LISNews - News For Librarians

Faced with the hideous maw that is today’s news cycle, there could be little more soothing than slipping into the esoteric world of We Love Endpapers, a society for enthusiasts to share their favourite examples of the most beautiful pages bookending tomes.

Endpapers date back to at least the 15th century, when pieces of old manuscript or vellum would be used to help sew a book block into its binding, and to protect it. By the 17th century, they were being used as decorative items; today, they can feature everything from maps to an extra shot of artwork from a book’s illustrator.

From Hold the front pages: meet the endpaper enthusiasts | Books | The Guardian

Amazon markets the service to publishers as a way to have “100 percent availability of books” internationally, and the company has enrolled a number of publishers. The problem is that Amazon apparently doesn’t police whether book content uploaded to CreateSpace actually belongs to the person doing the uploading. As others who sell through Amazon have discovered, Amazon has had a problem with mixing legitimate and counterfeit products in fulfillment warehouses because of how it prepositions product for Prime Delivery.

From Amazon caught selling counterfeits of publisher’s computer books—again | Ars Technica

Books have used the “XYZ: A Novel” format since the 17th century, when realistic fiction started getting popular. The term “novel” was a way to distinguish these more down-to-earth stories from the fanciful “romances” that came before, says Steven Moore, author of “The Novel: An Alternative History.” Then, as now, it was a tag that identified the kind of literature you were getting yourself into.

From Book covers still use the phrase “A Novel” for works of fiction – Vox

Slipped behind other books was a lovingly worn copy of the 1929 children’s book “The Postman,” by Charlotte Kuh. Gregg’s mother had checked it out of a Silver Spring, Md., library in 1946, when Gregg was a toddler.

Nearly 27,000 days past its due date, Gregg, now 75, decided to return it.

From Meet the woman who took 73 years to return a library book — and wasn’t fined – The Washington Post

In fact, librarians have long been advocates of digital inclusion and literacy. That’s why, last month, ULC launched a new initiative to give public libraries a leading role in a future with artificial intelligence. They kicked it off with a working group meeting in Washington, D.C., where representatives from libraries in cities like Baltimore, Toronto, Toledo, and Milwaukee met to exchange ideas on how to achieve that through education and by taking on a larger role in data governance.

From How Libraries Can Make Public Data More Accessible – CityLab

Is Amazon taking over the academic library industry? That’s what a new study from a higher-education-focused non-profit takes a look at, and their findings might surprise you as long as you haven’t read the title of this article too closely.

For the study, Ithaka S+R gathered acquisitions data from 124 U.S. higher education institutions in fiscal year 2017 along with data from 51 institutions covering between 2014 and 2017. The report has more than one interesting takeaway about the under-examined world of academic literature, but here’s the big one: Amazon isn’t anywhere close to controlling the academic library market. 

From Amazon Sells Way Fewer Books To Academic Libraries Than People Think

Literary scholars often hear about dangers of presentism: we are warned against looking at the past for confirmation of our own progress — the distance between us and them — and against collapsing that distance, and seeing, Narcissus-like, our own reflections in long-ago lives and letters. But of course, the present always shapes our encounters with earlier texts, whether we’re reading them, writing about them or, in the case of Shakespeare, staging them. Not only do we inevitably view the past through the lens of our present, but our present also renders the past visible — or invisible — in shifting ways. Walter Benjamin tells us that history is “filled with the presence of the now.” And, as the now changes, so does the history.

From The Very Modern Anger of Shakespeare’s Women – Electric Literature

Speaking of bedrooms – books apparently aren’t allowed in there, as they are a room for “sleep and love”. This raises some questions. Does it mean that if you like reading a book in bed you must then go put it back elsewhere in the house just before falling asleep? Is one book (singular) in the bedroom fine but two or more forbidden? What if you do find a partner thanks to your attractive new flat and he also enjoys reading in bed, does this create a loophole? Should you read this singular book together at the same time? Any word on Kindles?

From Shelf policing: how books (and cacti) make women too ‘spiky’ for men | Books | The Guardian

Before I start, a disclaimer: All of this is, of course, highly subjective. I read nonfiction for enjoyment, and I enjoy nonfiction most when I am learning interesting things, or am guided to think in new ways. Preferably, claims should be backed by peer-reviewed studies, or presented as speculation otherwise. Either way, the author should be clear about this, and unbiased enough to present different sides of the issue.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the rules.

From 3 Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books