50% of the profit from the purchase.

A British charity has called for a burning of the book “50 Shades of Grey” by E.L. James. Wearside Women in Need, which focuses on domestic violence, has asked readers to drop off books for a planned bonfire on Nov. 5.

“I do not think I can put into words how vile I think this book is,” Wearside Women’s Clare Phillipson told the BBC, “and how dangerous I think the idea is that you get a sophisticated but naive, young women and a much richer, abusive older man who beats her up and does some dreadful things to her sexually.”

Detroit library director reinstated, offered new $156K contract
The Detroit Public Library board flip-flopped this week, reinstating its ousted executive director and moving to extend her contract for a year.

From The Washington Post: Peter TerVeer was an up-and-coming auditor for the Library of Congress’s inspector general’s office. His boss liked him so much he tried to set him up with his single daughter, TerVeer says.

But when the boss discovered TerVeer was gay after learning from his daughter TerVeer “Liked” a Facebook page for same-sex parents, the supervisor harassed him with religious-based homophobia — and eventually got him fired, TerVeer alleges in a federal lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed Aug. 3 in U.S. District Court in Washington, claims that TerVeer, 30, suffered discrimination based on sex stereotyping and his religious beliefs in violation of Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act.

It charges that TerVeer was subjected to a hostile work environment for more than a year by his supervisor, John Mech, who quoted biblical passages to him condemning homosexuality.

Additional details in The Washington Blade.

His face has been printed in books and used in films, but for decades, no one knew the name of the fierce-eyed Civil War soldier in the portrait, known only as “unidentified.”

But a chance encounter between an avid Civil War photography collector and Villa Rica, Ga., resident Patricia Mullinax at last allowed the Library of Congress, which has the portrait, to identify her great-great grandfather, Stephen Pollard.

Pollard was a Confederate soldier from Georgia with a thin moustache, wearing an old-fashioned tie, with a brace of pistols in his belt and an 1855 muzzle-loading pistol, with stock, in his two hands, according to the Washington Post. The young soldier went on to survive the Civil War — and eventually have his image featured in Ken Burns’s famous film on the conflict, becoming famous, but still unknown.

NASA began a new chapter of its Martian chronicle Aug. 22 when the agency named its Mars rover Curiosity’s landing site after the late science fiction author Ray Bradbury.

Curiosity’s landing site inside Mars’ vast Gale Crater was rechristened “Bradbury Landing” to honor the iconic writer’s legacy and dedication to Mars exploration, NASA officials said.

Ray Bradbury died in June at age 91. His first book, “The Martian Chronicles,” paints a vivid picture of the human exploration of Mars through a series of short stories. The book was published in 1950 and later adapted into a TV series and video game.

Full article

Note: The landing was on Aug 5th but they renamed the landing site on August 22nd because that is Mr. Bradbury’s birthday.