August 2013

Library logistics: How millions of new books make it to the shelves

The library system orders books, CDs and movies daily, timing them to hit the shelves on the same day as they would in bookstores. Items also are ordered when there are at least twice as many requests from the public as copies available.This year, the library is to spend $7.4 million on materials.

It’s a precision-timed logistics that few library patrons notice, unless something goes wrong.

“We say that nobody talks about technical services until something isn’t there,” said Laura Simonds, manager of the operations center at 101 S. Stygler Rd. in Gahanna. “If we’re doing our job really well, the book is always there.”

Full story (Piece includes video)

Choosing a Book…by Its Cover

According to a few distinguished members of the library community, they don’t tell you in library school that you WILL occasionally choose a book by its cover, despite what the song says.

If you’ve had that experience, either choosing a book to read for your TBR pile or a book to add to your library’s collection BASED ON ITS COVER, please let us know in the comments below. Thanks!

New Books From J.D. Salinger?

J.D. Salinger Will Publish Five More Goddamn Books
According to Salinger, a new documentary produced by the Weinstein Co., and a corresponding 700-page book of the same title by the film’s director, Shane Salerno, and co-author David Shields, he spent at least some of that time at a typewriter. The new investigation into the author’s life claims that Salinger left behind explicit instructions to his estate to publish five books beginning in 2015. The New York Times reported that Salinger’s new works include: a “story-filled ‘manual’ of the Vedanta religious philosophy”; a book called The Family Glass, with five never-before-seen stories; another collection of stories called The Last and Best of the Peter Pans, which will revisit the Caulfield family from The Catcher in the Rye; a novella based on Salinger’s years as a soldier in World War II; and a new novel set during the same period about the author’s first marriage.

School Librarians Belong in NYC Schools

The New York City Department of Education, one of the largest educational organizations in the world, has effectively given up on librarians. As DOE officials call for a variance to state law which requires the presence of a school librarian in every middle and high school in the state they have passing up on a key, high performing, cost effective, tool for student success.

There is a strange dissonance when it comes to libraries. We are both armored by our stereotypes and defeated by them simultaneously. People are ready to hurl themselves on the barricade of our intellectual freedom but when budgets come we are universally tisked and shuttled off into the budget memory hole, quickly snipped away. The idiom of the dusty shelves comes up in the press every time in order to evoke mood.

Full piece

Nothing to read? Airport libraries to the rescue

It’s appropriate that a book celebrating the 75th anniversary of Nashville International Airport includes a page — and a charming photo — documenting the library branch that opened on-site in 1962.

Staffed by a librarian who received an extra $4 in her paycheck to cover airport parking, the Nashville Public Library reading room was the first time a public library was ever established in a municipal airport.

Full story — USA Today