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Ten Stories That Shaped 2012

It’s that time again… let’s look back at this year’s top library headlines.

10. Bird Flu Study is Published

After researchers found a way to spread H5N1 to humans, an interesting test ensued of the bounds of free speech versus public health. Citing concerns over bioterrorism, a government panel wanted to ban publication of the scientific findings. The paper was printed, in full, in the journal Science.

9. Remember Those Boycotts?

Multiple generations of librarians have lamented over costly journal prices. Aside from the continued drive for
public access to funded research, libraries and now finally scholars are boycotting Elsevier and the American Chemical Society. Here’s hoping the Open Access movement against profiteering publishers keeps growing.

Quote of the Year

"The economics of publishing print no longer worked and that’s why we’re going to go all digital" – Newsweek editor Tina Brown. How does your employer intend to survive?

8. Begun, the E-Book Wars Have

As e-books continue to gain mainstream dominance, thorny issues over lending, pricing, and the future of publishing remain crucial to follow.

7. Library Evolution Sparks Protests

Some library administrators now realize that running a change averse institution no longer has the survival value that it once did. The very notion of change, however, is still antagonistic to some. Two notable examples of adapting libraries this year are Harvard University and the New York Public Library.

6. National Library Efforts

Though still vaporware, the concept of a Digital Public Library of America, now with some major backers, holds promise. An initial launch is planned for 2013.

Honorable Mention

More libraries are going to the dogs. Has yours?

5. Georgia State E-Reserve Case

Libraries would not exist if copyright was an absolute. In a complicated case (as with Google Books and HathiTrust, aren’t they always) of publishers suing over the use of electronic reserve readings, the verdict came out in the library’s favor.

4. Kiosk Libraries Take Root

Kudos to the innovative Little Free Library project. Is there one in your community?

3. 3-D Printing

Those devices that create custom three-dimensional products on demand also generated a lot of buzz this year. There are promising business applications but also legal battles looming for such products.

Dis-honorable Mention

Regarding this year’s bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey, Salman Rushie says it best.

2. Innocence of Muslims

As with the burning of the Quran by Terry Jones and later by soldiers in Afghanistan, people are dead because of this movie. Google has blocked access to the film in certain countries. Should there ever be limits to the freedom of speech?

1. Have you heard of… the Internet?

This year saw the continued growth of the Web and its interaction with human intelligence, not to mention our dependence on it, to the point of our devices now serving as an external drive to the brain. Prince and Clifford Stoll were wrong: the Internet is not a fad. What else will be taken for granted in a few more years? Cloud computing? Web-scale discovery? And where do libraries fit in this picture?

What’s your favorite story of 2012?

December 14, 2012 by Censorship EBooks Google Harry Potter Internet Legal Issues Libraries Stories Of The Year

Has your Library Gone to the Dogs?

With the recent stories about disasters, legal wrangling, and futurism, let’s look at a hands down, slam dunk, win-win idea for libraries: dogs! Many school and public libraries use therapy dogs in their reading programs, calming children to widespread acclaim. Academic libraries also make use of therapy dogs, calming homesick students during finals week. These projects involve minimal costs and have a profound impact. Don’t let a lawyer or administrator use absurd logic to deny you this wonderful opportunity to have patrons perceive the library as a comfortable and welcoming atmosphere. And remember: refusing to allow a service animal in to a building is also a violation of federal law. What are your dogs in libraries stories?

November 12, 2012 by Google Internet Legal Issues Librarians Libraries School Libraries

Elsevier Filters Recommendation Engine to Show Elsevier Titles Only

As the Elsevier boycott continues to gain attention, a good example of what the company stands for: the Ex Libris bX service is a neat little recommendation tool that displays suggested citations, working from a known item and based on search traffic. It provides researchers with suggestions based on their area of interest, and the items displayed are usually additional relevant articles (similar to Amazon’s “people who bought this also bought…” feature). The Elsevier ScienceDirect site embeds this service in their own custom application, but librarians noticed the results it was displaying were only for Elsevier titles. Here is the Ex Libris explanation:

bX itself is entirely publisher and platform neutral and sends and displays all relevant articles regardless of journal, publisher or platform. But those who build their own applications – like Elsevier did – can manipulate the data by filtering before displaying it. For the app on Science Direct Elsevier indeed filters the bX articles by those available from Science Direct.

Is it any wonder this company gets a bad rap?

February 14, 2012 by Libraries Web Filters

Is the Loss of Objective Search a Bad Thing?

Imagine a research database, that upon searching for “wind energy,” gives top results about the benefits of turbine technology to one student, while another student (with a different search history, or in a different state) is instead shown articles that focus on the noise and vertigo that wind turbines produce. Sound fishy? Google has unveiled a more personal search that does exactly this sort of thing, called “Search, plus Your World. Is this more about advertising revenue than providing access to information? For a nice review of the issue, see a competitor’s Escape your search engine Filter Bubble! When, if ever, would you want filtered results?

January 11, 2012 by Google Internet

Ten Stories That Shaped 2011

It’s time again to look back at the good, the bad, and the ugly library stories of the past year.

Honorable Mention: Lenny Bruce Should Have Been a Librarian

Hot on the heels of the popular book Go the Fuck to Sleep comes a straight-talking site that all library marketers should take note of: Go the Fuck to the Library.

10. Neither Fax nor E-mail nor IM

Print-based industries are struggling, and the United States Postal Service is no exception. I couldn’t help but hear the Postmaster General boast about not paying bills online and wonder how many analogous things librarians do, such as instructing students in the “old ways” of doing research.

9. Terry Jones burns a Quran

A copy of the Quran was burned by pastor Terry Jones in his church on March 20, 2011. Although not widely covered by mainstream media, the burning was condemned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. During the ensuing protests in Afghanistan, at least 30 people were killed. Among the dead were United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan employees, who were shot and decapitated.

8. Occupy Wall Street makes a “People’s Library”

The OWS movement in New York City got attention for forming a library. When the protests ended, things didn’t go so well for the library, however. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the “destruction of a library” or the “eviction of illegal squatters who had some books confiscated.”

7. Greg Mortenson: Humanitarian or Swindler?

Though not as flashy as the James Frey or Jayson Blair scandals, Mortenson’s publications were also charged with containing inaccurate and possibly fabricated information. A 60 Minutes hit piece was followed by a class action lawsuit against Mortenson’s charities.

6. Borders Goes Bankrupt

The headlines Why Borders Failed While Barnes & Noble Survived and Borders Closes the Book as Decisions Come Back to Haunt Chain sum up the bookseller’s demise. The cheeky Closing Borders Store Tells Customers Where To Find A Restroom is also worth a look.

5. Publishers Continue to Lawyer-Up

Hard to believe, but the Google Books Settlement first made this list four years ago, and the dispute over royalties and orphan works continues to this day. You can now add Authors Guild v. HathiTrust to the list of pending litigation over libraries making digital copies of their materials available online.

4. Find the Future at NYPL

Tired of the libraries and video games trend yet? Well you shouldn’t be, any more than you’re taking affront at a modern library collection containing pleasure reading.

This year saw the launch of Find the Future, a collaborative game built around the collections of The New York Public Library. Whether innovations such as this entail the withering of traditional libraries (or even if that’s a bad thing) is unclear.

3. HarperCollins Busts a Cap in E-book Circulation

Can you imagine a library agreeing to buy a book under the condition that after 26 uses the copy be destroyed? Well that’s just what HarperCollins wants libraries to do with e-book lending. Penguin Books also yoinked titles from library e-book collections.

Border’s bankruptcy and Netflix’s pricing kerfuffle also demonstrate how companies are still fumbling with technological evolution. As with supporting Open Access publications, it is time for libraries to show a little backbone and vote with their wallets: refuse to support publishers’ efforts to maintain contrived scarcity with online formats.

2. Watson Wins Jeopardy!

What does a computer winning a game show have to do with libraries? Just the potential demise of the need for human librarians. We already have full-text indexing, which has by and large superseded subject cataloging. With the potential for AI librarians on the horizon, how long until we are playing the role of John Henry at the reference desk?

1. E-Books Go Mainstream

It took over 11 years to go from The Plant to Pottermore. In that time, technological improvements have given rise of what is now a crowded tablet market. As Amazon’s sales indicate, there is now widespread consumer adoption of electronic books. Considering new programs such as Kindle lending, with this advent of electronic formats and other digital forms of information, the future role of libraries as a place for storing paper books, or even the need for them, remains to be seen.

Ikea even got in to the mix with a redesign of a bookcase to hold things other than dead-tree books. But laggards fear not, if you still miss the smell of paper books, you can always get the perfume.

What was your favorite story of the year?

December 15, 2011 by EBooks Google Harry Potter Internet Legal Issues Libraries Stories Of The Year

Vatican to Digitize Prohibited Archives

Hot on the heels of their successful iPhone app/Apple Store and drive-through confessional, the BBC News reports that the Vatican has announced plans to digitize their pornography collection and make it available online to paying subscribers. Given what the church has planned for the project’s profits, here’s hoping they learn lessons from the the New York Times paywall loopholes. Is anyone in on the Indulgentia beta?

April 1, 2011 by Archives Internet

Ten Stories That Shaped 2010

It’s time again to take a look at the memorable headlines of the year.

10. YouTube Sensations

Although viral videos are nothing new, libraries found themselves involved in a few catchy clips this year, and even got Old Spice guy involved in their cause.

9. Libraries and DVDs and Netflix, Oh My

Libraries check out a lot of movies, in case you haven’t heard. A library touting their use of Netflix, however, ran afoul of many due to the admitted violation of Netflix’s terms of use.

8. Piracy Crackdown

Many Chicken Little essays cropped up over the seizure of domains by Homeland Security, questioning the due process involved and decrying the potential for censorship that the new law affords.

7. Under New Management

The corporate takeover of public libraries and the commercialization of academic libraries should have us all thinking about our workplace of the future.

6. Gizmo of the Year: iPad

Since its spring release, Apple’s life-changing tablet has been put to use by many libraries. How is your library using iPads?

5. I For One Welcome Our New Media Overlords

My how times have changed. Gone are the days of video stores and print magazines, right?

4. Web 2.0 Fatigue

Oops, I forgot, it’s called “emerging technologies” now. With all the information overload surrounding social media and who knows what else that’s on the horizon, many of us may feel sympathetic with this take on the next big thing.

3. Sign of the Times: Libraries = Offices for Unemployed

Hardly a news flash, but as library budgets continue to spiral while others question the need for libraries at all, library use during the recession has filled a need for those seeking employment.

2. Google eBookstore Opens

The advertising company that organizes so much of the world’s information is, gasp, actually going to try and make money by selling it. The Google eBookstore launched this month. It should give any librarian pause about the Google Books Settlement — and the future of publishing and lending in general.

1. Wikileaks Freakout

The release of secret diplomatic cables received substantial coverage this year. The Library of Congress even became involved. Several free speech issues are raised by how the leaks are being handled.

Don’t forgot to post your favorite library story!

December 15, 2010 by Censorship EBooks Google Legal Issues Libraries Stories Of The Year

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