January 2017

Prison spokeswoman Maria Peterson said those details were lost in the shuffle when a new executive director started shortly after the ban was instituted; other leaders also retired and were replaced about the same time.

“All of the people who were here, are no longer,” she said.

The ban was categorized as a security measure, accompanied by a brief explanation. Prison officials feared the books, Jensen said, could show inmates “how to control people, how to get people to do exactly what you want them to do.”

From ‘What is it about these two books that is so dangerous?’: A look at the Utah State Prison’s banned-books list | The Salt Lake Tribune

Donald Vass, who has spent the past 26 years mending and tending to books for the King County Library System, has seen mechanical and human-inflicted damage and more. At 57 and with not many years left before retirement, he says he believes he will be the last full-time traditional bookbinder ever to take up shears, brushes and needles here. The skills take too long to learn, he said, and no one is being groomed to take his place in “the mendery,” Room 111 at the library’s central service center, where not so many years ago, 10 people worked.

From Issaquah bookbinder among handful at libraries nationwide still operating a ‘mendery’ | The Seattle Times

Badly worded or poorly conceived questions on standardized tests are not uncommon (remember the question about a “talking pineapple” on a New York test in 2012?). But here’s something new: The author of source material on two Texas standardized tests says she can’t actually answer the questions about her own work because they are so poorly conceived. She also says she can’t understand why at least one of her poems — which she calls her “most neurotic” — was included on a standardized test for students.

From Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems – The Washington Post

Christmas trading for the UK book market saw its strongest sales in 10 years, new figures have revealed. 

Nielsen BookScan reports that a total of £83.3m worth of print books were sold in the run-up to Christmas, which marks the highest since 2007.

From Book sales the week before Christmas were highest in 10 years | The Independent

Perhaps you’re acquainted with Edinburgh University’s Library Cat? Here’s the Facebook page where I first met him.

Sadly I must report that Library Cat has gone missing this past summer, and has not shown up at the Uni library nor any of his other favorite spots. There appears to be a usurper, the so-called Library Cat 2.0.

Here’s the story of Library Cat’s tenure at the library and his disappearance.

He will be missed greatly. But his ghostwriter, PhD student Alex Howard has published his inner thoughts in a wonderful volume, shown here. It’s been published in the UK but is available elsewhere via BookDepository.com.

Barnes & Noble Inc. posted its first decline in holiday sales in three years, hurt by a downturn in the coloring-book category, bringing another sign that the Christmas season wasn’t kind to retailers.

Same-store sales sank 9.1 percent for the nine-week holiday period, the New York-based company said on Thursday. Coloring books and other art supplies — products that had surged last year in part because adults were embracing them — were particularly weak. Still, Barnes & Noble expects to bolster its operating profit by keeping a tight lid on expenses.

From Barnes & Noble holiday sales sink as coloring-book fad fades – The Denver Post

In such an environment, how is a librarian or faculty member supposed to respond to a bright student who sincerely asks, “How can you say that a blog post attacking GMO food is less credible than some journal article supporting the safety of GMO food? What if the journal article’s research results were faked? Have the results been replicated? At the end of the day, aren’t facts a matter of context?”

From Information illiterate: Challenges libraries face in this fake news era – Salon.com

Privacy is a democratic value. It is free thought and independence. Studies show that people change their behavior when they feel watched. They seek information less freely, act and express themselves less freely, are afraid to stand out and go against the flow. Trevor Hughes, CEO of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, IAPP, has a good explanation of the importance of privacy: “As humans, we seek solitude when we feel vulnerable. Sometimes, this is related to physical vulnerability. We seek to exclude ourselves from our societies when we are sick, or in moments of particular risk (think: sleeping, toileting, sex, etc.). But we also seek to exclude ourselves when we feel emotionally vulnerable. We seek private space to explore new identities or ideas.”

Privacy and the space to think and act without feeling watched is a prerequisite for individuals’ ability to act independently and freely. A private life ensures that each person can create his or her own unique identity and determine his or her life’s direction — the right to fail along the way or to go against the tide. The right to privacy is thus a prerequisite for active democracy.

What’s online doesn’t necessarily last forever. Content on the Internet is revised and deleted all the time. Hyperlinks “rot,” and with them goes history, lost in space. With that in mind, Brewster Kahle set out to develop the Internet Archive, a digital library with the mission of preserving all the information on the World Wide Web, for all who wish to explore. Jeffrey Brown reports.

Full story

After allegations by an unidentified person made in November, an investigation by the Lake County clerk of courts’ inspector general’s office concluded that Finley was a fake, and the county has since requested a systemwide audit of its libraries.

The goal behind the creation of “Chuck Finley” was to make sure certain books stayed on the shelves – books that aren’t used for a long period can be discarded and removed from the library system.

George Dore, the library’s branch supervisor who was put on administrative leave for his part in the episode, said he wanted to avoid having to later repurchase books purged from the shelf. He said the same thing is being done at other libraries, too.

http://www.newsherald.com/news/20170102/fake-readers-help-save-books