Matt

First Phalluses Now Female Torso Taken

A sculpture of a female torso has been taken from the same library once displaying the \”phallic art.\” It\’s not known if the two thefts are connected, although in this case the theft was not discovered until 5:30pm, whereas \”El Dildo Bandito,\” was witnessed by other library patrons. Read the story from the Denver Channel.

Fear and Self-loathing in the Library

\”Keep it quiet, this is a library\” says Deyan Sudjic for The Observer. Sudjic blames, \”A generation of book-hating, self-loathing librarians, nervous of literature and hypnotised by technology,\” for libraries\’ decline. \”Libraries have struggled to face up to the threat to their survival, usually by pretending to be something else.\” The new Norwich library has a Pizza Express, tourist information, and houses local BBC studios. Strangely, he seems to approve of the pizza joint and the new library design as a whole. Read the full story

Free Public Library Rates High in Importance

I\’ve got Good News, and Bad News.

Good News: Business First says the Louisville Free Public Library was ranked by 92.2% as \”very important\”. The Study was conducted by Bruce Gale, director of the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Louisville.

Bad News: However, \”the library ranks behind home-delivered papers and local bookstores as the leading source of reading material and information.\”

Will We Ever Want E-Books?

Paul A. Greenberg of the E-Commerce Times reports that publishers continue to push e-books, even though the public isn\’t all that interested:

\”Do we need e-books? Do we want them? Can we curl up at night with a digital book the way we do with some of our favorite traditional books?
No, no and no.\”

Why are publishers continuing with e-books? Because they are a, \”low-risk venture with low overhead.\”

Librarians Urged to Promote Open Archives

Professor Jean-Claude Guédon proposes a new alliance between research scientists and librarians to combat the \”serial publishing crisis\” He is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Montreal. Guédon wants librarians to, \”throw all of their weight––and it is considerable––behind the Open Archive Initiative.\” Read his paper, In Oldenburg’s Long Shadow: Librarians, Research Scientists, Publishers, and the Control of Scientific Publishing