Library administrators across the state are holding emergency meetings and hoping for the best after the Supreme Court ruled last week that a law forcing the Kanawha County Board of Education to fund its public library is unconstitutional.
“I think we’re all making plans for the worst-case scenario because right now, that’s the fiscally responsible thing to do,” said Pam Coyle, director of the Martinsburg-Berkeley Public Library.
The local grass roots group “Escondido’s Future” partnered with CSUSM Community Service Learning Office to conduct a survey of the impact of the library closure on the community. We discovered that most of students actually went to the library for books and media and not mainly for the computers as some city leaders had presupposed. A quarter of the students went to the branch library for a safe place to be and more than a third said that with the branch library closed they didn’t have a proper place to study or do homework.
How Are Some Authors Landing On Best-Seller Lists? They’re Buying Their Way
West Virginia could have saved almost $8 million had the scope of the purchase been scaled to the requirements of the state’s libraries, schools and state police, the report states. Smaller, less expensive routers could have been used in the state’s 172 libraries, resulting in a savings of $2.8 million; in state police facilities, for a savings of $1 million to $1.4 million; and in 368 schools with enrollments of less than 500, for a savings of $3.68 million.
Rural Indian consumers need only dial 58080 from their mobile phone to be connected with Apna Chaupal. From there they can browse various subscription packs focusing on categories including agriculture, health, education, employment, entertainment and religion. The service is available in all local languages, with highlights including Mandi crop rates, love advice, astrology, English lessons, visa information, music and more. Subscription pricing begins at INR 10 for 10 days. It is also possible to request expert advice for solutions to specific problems.
In the real world, my new floor-to-ceiling shelves are already full and bulging, and lately I wander the house eyeballing the last remaining bits of open wall space, wondering if they might hold additional shelving, as my wife shakes her head.
“For what else,” Benjamin writes of his own books, “is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?” My wife would heartily agree. And yet, the order Benjamin invokes is hardly an illusion, but rather a way to find myself in all those shelves and volumes, an assertion, a means of saying: I am here.
Continuing budget issues may push more libraries toward exploring these ideas, though the concept is a bit controversial in library-land. Some in the library world fear that inadvertent censorship may arise out of the practice, and there are also those who would like to see libraries remain advertising-free public spaces. In these tough economic times, though, the idea appears to be gaining some traction
The key point that I want to make in this first of perhaps a few blog posts on all of these ideas is that the human behind the keyboard is just as important if not more important than the keyboard and CPU they wield. It is also important to set forth that cyberspace is only a place in the cognitive dissonance that we are all deluding ourselves into believing. In reality cyberspace is in fact what is between our ears and the internet is a medium with which we fabricate a social contract to communicate with each other, transfer data with, and potentially wage war.
We love to find those hidden gems which those in the know often take for granted but which genuinely surprise and inspire us. Today we learn about one whose history and proposition has much to offer in our thinking out the bookstore and library of tomorrow.
Good Ol Slashdot has a neat write up on Best-Seller Lists. How Are Some Authors Landing On Best-Seller Lists? They’re Buying Their Way .
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