November 2014

Self-Published Winners @ the Library

Annoyed Librarian — Whenever I write about self-published authors, the comment section seems to erupt into a melee between self-published authors talking about how great self-published works are and librarians talking about how awful they are. One solution to the problem would be for the ALA to create an award for self-published books to go along with popular awards like the Newbery Award and all the other awards I can’t remember right now. Then the librarians in the trenches would know what books to buy and wouldn’t have to read any of them.

Full piece:
http://lj.libraryjournal.com/blogs/annoyedlibrarian/

British Mystery Novelist P.D. James Dies At 94

British mystery and crime novelist P.D. James, whose best-known works featured poet and Scotland Yard detective Adam Dalgliesh as a protagonist, has died at age 94, her publisher says.

Phyllis Dorothy James, a baroness and award-winning writer of such books as Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower and The Murder Room, was born in Oxford began writing in her late 30s and published her first novel, Cover Her Face, in 1962.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/27/366997584/british-mystery-novelist-p-d-james-dies-at-94

The Library is Not for Studying

Annoyed Librarian —

Over the years there have been lots of calls to make libraries into something other than libraries. That’s especially true of public libraries, but even librarians in academic libraries sometimes want to change things up, to turn libraries from a silent haven for research into community centers or places to play video games.
In some ways it’s understandable. The most likely people to be bored with libraries are the librarians who have to work in them every day. They show up, day after day, and perform the same tedious functions.
After a while, they get jaded. The library is a boring place for them, and they want to make it hip or relevant or something like that. Most of all, they want action.
And what they’re most trying to fight against is the stereotype of the shushing librarian. We don’t shush!
It turns out that in some libraries there is a group that yearns for a shushing librarian: the patrons of the library.

Check out this story from Cerritos College, a community college in California: ‘Shhhhh’: Noise an issue in library, Student Center.

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/blogs/annoyedlibrarian/2014/11/20/the-library-is-not-for-studying/

Retired school librarian catalogues Ontario’s historical plaques

The federal and provincial governments install lots of plaques; plaques about inventors, plaques about canoe routes, even historical plaques about historians. You’ve surely seen a plaque or a hundred in your day, but what you may not know is you can look up and locate many of Ontario’s plaques at ontarioplaques.com.

The website is one-man project by Alan Brown, a retired librarian from Toronto who says he’s had an interest in plaques since he was a kid. Brown started his website in 2004 with the goal of photographing and making a page for each of our province’s Ontario Heritage Trust plaques. In 2009, he started on the Federal government’s Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada plaques.

http://www.thereview.ca/retired-school-librarian-catalogues-ontario-s-historical-plaques?id=770

Library Books Save FSU Student by Standing Up to Bullet

One lucky Florida State University student escaped unscathed from a Thursday morning shooting rampage in the school’s library thanks to his good study habits. Jason Derfuss didn’t even notice that he’d been hit until he came home and unloaded his backpack, only to find that a bullet had pierced the sack and several books he had just checked out from the library before finally getting caught in one. Something tells us a Kindle wouldn’t have been quite as sturdy.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/studious-fsu-student-saved-by-library-books.html