March 2016

Meet the man who is turning D.C. libraries into a national model

But Reyes-Gavilan’s ambitions go beyond bricks and mortar. He wants to put the D.C. Public Library at the forefront of American libraries, to be a model for the nation by embracing a “hacker” culture that treats library patrons not as passive consumers of information, but as creators. His mantra is “libraries are not their buildings,” but “engines of human capital.”

From Meet the man who is turning D.C. libraries into a national model – The Washington Post

But Reyes-Gavilan’s ambitions go beyond bricks and mortar. He wants to put the D.C. Public Library at the forefront of American libraries, to be a model for the nation by embracing a “hacker” culture that treats library patrons not as passive consumers of information, but as creators. His mantra is “libraries are not their buildings,” but “engines of human capital.”

From Meet the man who is turning D.C. libraries into a national model – The Washington Post

Proposed Alaska state budget cuts zero out funding for library internet

“It’s taken off, and people are just starting to see the many opportunities that it brings us,” Julene Brown says. “It’s just kind of ironic to see these state agencies that are trying to figure out how to deliver services with the budget cuts that they’re face. This video conferencing is one way they’re able to do that.”

Back in Haines, Miles Curtis says with the world becoming increasingly paperless, access to the web is no longer just a privilege.

“It’s gotten to a point where I would consider it a right,” he says. “Everything is going in the direction where it would be difficult to function, and have access to the information that everyone should be entitled to.”

From KHNS Radio | KHNS FM » Proposed state budget cuts zero out funding for library internet

“It’s taken off, and people are just starting to see the many opportunities that it brings us,” Julene Brown says. “It’s just kind of ironic to see these state agencies that are trying to figure out how to deliver services with the budget cuts that they’re face. This video conferencing is one way they’re able to do that.”

Back in Haines, Miles Curtis says with the world becoming increasingly paperless, access to the web is no longer just a privilege.

“It’s gotten to a point where I would consider it a right,” he says. “Everything is going in the direction where it would be difficult to function, and have access to the information that everyone should be entitled to.”

From KHNS Radio | KHNS FM » Proposed state budget cuts zero out funding for library internet

In San Jose, Poor Find Doors to Library Closed Because Of Late Fines

Alexander is more careful than most.Half of the current cardholders at the Biblioteca branch owe money, and most — 65 percent — are barred from borrowing materials and using computers because they owe $10 or more.

San Jose’s charges are exponentially higher than comparable cities like San Francisco, where there is no charge for late materials for users 17 and younger and a charge of 10 cents a day for adults.

“Fifty cents a day for middle-class families is a slap on the wrist,” said Maria Arias Evans, the principal of Washington Elementary School in San Jose, which is behind the Biblioteca Latinoamericana. Given the choice between paying fines “and putting food on the table and a roof over the children’s head, it’s a no-brainer: It is better not to check out library books.”

From In San Jose, Poor Find Doors to Library Closed – The New York Times

Alexander is more careful than most.Half of the current cardholders at the Biblioteca branch owe money, and most — 65 percent — are barred from borrowing materials and using computers because they owe $10 or more.

San Jose’s charges are exponentially higher than comparable cities like San Francisco, where there is no charge for late materials for users 17 and younger and a charge of 10 cents a day for adults.

“Fifty cents a day for middle-class families is a slap on the wrist,” said Maria Arias Evans, the principal of Washington Elementary School in San Jose, which is behind the Biblioteca Latinoamericana. Given the choice between paying fines “and putting food on the table and a roof over the children’s head, it’s a no-brainer: It is better not to check out library books.”

From In San Jose, Poor Find Doors to Library Closed – The New York Times

Reading Project – Take My Books Please

Piles of books were left in high-traffic locations around NYC which were all taken and have now travelled to more than 30 countries as part of The Reading Project.

Part-commentary on the way we live today and part-experiment, the project saw stacks of books accompanied only by a simple note that encouraged passers-by to take a book for free, read it and on completing the book, email me.

From Reading Project — MADE BY SHERRY

Piles of books were left in high-traffic locations around NYC which were all taken and have now travelled to more than 30 countries as part of The Reading Project.

Part-commentary on the way we live today and part-experiment, the project saw stacks of books accompanied only by a simple note that encouraged passers-by to take a book for free, read it and on completing the book, email me.

From Reading Project — MADE BY SHERRY

The Future of Academic Style: Why Citations Still Matter in the Age of Google

Academic style, however, is another thing entirely. This is not to say that there is not “style” in academic writing, contrary to both popular belief and a lot of self-skewering academic jokes. Academic style is dull, jargon-filled, overly ornate, hubristic, timid, and generally bad, and no one says so more than academics themselves. Eric Hayot dug into this reflexive disdain in a recent essay in the journal Critical Inquiry, exploring the oddities of the ways that literary scholars seem to think about scholarly writing, pointing out that “it’s weird for a profession to have one theory of language for its objects and another for its products.” If scholars genuinely care about academic writing, Hayot suggests, we might begin by giving up our contempt for the aspects that make it uniquely our own.

From The Future of Academic Style: Why Citations Still Matter in the Age of Google – The Los Angeles Review of Books

Academic style, however, is another thing entirely. This is not to say that there is not “style” in academic writing, contrary to both popular belief and a lot of self-skewering academic jokes. Academic style is dull, jargon-filled, overly ornate, hubristic, timid, and generally bad, and no one says so more than academics themselves. Eric Hayot dug into this reflexive disdain in a recent essay in the journal Critical Inquiry, exploring the oddities of the ways that literary scholars seem to think about scholarly writing, pointing out that “it’s weird for a profession to have one theory of language for its objects and another for its products.” If scholars genuinely care about academic writing, Hayot suggests, we might begin by giving up our contempt for the aspects that make it uniquely our own.

From The Future of Academic Style: Why Citations Still Matter in the Age of Google – The Los Angeles Review of Books

Google BigQuery Public Datasets Includes GDELT HathiTrust and Internet Archive Book Data

Google BigQuery Public Datasets

A public dataset is any dataset that is stored in BigQuery and made available to the general public. This page lists a special group of public datasets that Google BigQuery hosts for you to access and integrate into your applications. Google pays for the storage of these data sets and provides public access to the data via BigQuery. You pay only for the queries that you perform on the data (the first 1 TB per month is free, subject to query pricing details). It includes the GDELT HathiTrust and Internet Archive Book Data. This dataset contains 3.5 million digitized books stretching back two centuries, encompassing the complete English-language public domain collections of the Internet Archive (1.3M volumes) and HathiTrust (2.2 million volumes).

From Google BigQuery Public Datasets — Google Cloud Platform

Google BigQuery Public Datasets

A public dataset is any dataset that is stored in BigQuery and made available to the general public. This page lists a special group of public datasets that Google BigQuery hosts for you to access and integrate into your applications. Google pays for the storage of these data sets and provides public access to the data via BigQuery. You pay only for the queries that you perform on the data (the first 1 TB per month is free, subject to query pricing details). It includes the GDELT HathiTrust and Internet Archive Book Data. This dataset contains 3.5 million digitized books stretching back two centuries, encompassing the complete English-language public domain collections of the Internet Archive (1.3M volumes) and HathiTrust (2.2 million volumes).

From Google BigQuery Public Datasets — Google Cloud Platform

Library Leadership for the Digital Age

To understand the demands for digital leadership, they conducted a comprehensive
study of successful digital organizations, as defined by the extent to which they met their
mission and achieved profitability. They found ten surprisingly consistent practices
among these digital leaders, and for purposes of making the case for digital leadership in
libraries; I am borrowing their ten descriptors of successful digital organizations as my
headings and adding some interpretation to connect these practices from a broader context of organizational types specifically to academic libraries. . So what are these successful digital organizations doing?
1. Building a comprehensive digital strategy that can be shared broadly and repeatedly
across the organization.
2. Embedding digital literacy across the organization.
3. Renewing focus on business fundamentals
4. Embracing the new rules of customer engagement.
5. Understanding global differences in how people access and use the Internet.
6. Developing the organization’s analytical skills.
7. Focusing on the customer experience.
8. Developing leaders with skill sets that bridge traditional and digital expertise.
9. Paying close attention to cultural fit when recruiting digital leaders.
10. Understanding the motivations of top talent.

From

To understand the demands for digital leadership, they conducted a comprehensive
study of successful digital organizations, as defined by the extent to which they met their
mission and achieved profitability. They found ten surprisingly consistent practices
among these digital leaders, and for purposes of making the case for digital leadership in
libraries; I am borrowing their ten descriptors of successful digital organizations as my
headings and adding some interpretation to connect these practices from a broader context of organizational types specifically to academic libraries. . So what are these successful digital organizations doing?
1. Building a comprehensive digital strategy that can be shared broadly and repeatedly
across the organization.
2. Embedding digital literacy across the organization.
3. Renewing focus on business fundamentals
4. Embracing the new rules of customer engagement.
5. Understanding global differences in how people access and use the Internet.
6. Developing the organization’s analytical skills.
7. Focusing on the customer experience.
8. Developing leaders with skill sets that bridge traditional and digital expertise.
9. Paying close attention to cultural fit when recruiting digital leaders.
10. Understanding the motivations of top talent.

From ithaka.org PDF

When our culture’s past is lost in the cloud

We tend to think of memory as a purely mental phenomenon, something ethereal that goes on inside our minds. That’s a misperception. Scientists are discovering that our senses and even our emotions play important roles in recollection and remembrance. Memory seems to have emerged in animals as a way to navigate and make sense of the world, and the faculty remains tightly tied to the physical body and its material surroundings. Just taking a walk can help unlock memory’s archives, studies have shown.

From When our culture’s past is lost in the cloud – The Washington Post

We tend to think of memory as a purely mental phenomenon, something ethereal that goes on inside our minds. That’s a misperception. Scientists are discovering that our senses and even our emotions play important roles in recollection and remembrance. Memory seems to have emerged in animals as a way to navigate and make sense of the world, and the faculty remains tightly tied to the physical body and its material surroundings. Just taking a walk can help unlock memory’s archives, studies have shown.

From When our culture’s past is lost in the cloud – The Washington Post

Librarians Who Lend Out More Than Books

Cool story from Mental Floss on many of the things that can be borrowed from a library other than books, tapes, etc.

Among the objects for loan are neckties, kitchen equipment, guitars and puppets. Let us know if your library loans non-book objects in the comments section.

Cool story from Mental Floss on many of the things that can be borrowed from a library other than books, tapes, etc.

Among the objects for loan are neckties, kitchen equipment, guitars and puppets. Let us know if your library loans non-book objects in the comments section.

Don’t mourn the loss of libraries-the internet has made them obsolete

We can, and should, still love books, but we should not be sentimental about libraries, because they are a means to an end. Access to information is now widely available via smartphones: three quarters of us have one, it was one in five in 2010. Library and information services have to be designed with that reality in mind.
The true inequality remains access to books and reading. Children who grow up with and around books do better educationally than those who don’t. That is where childcare, nurseries and schools are the key. Libraries must adapt to the changing habits of adults, where there is a clear and irreversible trajectory there. But they must never abandon children. As Groucho Marx once said: “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

From Don’t mourn the loss of libraries – the internet has made them obsolete – Telegraph

We can, and should, still love books, but we should not be sentimental about libraries, because they are a means to an end. Access to information is now widely available via smartphones: three quarters of us have one, it was one in five in 2010. Library and information services have to be designed with that reality in mind.
The true inequality remains access to books and reading. Children who grow up with and around books do better educationally than those who don’t. That is where childcare, nurseries and schools are the key. Libraries must adapt to the changing habits of adults, where there is a clear and irreversible trajectory there. But they must never abandon children. As Groucho Marx once said: “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

From Don’t mourn the loss of libraries – the internet has made them obsolete – Telegraph