April 2014

ABC Local: Kickstarter has been used to fund everything from new gadgets to space missions — but in Berkeley, CA a group of kids just successfully used it to fund a library. A can-do attitude is at the core of the REALM Charter School’s curriculum. Now in its third year, the school has classrooms full of technology and teachers full of energy, but no library. The eighth grade class is about to change that. “I really want the future students to love it because we worked really, really hard on this,” student Agustina McEwen said. Call it a legacy, when they graduate, they’re leaving behind a gift. They’re calling it “x-space.” “It’s a space made out of x’s and we use these x’s to make

everything in here” Agustina said.

From the bookshelves, to the tables and chairs, it all started in their design class taught by a local group called Project H. “It’s sort of humbling and awe inspiring to watch a 13-year-old build something that came from their head, that they prototyped on their desk, and now is full scale,” Project H founder Emily Pilloton said.

From Milwaukee’s JSOnline:

“The Milwaukee Public Library board will meet Tuesday to discuss the possible sale or permanent loan of one of its treasures, “The Bookworm,” the most famous canvas by German romantic painter Carl Spitzweg.

The board will consider an active offer from an undisclosed party for the work, which is valued at $400,000, said Paula Kiely, director of the Milwaukee Public Library.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-house-committee-oks-100-million-for-obama-library-20140417,0,1319032.story

An Illinois House committee endorsed a plan today to contribute $100 million in state funds toward construction of a Barack Obama presidential library in Chicago.

The proposal, pushed by House Speaker Michael Madigan, goes to the full House next.

After a long-standing feud over allowing their metadata to be accessed by subscribers via other discovery services, EBSCO has announced a metadata sharing policy wherein they “will be making available all metadata (and full text when contractually allowed)” . . . except for when they don’t want to: “The only EBSCO research databases that are not yet included in the above policy are those resources that are built upon and subscribed to primarily for their subject indexing.”

News story via Lancaster Online, about State Librarian Stacey Aldrich’s address to Pennsylvania librarians about modifying the focus away from technology in libraries.

Last year, she spoke mostly the future — advancing technology, and the changing ways that libraries can store information and provide it in new ways to patrons. This year, Aldrich was more reflective. She talked a lot about her travels — to libraries around the state as well as other countries — and she took the group on a visual tour of State Library of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.

She still had a few things to say about technology, though — including the way many people are looking for ways to get away from electronics, even if it’s only for a short break. “A lot of people are looking for ways to disconnect to reconnect,” she said. “They’re turning off the electronics.”

Libraries, which have been scrambling to go high-tech with advanced computer and Wi-Fi options, are also trying to meet the need for patrons to decompress sometimes, Aldrich said. Sometimes, that means sponsoring “digital detox” nights, she said — hosting board games, for instance, and providing opportunities for conversation.

“Look around you. See what people are doing in your community,” she urged.

http://blog.assaflavie.com/wikipedia/
“It often takes more than a few clicks to reach understanding. You dive down, deeper and deeper with each click, then navigate back up and continue reading. It’s very easy to get lost and to lose your context. Don’t get me wrong, I realize it’s an encyclopedia and not a textbook, and every article can’t possibly explain every sub-article it links to. Yet this level of normalization yields a terse, unfriendly tone, which can be frustrating if you’re new to the subject and don’t understand many of the terms used.”

Same as last year’s…Captain Underpants.

Just as in 2012, the potty humor of the Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey brought the books to the top of the list. Other repeat offenders in the top ten included Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James and Looking for Alaska by John Green. The newcomers to the top ten were:

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison (second place)
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
A Bad Boy Can Be Good for A Girl, by Tanya Lee Stone
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Bone (series), by Jeff Smith

The list was excerpted by Time Magazine from the State of America’s Libraries Report 2014 [ALA].

From CNN:

Despite enduring budget cutbacks and being forced to reinvent their services in the face of the ubiquitous Internet, public libraries remain staple institutions in various communities. There’s been an increase in the use of public libraries in the U.S. over the past decade. Services such as public computers doubled in usage in the past 10 years, and libraries saw a circulation increase of 2.46 billion materials in 2010, the highest ever reported, according to a report by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Some libraries bring in more than just patrons. They are also popular amongst tourists, drawing visitors by the tens of thousands, if not millions.

The article has photos of twenty-seven libraries big and small across the US.

Friday was the store’s last day at 31 West 57th Street, and the closing came at the end of a painful week for shoppers who value a particular kind of New York store. J & R Music and Computer World, which grew from a 500-square-foot basement operation to storefronts along an entire block in Lower Manhattan, closed, saying it had to be “reimagined and redeveloped.” And Pearl Paint, a store on Canal Street beloved by artists, reportedly put its five-story building on the market.

We posted a story on this from another source the other day. NPR did a piece this weekend.