January 2013

A Doll’s Magic, Free to Renew
These have been the many phases of Kirsten Larson, an American Girl doll who sat on a shelf in the Ottendorfer branch of the New York Public Library, in the East Village, until a resourceful children’s librarian began lending her to girls, many of whose parents, because of financial or feminist reasons, resist buying the dolls.

David Lee King with an interesting question, what do we think is important? Do our users agree?
Think about some of these things libraries have, for example:
-Library Catalog – interesting to our customers?
-Article Databases – interesting to our customers?
-Periodicals reading room …
-Reference desk …
I think our goal should be two-fold:
1.spend time, money, and expertise on stuff our customers care about
2.do stuff that our customers care about

One might not expect to find VHS covers of pornographic movies or prostitutes’ trade cards at the library, but those items are among the racy ephemera Cornell University has been compiling since 1988 as part of its Human Sexuality Collection.

Perhaps the most groundbreaking aspect of “Library Services in the Digital Age,” the report released today by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project is how non-groundbreaking its findings are.

Based on “a survey of 2,252 Americans ages 16 and above” conducted between October 15 and November 10 of last year, the Pew reportassures us that, even in the digital age, libraries continue to serve a variety of functions, with nearly 60% of respondents having had some kind of interaction with a library in the last 12 months, and 91% saying that “

Pippert concludes, “It might ultimately be a human problem to solve: capture content from others mindfully and use it thoughtfully, with good communication. Let others know you’re using the content and make sure you are clear to friends your preference about your content being redistributed.”

This is yet another reminder that anything you say anywhere on the web, private or not, is always subject to being shared via third party apps, screenshots, or good old fashioned copy and paste, so never say something online that you wouldn’t say in public, because there really is no such thing as privacy, which is sad and unacceptable, but true.

“I don’t personally use the library. I kind of have the feeling that libraries are going the route of the video rental stores but I’m probably… wrong about that,” said Coun. Ian Paton. “With the access to information now, with everyone having computers in their home, why do we spend so much money? Do the people out there even know we spent $2.3 million a year of our money to run our libraries in Delta and just how many people use libraries any more?”

Read more.

Jessamyn West:
“As librarians, I feel we have to be prepared to find content that is freely usable for our patrons, not just content that is mostly freely usable or content where people are unlikely to come after you. As much as I’m personally okay being a test case for some sort of “Yeah I didn’t read all 9000 words on the JSTOR terms and conditions, please feel free to take me to jail” case, realistically that will not happen. Realistically the real threat of jail is scary and terrible and expensive. Realistically people bend and decide it’s not so bad because they think it’s the best they can do. I think we can probably do better than that.”

Fans bombarded Amazon with dozens of negative reviews of a new biography, got several favorable notices erased and even took credit for Amazon’s briefly removing the book from sale.

Full article

This week’s episode looks around the LISHost galaxy while looking at some ambiguous information in a speculative manner.

Related links:

• LISWire: Worch Memorial Public Library Joins COOL and Goes Live on Evergreen
• Pwnie Express: Pwn Plug Elite
• Wired: The Little White Box That Can Hack Your Network
• The Verge: Wikileaks claims Aaron Swartz was an ally and possible source, breaking anonymity
• CNET: WikiLeaks says Aaron Swartz may have been a ‘source’
• The Guardian: Libraries crisis set to get ‘much worse’ this year
• Galileo 0.012 released!

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Sign in the Manly Library Australia reassigns his titles to Fiction

Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace after admitting to using performance-enhancing drugs shows no signs of slowing.

The professional cycling fraternity has shunned him, the sponsors have dropped him and just about everyone else he’s ever crossed is about to sue him.

And now, his books – once an inspirational story of how to overcome adversity – have been re-shelved and re-categorised from ‘must-read autobiography’ to ‘fiction.’