[LISNews] The LISNews For February 4th 2010
The LISNews Librarian News By Email
lisnews at lishost.net
Thu Feb 4 10:57:23 CST 2010
Let's see what the most popular stories have been for the past 30 days:
-[1] - 10 Librarian Blogs To Read in 2010
http://lisnews.org/node/35544/
-[2] - If Your Password Is 123456, Just Make It HackMe
http://lisnews.org/node/35710/
-[3] - Coming Out Now...the iPad (aka the Apple Tablet)
http://lisnews.org/node/35773/
-[4] - It's Good to Be a Librarian
http://lisnews.org/node/35600/
-[5] - Author Sherman Alexie's Rants On Colbert
http://lisnews.org/node/35534/
And here's the latest from LISNews:
--Skyline Books closes doors after 20 years
- http://lisnews.org/node/35849/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Thursday February 4th at 11:55 AM
-Read 8 times - 0 Comments
Village rare bookstore, Skyline Books, closes doors after 20 years Say goodbye to yet another dusty, musty piece of
vanishing Manhattan. All that's now left of Skyline Books is a sign in the window reading "End of an Era. Thanks for 20
Great Years." That's how long Robert Warren's used book store at 13 W. 18th St. lasted - a kind of hole-in- the-wall home
to a universe of rare books, from first editions of Beat Generation classics like "The Dharma Bums," to pornographic Italian
comics to an autographed copy of Charles Bukowski's "Post Office."
--Is Amazon Building a Superkindle?
- http://lisnews.org/node/35848/
-Front Page Story by Bibliofuture Posted Thursday February 4th at 10:53 AM
-Read 115 times - 1 Comments
NYT Bits Blog If you were Amazon, and Apple released the iPad, what would you do? Scurry away into the corner, or buy a
small company in New York and use its technology to build a Superkindle, with a multitouch color screen and built-in
applications? If you guessed the latter, you’d be right. Full blog entry
--Amazon's Overblown E-Book Tussle
- http://lisnews.org/node/35847/
-Front Page Story by Bibliofuture Posted Thursday February 4th at 10:23 AM
-Read 115 times - 0 Comments
AMAZON.COM (TICKER: AMZN) shares are down 6% since Macmillan announced that it was switching from a wholesale pricing model
to an agency pricing model (the agency model prevents Amazon from discounting e-book titles). We believe concerns over the
impact of the potential change in e-book pricing and Apple's (AAPL) iPad launch have been overblown. Even if all of the
publishers move to the agency model, which is unlikely, we still expect Amazon to capture a large share of the e-book
market. We also expect physical book sales, in which Amazon has a leading market position, to significantly exceed digital
book sales for at least the next five years. In addition, the iPad costs two to three times more than the Kindle, and its
liquid crystal display screen provides an inferior book-reading experience. Finally, we expect nonmedia sales to be the most
important driver of Amazon's growth. Story at Barron's
--Springfield's IL Last library branch closed yesterday
- http://lisnews.org/node/35846/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Thursday February 4th at 9:46 AM
-Read 138 times - 1 Comments
And then there was one... The Southeast Branch of Lincoln Library, which has been open to city residents for 27 years, will
close today, the victim of city budget cuts. The West Branch closed, perhaps permanently, on Wednesday. The closures were
announced less than 24 hours after aldermen approved a spending plan for the next fiscal year that doesn’t include funding
for the branch libraries.
--Lexingtonians, Meet the Candidates for New Library Director
- http://lisnews.org/node/35845/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Thursday February 4th at 8:28 AM
-Read 136 times - 0 Comments
The Lexington KY Public Library is inviting members of the community to meet the three candidates for the position of
Library Director. The three finalists will be on hand for a public forum at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4, at the Central
Library Theater. Each candidate will address the public and answer questions. Check out their vitae here. Who's your pick?
--HTML5 Explained
- http://lisnews.org/node/35844/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Thursday February 4th at 7:27 AM
-Read 189 times - 0 Comments
Why HTML5 Isn't Going to Save the Internet HTML is also setting forth a vision of media—specifically video—that doesn't
rely on crashy, resource-intensive proprietary plugins. Look in your plugins folder, you will probably see four video
plugins at a minimum. HTML is a standard with an optimistic view of the future: You launch your browser, and whatever site
you visit, whatever media you choose to play, your browser just magically supports it, without the frustration, confusion
and added instability of a plug-in. But at heart HTML is just a framework, a glimpse, and an ideal: Its real effect on the
internet continues to be defined by the companies and web developers who choose to adopt its many pieces—and it is further
shaped by those who don't.
--Stanford signs Google Book Search agreement, endorses court settlement
- http://lisnews.org/node/35843/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Thursday February 4th at 7:00 AM
-Read 211 times - 1 Comments
Stanford signs Google Book Search agreement, endorses court settlement "Stanford is on the cutting edge of technology
development and is using technology to improve access to information not just for their faculty and students, but for the
world," said Dan Clancy, Google Books engineering director. "Their early participation was important to the establishment of
the Google Books project, and we’re very pleased that they have continued to support this effort and expanded their
commitment under the terms of the settlement."
--The future of books
- http://lisnews.org/node/35842/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Thursday February 4th at 6:54 AM
-Read 214 times - 0 Comments
The future of books Rebecca Smith, communications and advancement director for KU Libraries, says the Sony Readers have
been so popular they are planning on purchasing four more. “We’re trying to meet and anticipate student needs,” Smith says.
“E-book readers are something students are incredibly interested in. So far, we’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback.”
However, not everybody is enthusiastic about reading a screen instead of a traditional paper page. Ian Hrabe, 2009 graduate,
doesn’t think e-books could ever replace the real thing.
--With enough libraries, all content is free
- http://lisnews.org/node/35841/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Thursday February 4th at 6:52 AM
-Read 154 times - 0 Comments
Jessamyn West: when good librarians go bad, geniune options in librarianship "That is to say… if the world was one big
library and we all had interlibrary loan at that library, we could lend anything to anyone. The funding structures of
libraries currently mean that in many cases we’re duplicating [and paying for] content that we could be sharing. This is at
the heart of a lot of the copyright battles of today and, to my mind, what’s really behind the EBSCO/Gale/vendors."
--The Body of Information
- http://lisnews.org/node/35840/
-Blog Entry by AndyW Posted Thursday February 4th at 1:49 AM
-Read 81 times - 0 Comments
I just finished reading a New York Times article entitled “Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally” that came out
a few days ago. Librarians certainly talk about how information is organized and how it can be accessed, and so I thought
this article relates well in talking about how the brain (our ultimate end user) perceives information. It is part of an
psychological field called embodied cognition. Notable quote: “How we process information is related not just to our
brains but to our entire body,” said Nils B. Jostmann of the University of Amsterdam. “We use every system available to us
to come to a conclusion and make sense of what’s going on.” We talk about how information is presented all the time, but
this brings it to a whole new level. Should we be designing the user experience with these types of body cues in mind? Does
this have a viable use in the library at all?
--LISTen 106 Delayed
- http://lisnews.org/node/35839/
-Front Page Story by StephenK Posted Wednesday February 3rd at 11:03 PM
-Read 156 times - 0 Comments
Due to the impending Super Bowl match-up on February 7th, it is anticipated that connectivity will be quite impaired for
Erie Looking Productions at its rural operations site in extreme northeastern Ohio. Under optimal conditions not tied to
major events like the Super Bowl, our cable broadband access has roughly one-third the throughput a conventional cable
broadband connection in the United States would possess. We expect that access will be impaired during and immediately
after the game. Recognizing such, LISTen #106 will not be released on February 8th as we will most likely repeatedly
time-out during upload attempts.Columns will still be released as deemed appropriate in the intervening time. These will be
posted as text posts with Adobe Acrobat files injected into the podcast stream as enclosures so as to not leave podcast
listeners without something.Barring any further disruptions, LISTen #106 is anticipated to be released on or near 0500 UTC
on February 15th. For those wanting to catch up on listening after ALA Mid-Winter might have put you behind, LISTen 105
remains available as does the column Defining Value.
--Book Club Burlesque Show...Fiction Fetish
- http://lisnews.org/node/35838/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Wednesday February 3rd at 8:28 PM
-Read 217 times - 0 Comments
The New Yorker has a colorful blurb about an off-off Broadway show entitled Book Club Burlesque at the Parkside Lounge on
the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Photos, quite cheeky, are included. Dancer Lydia Ransom opened the show dressed as a
proper librarian (tweed and argyle), and cheekily shushed the audience. “This is a library,” Ransom winked, before removing
her cardigan and skirt. She pulled David McCullough’s “John Adams” out of a Strand shopping bag. “Good role model, very good
role model,” she said, and rubbed the cover down her body. (Would you do that with an iPad?).
--Woman's stock donation to library grows
- http://lisnews.org/node/35837/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Wednesday February 3rd at 1:21 PM
-Read 207 times - 0 Comments
Woman's stock donation to library grows A donation of stock shares to the Loveland Public Library has now grown large
enough to build the library's poetry section and start on an expansion. Lula Colwell donated 3,200 shares of Proctor &
Gamble stock worth less than $9 each in the late 1980s.
--Grisham and Updike among authors banned by Texan jail authorities
- http://lisnews.org/node/35836/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Wednesday February 3rd at 1:19 PM
-Read 351 times - 2 Comments
Grisham and Updike among authors banned by Texan jail authorities An exhaustive analysis by the Austin American Statesman
of five years'-worth of publications whose rejection as unsuitable was appealed by inmates found a host of bestselling and
classic titles had been banned from the state's prisons. Books by Nobel laureates Pablo Neruda and Andre Gide, collections
of paintings by Picasso and Michelangelo, and bestsellers by James Patterson, Carl Hiaasen and Hunter S Thompson have all
failed to pass the prisons' censors.
--After years of lobbying, a Bronx high school scores a library
- http://lisnews.org/node/35835/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Wednesday February 3rd at 1:17 PM
-Read 291 times - 1 Comments
After years of lobbying, a Bronx high school scores a library When School Construction Authority officials first stepped
foot in the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics to build a $1.1 million library, Principal Edward Tom had some specific
instructions. “I told them not to think about high school libraries,” Tom said at a ribbon cutting ceremony held at the
school today. “I told them: ‘Think Starbucks.’”
--Open Societies need open systems
- http://lisnews.org/node/35833/
-Front Page Story by AndyW Posted Wednesday February 3rd at 10:09 AM
-Read 250 times - 0 Comments
>From BBC News (via Library Link of the Day) Notable quote: "At the heart of this and many other fights lies an attempt to
limit the ways in which the network and the computers connected to it can be used, and to do so in ways that serve the
interests of corporations. These interests may sometimes be aligned with those of the wider public, but that alignment is
conditional and contingent and cannot be relied upon, which is why it must always be challenged." Full commentary
--Re: Nothing is the Future, ctd.
- http://lisnews.org/node/35832/
-Blog Entry by AndyW Posted Wednesday February 3rd at 12:54 AM
-Read 351 times - 0 Comments
Some of the commenters to Wayne Bivens-Tatum’s post “Nothing is the Future” seem to be under the odd impression that his
post is an response to Library 2.0/101. It could be one till you get to the last paragraph of his post. I've used
"mobile" just as one example. The same could be said of various service or organization models. You can plug in
any term you want, and know that when anyone tells you that thing is "the future," they're wrong. And to be clear,
my criticism isn't of any particular services or trends. If there's a new, popular way for librarians to communicate with or
reach out to library users, by all means librarians should adopt it, or at least experiment with it. My criticism is the
hype and the reductionism, and the implied claim that some librarians really know what the future holds, and that it just
happens to be centered around whatever they happen to like at the moment. Maybe they're convincing themselves, but they're
not convincing me. (Emphasis mine.) From the bolded text, Mr. Bivens-Tatum is addressing all forms of library future
hyperbole. While Library 2.0/101 make an excellent target for such criticism, the logic presented also makes an excellent
case for the librarians who are overly cautious and/or completely rejecting minor changes to the practice and profession
(e.g. the people who make the overzealous argument that rejects any new service, program, event, material, web tool, or
website based on their own biases without patron consideration or input). It’s a dangerous, dismissive, and ultimately
untenable position to maintain in this information-communication revolution. It’s antithetical of the evolution of knowledge
and ultimately critical of anyone working on better content delivery, regardless of their means and methods. If the zealotry
of the web 2.0 techno-narcissists with their grand prophetic-like innovation announcements is bad, then their counterpart in
the sneering cynical criticisms of pompous ludbrarians[1] rejecting deviance from the status quo is equally harmful for
rational forward looking discourse. (To provide a visualization of how I am seeing this, I made up a simple chart.) I
count myself in the middle of this chart, perhaps with a leaning towards the right end. The middle sentence between the two
bolded ones in the quotation holds more of the essence of the “change in the library” conversation that I’m interested in.
It is about watching and listening to what patrons are doing and saying and then providing materials and services that work
towards or meet their expressed needs. If I can provide both a low tech or a high tech solution, who gives a damn which is
used so long as there is a solution? I am beholden to the end result (patron with need satisfied), not the process that
achieved it. Tim Spalding in the Thingology blog makes an excellent concluding point in his reply to the Academic Librarian
post, stating: It says something that hasn't been said before as well. But if it prompts librarians to dismiss
technology's impact on the future of libraries, it will do great harm. Instead, I hope people use your essay as a way to
"kick it up a notch" intellectually, get past the small stuff and confront the very real changes ahead.
(Emphasis mine.) I couldn’t agree more. It’s really time to get past the crap, get over our hang-ups, and talk like
adults. This divisiveness that has been generated is really beneath a profession who values the free exchange of ideas.
Let’s start acting like it. [1] Luddite + Librarian = Ludbrarians. AndyW
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