shelfcheck

When Library Manager Lesa Holstine asked author Tess Gerritsen to do a guest post on her blog, Lesa’s Book Critiques, she expected the writer might blog about her new book, Ice Cold, which debuted at #10 on this past Sunday’s New York Times bestseller list. Instead, Gerritsen offered a piece on recent budget cuts to public libraries across the country, and the place public libraries have had in her life.

An avid reader who co-authors a book review blog, The Naughty Book Kitties, 15-yr-old Brent wrote a guest post at Pinched Nerves that has received thousands of views since it was posted on June 15th and linked by The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan the same day.

The post, titled Gay teen blogger/book reviewer takes librarians to task over LGBT lit, describes Brent’s disappointing encounters with librarians and libraries (and awareness that not all librarians are like those he’s encountered), what he’d like to see in a well-rounded GLBTQ YA book collection (hint: not just coming-out narratives), and how crucial books with gay teen characters have been to his development as a proud gay teen.

Don’t miss the good discussion in the comments left on the post–many by librarians and a few by YA authors, including Ellen Hopkins and Michael Grant.

Via The Huffington Post:

“Authorities say a 74-year-old Boise woman arrested after pouring mayonnaise in the Ada County library’s book drop box is a person of interest in at least 10 other condiment-related crimes.

Joy L. Cassidy was picked up Sunday at the library, moments after police say she pulled through the outside drive-through and dumped a jar of mayo in the box designated for reading materials.”

[full story at the Huffington Post]

“Students and faculty from the University of Washington’s Information School get their groove on.” View below or watch at YouTube.

Forgive the editorial but: awesome.

Via BoingBoing: an NYPL staffer identified only as “David” wrote to Boingboing: “We’re facing a crippling proposed budget cut at the NYPL–so we called Improv Everywhere, who recreated Ghostbusters in our main reading room to a delighted crowd of onlookers to see if they bust budget cuts as well as they bust ghosts. We could use all the support we can get right now in changing minds at City Hall.”

Click to view video

Don’t Close the Book on Libraries (NYPL)

As part of the promotion for What He’s Poised to Do, Ben Greenman’s forthcoming book of stories inspired by letters, Harper Perennial invites folks to submit a letter written to a fictional character.

Harper Perennial is posting selected letters at Letters With Character: the blog. There’s a moving letter to Charlie of Stephen Chbosky’s oft-challenged The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and a funny one to Lowly Worm of Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go.

Who would/will you write to?

On April 21, Overdrive announced a free audiobook app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, available now in the Apple App Store.

From the announcement: “With OverDrive® Media ConsoleTM for iPhone, users can now wirelessly download MP3 audiobooks from OverDrive-powered library and retail websites to their Apple® device. Audiobooks for over-the-air download are available from more than 10,000 libraries worldwide.”

Has anyone out there tried this? I don’t have the requisite device so I can’t give it a test-run. This strikes me as huge news. If anyone reading this tries the app out, please post results in the comments.

At The Huffington Post, Art Brodsky kicks off National Library Week with an editorial called, “Our Public Library Lifeline Is Fraying. We’ll Be Sorry When it Snaps.”

“Facing another round a budget cuts for this coming fiscal year, my library had to lay off all of our reference staff, except for me [Brian Herzog]. However, in an effort to continue to meet patron need at the Reference Desk, the library is capitalizing on Massachusetts’ strength in the biomedical technology industry by partnering with biotech firms to create librarian clones. The advantages are numerous:
* multiplying the effect of a library degree
* staff training is streamlined
* communication within the department is excellent
* we all share a single social security number so we also share a single salary”

(Read more on this exciting new development)

Ouch! Web designer and cartoonist Brad Colbow calls this strip Why DRM Doesn’t Work–but the subtitle reads “How to Download an Audiobook from the Cleveland Public Library.” Colbow’s not taking a shot at Cleveland Public, but at the frustrating (for him–and, I admit, for me, too, as a patron) experience of trying to use Overdrive…one that ends with the strip’s protagonist choosing to “give up on [the] stupid library” and head for BitTorrent.