September 2012

New license plate encourages drivers to ‘Support Kentucky’s Libraries’

A new Kentucky license plate gives drivers the opportunity to show their support for libraries. Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives Commissioner Wayne Onkst recently presented the “Support Kentucky’s Libraries” license plate to Gov. Steve Beshear and First Lady Jane Beshear.

“Kentucky’s public libraries welcomed more than 20 million visitors last year who checked out more than 30 million books and other items,” said Beshear. “It’s clear that Kentuckians love their public libraries, and now they have another way to show their support.”

The new plate is available at any county clerk’s office with a $25 application fee. At the time of issuance, an optional $10 can be paid to fund library science scholarships.

Full article

Librarian Patience Has Run out on E-Book Lending Issues, Library Association Says

Speaking at a private gathering of publishers organized by the Association of American Publishers, Sullivan was explaining why earlier this week the ALA sent a strongly worded open letter to publishers about the need to figure out way for publishers to sell libraries e-books for “equitable use at a reasonable price.”

Publishers in the room, however, were not so conciliatory.

An executive from Perseus Book Group who did not identify herself said, “our executives are confused as to what is a library?” She cited concerns that the free and wide availability of e-books to library patrons could undercut publisher business.

But the most pointed questioning came from Wiley’s director of digital business development Peter Balis.

“When will the ALA start proposing to us some best practices on what models you think will work from your digital solutions working group? You put a lot on us and it’s created a lot of chaos and clearly it’s [e-book library lending] broken. We have twelve different models,” he said. “You have to come back to us with more than just ‘equitable access at a fair price.’”

As the question was being posed, many heads in the publisher-heavy audience were nodding in ascent.

Full piece

Woman arrested for returning books late to library

This One is a bit different from the other “arrested for overdue books” stories.
According to police, in July the director of the Easton Public Library [CT], complained an employee of the library, had been using her Trumbull library card and two Easton library cards she had signed up for in the names of her two children, to borrow numerous books, DVDs and magazines from the library. The director told police the employees children were not eligible to receive a town library card because they are not Easton residents.

Same book but not: Publishers offer titles in adult, kid versions

Interesting
When HarperCollins publishes the memoir of a Rutgers University football player who was paralyzed in a fourth-quarter tackle, it’s doing so with two different titles targeting two different audiences.

“Believe” by Eric LeGrand is being simultaneously published this week with twin titles — one for adults with the subhead “My Faith and the Tackle That Changed My Life,” and another for middle-grade readers, subtitled “The Victorious Story of Eric LeGrand.”

New Harry Potter Book?

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling isn’t ruling out return to wizarding world
.K. Rowling plans to return to writing for young people — and the author says she doesn’t rule out another book set in Harry Potter’s magical world.

Rowling became the world’s most successful living writer with her seven novels about a boy who discovers that he is a wizard and is pitched into battle against the forces of evil.

Rowling’s first book for adults, “The Casual Vacancy,” is being published Thursday, five years after the release of the last volume in the Potter saga.

Brainstorming the library of the future

Jill Hurst-Wahl: “At this lunch event, I would like to gather as many of this organization’s employees as possible. Then I would like invite two students for each employee. (So twice as many students as employees.) Why? Students are used to thinking creatively and I want to “up” the creative thinking in the room, but not totally overwhelm this organization’s employees.”

Public libraries represent excellent value propositions

Over on his Cites & Insights site Walt Crawford has pulled out a selection from his latest [PDF] Cites & Insights where he points out what an excellent value proposition public libraries represent… “…quite apart from being at the heart of healthy communities large and small. Public libraries typically yield several dollars in benefits for every dollar in expenditures. Public libraries also need better funding to do better work – and unless they have separate funding agencies, must compete for that funding with other agencies at the local and state level.”

His new book, Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four is available in three versions, from Lulu, http://lulu.com. You might go first to the Lulu home page and look for a coupon code, then search for “Give Us a Dollar” to get to the books.

Profile Of Indiana Maker Lab

Allen County is one of just a handful of public libraries that have set up multipurpose workshops for patrons who want to share and collaborate in order to create and build things. The terms used to describe these spaces include “makerspaces,” “fab labs” or “hackerspaces.”

So why does the Allen County Public Library have a high-tech lab for would-be designers, engineers and inventors? “The library is in the learning business, not just the book business,” said Director Jeff Krull. “Anytime libraries come across an opportunity for people to learn and grow, they should do it.”

[Thanks Cheryl!]

Columbia University Gets “X-Men” author Chris Claremont’s Notes

For decades, “X-Men” author Chris Claremont kept handwritten notes about characters such as Wolverine and Magneto in dozens of boxes in the closet and basement of his Brooklyn apartment – as well as his mother-in-law’s house.

Perhaps not many outside of the comics fanboy community would consider this ephemera worthy of preservation, since even Mr. Claremont’s wife wanted to “get the crap out of the house,” he said. But Columbia University’s libraries deemed the journals, fan mail and correspondence important enough to be part of its archives.

[Thanks Andrew!]

Harvard University Press

From Harvard University Press: The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland

Between 1961 and 1967 the United States Air Force buried 1,000 Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles in pastures across the Great Plains. The Missile Next Door tells the story of how rural Americans of all political stripes were drafted to fight the Cold War by living with nuclear missiles in their backyards—and what that story tells us about enduring political divides and the persistence of defense spending.

By scattering the missiles in out-of-the-way places, the Defense Department kept the chilling calculus of Cold War nuclear strategy out of view. This subterfuge was necessary, Gretchen Heefner argues, in order for Americans to accept a costly nuclear buildup and the resulting threat of Armageddon. As for the ranchers, farmers, and other civilians in the Plains states who were first seduced by the economics of war and then forced to live in the Soviet crosshairs, their sense of citizenship was forever changed. Some were stirred to dissent. Others consented but found their proud Plains individualism giving way to a growing dependence on the military-industrial complex. Even today, some communities express reluctance to let the Minutemen go, though the Air Force no longer wants them buried in the heartland.

Complicating a red state/blue state reading of American politics, Heefner’s account helps to explain the deep distrust of government found in many western regions, and also an addiction to defense spending which, for many local economies, seems inescapable.