Library Journal, 09/01/2011

How've you been for the past 4 months?

I got you this review of a magazine that's a month old.

I hope you like it:

• p. 8 - Enlist the New Librarians!
  - Article saying that it's important, with all this spunky new grads coming into the business, that we make it a priority to keep them involved in library land after graduation, because they are awesome and digitally native and full of sparkles and whatnot.
  
  
• p. 12 - U.S. Libraries Move to Adopt RDA Cataloging Code - ASCII is out, RDA is in, though not before 2013. How much will it cost? How will we train folks? How will our systems cope? AIEEEEEE!
  
  
• p. 14 - In Pursuit of Carnegie, On a Smaller Scale - Some dudes in Wisconsin are putting together small kiosks--really pole-mounted hutches (24"x24"x30")--that contain 20 books and a sign that says "Take a Book, Leave a Book." It's a pretty cool experiment in social...media?
  
  
• p. 16 - Boston, Los Angeles Protect And Expand Service Hours - WOOO! Good news...in other parts of the country, BUT STILL. TO THIS I WILL CLING.
  
  
• p. 21 - OCLC App Makes Connections - This visual app via Worldcat.org will show you connections between authors, characters, corporations, etc. Must check it out. (The computer I'm on won't do it because of FLASH issues.)
  
  
• p. - - TO BE CONTINUED
  
  
• p. - -
  
  
• p. - -
  
  
• p. - -
  
  
• p. - -
  
  
• p. - -
  
  
• p. - -

Library Journal - 06/15/2011

Look at these things that caught my attention and here my thoughts thereupon:

• The Problem is Poverty - Editor John Berry opines that we should treat all patrons like people, and that the problem isn't patrons it's poverty that puts them in untenable situations. If we don't work to correct the problem, then we are fighting against ourselves.
  
  
• Georgia State Law Suit - So a bunch of academic publishers are suing Georgia State University, charging that they are breaking the law by making ANY COPIES AT ALL without publisher permission (and fees). The publishers are Oxford Univeristy Press, Cambridge University Pressm, and SAGE. I like this part from Barbara Fister: "Most of the content published by academic publishers is produced by our own faculty and students--it is past time to commit to new models for distributing this content that don't leave it in the hands of rent-seeking, for-profic businesses with no respect for academic values." While I don't know what that would like like, especially in America where capitalism is king, I think it's an interesting idea to foster intellectual discussions this way.
  
  
• U. of Michigan to Identify Hathitrust's Orphan Works - Just interesting because while copyright is out of hand, the orphan works without verifiable copyright-holder are really aggravating to me. (Although for no real reason...just philosophically I guess.)
  
  
• Library of the Year: King County Library System in Washington State - I just found it interesting that the director removed security cameras from the buildings under the auspices of intellectual freedom. Seems like a hobbyhorse, but not an entirely illogical one.
  
  
• The Problem is Not the Homeless - The larger article which inspired the editorial response above. All sorts of innovative services, from book clubs to bringing in Social Workers as staff, etc. We don't really have this as a huge problem in our system, but I think it's interesting that people are willing to innovate to find solutions to people's problems. Talk about public service.
  
  
• 12 Young Adult Authors with Crossover Appeal - M.T. Anderson, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Eoin Colfer, Melissa De La Cruz, Sarah Dessen, Sonya Hartnett, Margo Lanagan, Melina Marchetta, Megan Whalen Turner, Scott Westerfeld, Markus Zusak.

Reactions

Publishers Weekly - May 16, 2011

• Shout-out to Blue Elephant Book Shop in Decatur, GA, which I've never actually been to despite proximity and my affinity for independent book stores. (They had an employee (owner?) write up something for The Return of Captain John Emmett, a book about returning home after WWI.)
  
  
• This issue has a big focus on audiobooks (June is apparently some sort of marketer-created audiobook month, so I guess it's nice that I'm reading this May issue in June). An interview with a narrator that was interesting (to give the characters voices, or not?) and a big section on The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, which clued me in to the existence of audiobooks for a lot of his previous works. (Though not Infinite Jest, which would have been VERY helpful earlier this year.)

Publishers Weekly - May 9, 2011

• Credit Crunch is pushing publishers to bully indy bookstores for payments. Death of the people's voice, we're all going to stupid hell, etc.
  
  
• Apparently Nancy Pearl is going to write a library-themed column for PW, starting May 30, so...I guess that happened. Be interesting to see what it's like.
  
  
• Should dictionaries be printed or digital? Houghton Mifflin wondered as it prepared to publish 5th edition of American Heritage Dictionary. But only 49% for those 18-30, with percentages rising as the age section rises. For reference books, problems can occur when trying to render graphics, diagrams, etc. But publishers say the internet has not eroded reference sales.

E-mail Review!

OK, I obviously stink at keeping up with things.

So I'm going to try again with the keeping it simple. (Simpler.)

This is going to be the things that caught my eye while reading magazines/e-mails about library stuff. It helps me to actually remember/absorb things if I do more than glance at them. Eidetic my memory is not.

ENJOY!

American Libraries Direct e-mail, 06/15/2011

• Charlotte Mecklenburg libraries get a reprieve - While the article doesn't say everything will be all better forever, it in fact indicates that this will only last a year, but maybe this is part of a bigger trend of people actually evaluating the place they want to live and thinking that a library is important to their idea of that place. (Freedom! Information! USA! USA!) And I can only imagine the relief for the employees (only some of them, unfortunately) that got their dismissal slips rescinded.
  
  
• Social Search - It rubs me the wrong way, a little bit too circular, but at the same time I acknowledge that life works that way even WITHOUT the internet so...that's that.
  
  
• Most Americans are not for book banning - Hooray. I mean, that's a pretty low bar, but I'll take it.
  
  
• ACLU vs. Gwinnnett Co. - Looking at the comments on the story in the local paper will make you cry. Just...really? Anyway, I'm for freedom of information, and even if you have to block stuff deemed inappropriate, it's a pretty bold cultural statement these days to say that a site about homosexuality is inherently inappropriate.
  
  
• DigitalLiteracy.goc - New site to help Americans get basics of digital literacy. Pretty interesting, but I think the first step will still be teaching them how to navigate the site.
  
  
• Is the MLIS worth it? - Interesting chart, which points out that most MLIS holders asked would reccomend people following the path, but the younger/newer the holder the more likely they'd be do dissuade someone from following the path.
  
  
• Blue Bins for Book Donations - This is interesting for me because my library doesn't do a book sale, but sends books to an online service that sells them, and we also let them put book donation bins at the branches for people who come in asking to donate books (which we generally don't accept).
  
  
• Library Blog awards - To find people who DO have the capacity to keep up with something like this.

And there you go.

NEXT TIME: Things I saw in Magazines!

(I'm not kidding...)

Resting on Laurels

Well, as you can surely tell, this has been a resounding success what with the depth of my thoughts and the constant nature of my posting.

I did have another post that I started a while back, about censorship and library programming and balancing ideologies, but the internet ate part of it and I decided it just wasn't worth going back through it all. Especially because I changed my mind halfway through so it was basically just a big long block of text wherein I argued myself out of a point I initially made. WHO NEEDS THE CONFUSION?

Anyway, today my goal is simple: Record my takeaways from the Feb. 01, 2011 edition of Library Journal.

• Page 15: An inset about the Consumer Electronics Show which featured many tablets this year, as opposed to the plethora of e-readers featured last year. This is attributed to the lack of an iPad at last year's show. The writer argues that this means that tablets are the wave of the future and that e-readers are already over.
  
  That's premature, in my opinion, because people who love e-readers really seem to LOVE e-readers, and people who want an iPad seem to have an iPad. (Except for me. Sadface. But that's why I got the color nook anyway. Half and half.)
  
  
• Page 17: An essay by Aaron Schmidt about good design and how we should all take stock of the signs in our branches and making sure they are accurate, timely, useful, etc. (Basically not misinformation or extraneous uglification.) Also, simplify signs to the required info. Flowery language is distracting. (That's a lesson I need to learn, think ye not?)
  
  
• Page 24: "The Quiet Plug Crisis" describes the current neet for AS MANY PLUGS AS POSSIBLE OMG in new library buildings, and the troubles old library buildings are having finding places for patrons to plug in and charge up. The article does mention specifically the popularity of tables with pop-up plugs, which we have in my comparitively new library building! Yay! But they don't mention the headache that the cords and cord-covers can cause under the tables. (Ours fall apart because they have heavy metal bases that are attached with plastic pegs to plastic, spinal-column-looking cord covers and the heavy metal bases are always coming unattached and falling to pieces. BAD NEWS BEARS.)
  
  
• Page 28: "Is Your Library Up On Yelp?" Ours is not. Someone should do something about this. This may require the drastic step of an e-mail to management.

And there you have it.

Aren't you happy? At least sanguine?

I dunno. Why does that mean what it means instead of bloody?

eReaders, e-readers, and Ereaders

Starting point: This post from The Librarian in Black.

The L.i.B. gushes over her Kindle, but assures us she feels guilt over it because, "As you probably know, the Kindle is the only eReader devices that doesn’t allow library digital content onto it."


Photo from wired.com

I myself went with the B&N nook for my eReader of choice, mostly because what I really wanted was something I could use to read articles on Instapaper and through Google Reader. Something that was bigger than my phone, and had color, and cost less than a $600 (more with accessories) iPad.

I'm fairly happy with it, but that doesn't change the fact that the Kindle is still seen as the standard in the collection of eReaders available today. What this means for libraries is that we're telling a lot of people the new Kindle they got for Christmas isn't library compatible, sorry, better luck next time. And hey, have you heard of Project Gutenberg or Google Books?

What we can't do is give them the information also presented in the L.i.B.'s post, which is how to illegally get around all the pesky DRM limitations by reformatting files and things like that.

What I wonder (not that I would ever DO such a thing) is how such books would show up in a Kindle. Because one of the most annoying things about my nook is that the files I download from the library or Google books won't show up in my main "nook library." They're in a another less easily accessible file. Boo to that.

The regular nook books show up on the main page with shiny covers. (Shiny because the nook has an LCD screen instead of eInk (e-ink?) which means you can't read it outside in the sun because of glare. As I've told anyone who asks, I don't tend to read outside if at all possible. So that's a non-issue. And it would be nice if I could see the shiny covers to ALL of the books I download, not just the ones I paid B&N for.)

So I wonder what the Kindle interface is like. I've played with them a little bit in the stores, but have never really gotten down to brass tacks (plastic pushpins?) with one. I probably won't, unless someone I know gets one, because how many librarians have the discretionary income to buy TWO eReaders? (Frankly, I'm pushing it with one.)

But even so, in the spirit of my "Information wants to be free!" profession, it's probably good to know that people can get around the DRM protections if they really want to. After all, they paid for the device, why can't they do what they want with it?

Intro

This is intended as a way to kick start my involvement in the intellectual side of Library and Information Science. I'm a librarian in a public library, so I deal with the realities of library land every day, but I'd like to encourage myself to stay up to date with changes and have opinions about current topics.