[LISNews] The LISNews For February 26th 2010

[The LISNews Librarian News By Email]

Happy Friday! It's the LISNews for February 26th, 2010...

 Let's look at the top headlines from the past week:

-[1] - A Literary Approach to Speed Dating
   http://lisnews.org/node/36002/
-[2] - The Case Against Public Libraries
   http://lisnews.org/node/36023/
-[3] - Librarians Gone Wild
   http://lisnews.org/node/36009/
-[4] - Parent Has a Problem with "Pants" Books for Teens
   http://lisnews.org/node/35988/
-[5] - Pew Report: The Future of the Internet IV
   http://lisnews.org/node/35997/


And here's the latest from LISNews:


--Announcing The LISNews Librarian Joke Contest
- http://lisnews.org/node/36079/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Friday February 26th at 12:12 PM
-Read 3 times - 0 Comments
As the LISNews Librarian Essay Contest winds down it seems like a good time to formally announce the LISNews Librian Joke
Contest! We won't judge each joke, but anyone who submits a joke will be entered to win some cool prizes.   From
www.funkandweber.com and www.StitchingForLiteracy.com ...a set of four Needle and ThREAD: Stitching for Literacy cross
stitch bookmark patterns, including two designed from the old chicken-and-frog library joke. You know, a chicken walks into
a library and says, "book, Book, BOOK!" (you gotta say it like a chicken), so the librarian gives her a book. The chicken
takes the book outside and down to a pond where a frog sits on a lily pad and croaks, "read-it, read-it" (that's right, say
it like a frog).  Book Marks from www.InMyBook.com  Web Hosting from www.LISHost.org  You'll want to submit your joke(s)
HERE starting on MONDAY.  Follow along on the tracker page (http://lisnews.org/joketracker) or RSS feed
(http://lisnews.org/jokes/rss) 


--A Perfect Mess
- http://lisnews.org/node/36078/
-Blog Entry by Bibliofuture Posted Friday February 26th at 10:53 AM
-Read 43 times - 0 Comments
 Book: A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and on-the-Fly Planning
Make the World a Better Place  A groundbreaking book that sheds new light on ideas of order--and shows how chaos, disorder,
and mess make our world a better place! Like Freakonomics, here is a book that combines counterintuitive thinking with
stories from everyday life to provide a striking new view of how our world works. Ever since Einstein's study of Brownian
Motion, scientists have understood that a little disorder actually makes systems more effective. But most people still shun
disorder--or suffer guilt over the mess they can't avoid.  No longer! With a spectacular array of anecdotes and case studies
of the useful role mess can play, here is an antidote to the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, neatness, and consistency
are the keys to success. Drawing on examples from business, parenting, cooking, the war on terrorism, retail, and even the
meteoric career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, coauthors Abrahamson and Freedman demonstrate that moderately messy systems use
resources more efficiently, yield better solutions, and are harder to break than neat ones.  A PERFECT MESS will help
readers assess what the right amount of disorder is for a given system, and how to apply these ideas onto a large
scale--government, society-- and on a small scale--in your attic, kitchen, or office. A PERFECT MESS will forever change the
way we think about those unruly heaps of paper on our desks.


--Crash Course in Cataloging for Non-Catalogers
- http://lisnews.org/node/36076/
-Blog Entry by Bibliofuture Posted Friday February 26th at 10:19 AM
-Read 61 times - 0 Comments
 Book: Crash Course in Cataloging for Non-Catalogers: A Casual Conversation on Organizing Information  Written with minimal
theory and much practical and hands-on experience, this work by an associate faculty associate in the School of Library and
Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin—Madison is of great value not only to the nonprofessional cataloger but
also to the cataloging student or any librarian wishing to know more about what goes on in the process of cataloging. . . .
Kaplan provides a fast read to one wishing only a quick overview, while simultaneously providing practical experience for
the one wishing to delve more into the topics addressed. . . . A very detailed index enables use of the volume as a
reference book, while the chapters themselves enable self-teaching or use as a text in a cataloging and classification
course at a library school.


--Online Storage Site Ordered To Filter Books
- http://lisnews.org/node/36075/
-Front Page Story by Great Western Dragon Posted Friday February 26th at 7:53 AM
-Read 114 times - 0 Comments
>From the article:  Six book publishers have gained an injunction against file-hosting company, RapidShare. The Swiss-based
‘cyberlocker’ service must monitor user uploads to ensure that around 148 titles, many of them textbooks, are never made
available to its users. Failure to do so could result in $339,000 fines, or even jail time for company bosses.  For those
who don't know, RapidShare is site where one can upload files for off-site storage and distribution. It's that
"distribution" that it's well known for as thousands of people upload larger files to the service with the intention of
allowing others to download. Though it's well known in certain circles for hosting pirated content, it's strange that the
first shot fired against it should come from the publishing industry rather than the recording or motion picture industries.
 More from TorrentFreak.


--The Individual and the Collective: Paths to Fixing What’s Broken in Our Libraries
- http://lisnews.org/node/36073/
-Blog Entry by stevenj Posted Thursday February 25th at 9:41 PM
-Read 73 times - 0 Comments
	Whether you graduated from college just a few years ago or many, the likelihood is that most of what you learned is hazy
at best or gone completely. Such is the case with much of my college experience, but every so often I recall something
memorable. One course in particular, the exact name didn’t make it into my long-term memory, dealt with the theme of
individualism versus collectivism in American culture. Through literature and history we explored how our nation grew from a
mix of rugged individualism and collective action. On one hand we celebrate the lone frontiersman who forged paths into the
wilderness taming it along the way, while we also portray ourselves to the world as the great melting pot experiment in
which our many cultures blend and work together to create a great union. It is a unique dualism to be sure.  	The themes
from this course are memorable owing to their simple truth, but also because the evidence of the tension between the
individual and the collective surrounds us and constantly emerges as a source of strain in our lives and dysfunction in our
organizations. We want to be free to pursue our own interests, but we have commitments to our families. We seek individual
attention, but we understand the importance of giving credit to the community. And in our libraries, as individuals or
departments we occasionally want to do what we want, and sometimes we forget that we are part of a larger collective we call
“the library”, and that we have a responsibility to put the larger entity ahead of our personal satisfaction. In order for
the collective to succeed each individual must take personal responsibility to make sure the greater good is served.  	Every
library has something that’s broken. If everything works flawlessly at your library, call me, I want to come see it. For the
rest of us it’s important to pay attention to what’s broken and to fix it. Too often however, things stay broken because
everyone is too busy doing something else to bother with what’s broken, and we take it for granted that someone else will
fix it. But what happens all too often when individuals evade personal responsibility is that the collective suffers. This
becomes a significant problem when library workers become so accustomed to these broken things that they no longer notice
what’s broken, from a malfunctioning pencil sharpener to large-scale technology that fails at even simple tasks. The people
who use the library do notice though, and when too many things, people and processes are broken those people go elsewhere
for their information services and content.  	True story. A colleague went to a large, metropolitan public library to obtain
several books, equipped with printouts from the library catalog. A few of the books were in a closed stack area. 
Approaching the desk to request the books, she was told that in order to retrieve the books a printout of the records signed
by a librarian was required. The printout she held in her hands was of no consequence. So she trudged over to the librarian
who sat dutifully at a desk. Thinking of saving time for both of them my colleague showed her printout and asked to have it
signed. To her disbelief the librarian insisted on searching the books again, further wasting time. Why? Because that’s what
the rules required. The library workers know their rules-based culture is broken, but the response is a lack of individual
responsibility and collective failure. Repairing what’s broken requires someone who will say “this is broken” and take
personal responsibility to see that it gets fixed. That’s a form of library leadership any library worker can take.  
	Here’s an example, from higher education, of the difference personal accountability can make. Chicago State University has
a 160-acre campus in a low-income, urban neighborhood and it has a large portion of at-risk students. For many years the
campus was poorly maintained, and the institution was a small deficit away from collapse. But a new President turned it all
around with a simple change in culture. It took an act of leadership to create an environment of personal responsibility
that made the difference. Now other administrators pay attention to broken windows or plants that need replacement, and
students are more conscientious about taking care of the campus. With an improved physical plant the administration was able
to turn its attention to fixing more complicated systems such as those for enrollment and registration, while encouraging
top faculty to take responsibility for more core courses. As the author of a Chronicle of Higher Education article about
Chicago State University put it, you can talk all you want about standards and accountability, but all “jargon moves from
abstraction to reality when you see the price students pay for inattention.”  	The tension between the individual and the
collective can be seen at the departmental level as well as the individual one in our libraries. Rather than thinking and
acting as a collective, too often our units act as silos pitting themselves against each other. Has this ever happened at
your library? A new problem rears its ugly head. Rather than taking individual responsibility each department points at the
others, insisting that the problem is not their problem and that another department is the responsible party. It’s possible
that the departments are short on staff, and understandably reluctant to take on one more problem with which to deal. The
finger pointing solves nothing and ultimately detracts from the library user experience.  	So what can we do in our
libraries to bring the individual and the collective into balance, and instill the value of personal responsibility that can
lead us to fix what’s broken? Of course we want to encourage individualism that brings innovation and thoughtful initiatives
to our libraries. None of this is to suggest that library leaders should have all staff walking in lockstep. But when there
is too much individualism and too little collectivism no one may be paying attention to simple quality-of-life services that
make a library worth using and enjoying. A new book from the Heath brothers, Dan and Chip, may offer some solutions, because
this lack of personal responsibility and failure to fix what’s broken is, at its essence, about change. The Heaths, authors
of the must read Made to Stick, focus their new book on the simple idea that change is hard. In their new book, Switch: How
to Change Things When Change is Hard, the Heaths offer ideas and examples of how to “flip the switch” and make change
happen. Through their study of positive change, they found one key was to find the small successes and then build on them.
When individuals see that as a collective their small efforts contribute a larger change for the good, it will stimulate
them to repeat that behavior.   	That seems like a fairly simple idea, one that many of us could implement in our libraries.
We all have successes to point to, and rather than forget them we should be doing more to use them as launching pads for
other initiatives. And if we have too few successes we need leadership to create them, and one way is to start with the
low-hanging fruit. What about those pencil sharpeners? How long have they been sitting there broken? Is it possible that no
one individual or department will take responsibility for the problem, that everyone thinks he or she is too busy or
important, or that the other department is supposed to deal with this? But instead of having the boss who’s now fed up with
this problem just force one unlucky library worker to deal with it, take the opportunity to create a small collective out of
one representative from each department to tackle it. No pointing fingers or evading the task at hand. Just accept personal
responsibility as an individual and commit to finding a solution as part of the collective.   And once the pencil sharpeners
are working again, the result of a group effort to figure out how to get it done, the library now has an example of a
collective success. What was once broken is now fixed. The reality is that our libraries and community members will suffer
if we fail to pay attention to what’s broken. But getting started on solving this problem is manageable. In many cases new
funding isn’t needed. High-tech gadgets aren’t the answer. It certainly doesn’t need a committee. What it requires is a
commitment to accept personal responsibility. That is the path to achieving collective success.	   


--A Librarian’s Dilemma: Three Articles in Consideration of DDC and its Utility in Public Libraries
- http://lisnews.org/node/36072/
-Blog Entry by bas2112 Posted Thursday February 25th at 7:01 PM
-Read 345 times - 5 Comments
by Bruce A. Sullivan  Part I: Summary  The current debate over the continued utility of the Dewey Decimal System in public
libraries seems to hinge on one assertion, as articulated by Michael Casey: “Dewey, no matter how good for librarians
needing to locate a book fast, is simply not suited to a popular collection intended more for browsing than research” (Casey
19). Resultantly, a number of small public libraries, notably Maricopa County Library District in Arizona, Rangeview Library
District in Colorado, and Frankfort Public Library in Illinois, have adapted standards designed by booksellers (indeed, for
booksellers) to their collections. These BISAC standards allegedly facilitate browsing, giving the library patron a more
user-centered, as opposed to professional-centered, experience.  Hence, library professionals face what Barbara Fister,
writing for Library Journal, has called, “The Dewey Dilemma.” On one hand, librarians wish “to retain Dewey’s precision and
its ability to identify a specific shelf location” (25). On the other hand, “Many librarians feel BISAC’s relative
simplicity and user-friendly language have an advantage over Dewey’s complexity” (22). Library users, regardless of their
purposes for visiting the library, want to feel empowered; Fister’s article indicates both that many librarians feel Dewey
could be improved with category signage and catalog metadata, and also that many patrons (over 50 percent) feel that call
numbers are too complicated to use (see 24, “Chart 1” and “Table 1,” respectively). Solutions to the dilemma seldom involve
dropping Dewey altogether. Darien Library’s Kate Sheehan states, “We wanted to retain the findability of Dewey while
encouraging and enabling browsing. We clumped similar areas of Dewey together in eight broad categories, which we call
glades” (qtd. in Fister 24). Other libraries have taken a variety of approaches, but still “Dewey is currently the most
widely used classification system in the world, employed in 138 countries by over 200,000 libraries” (25).  In “Another
Opinion: The Joys of Deweying,” librarian Bob Hassett is forthright in his opinion of the abandonment of Dewey: “It is
reckless and irresponsible, amounting to dereliction or our core mission, a rank disservice to library users” (47). Writing
for Library Media Connection in 2007, Hassett refers to the bookstore model as “a small number of vague categories”
demonstrating “the absence of any reliable formal system for organization” (47). While Hassett acknowledges a number of
arguments against using Dewey, he stresses its ongoing, widespread utility, writing, “In the end, the point of
classification is findability, providing as many access points as possible for users. Experience tells me that even the best
bookstores do not serve this end with near the efficiency of even the worst libraries” (47).  By March 2008, librarians of
the Frankfort Public Library district had decided to “Free Dewey.” Two years later, writing in “Transition & Reflection:
Frankfort Public Library District’s Decision to Go Dewey Free” from ILA Reporter, librarians Melissa Rice and Joanna Kolendo
detail their experiences with the project and reflect on its aftermath. They write, “The most exciting aspect about going
Dewey Free was the freedom to redesign collection layouts. No longer restricted to a numerical order, we moved popular
collections closer to the front of the library and combined similar collections” (14). Highly circulating collections were
moved near the entrance and check-out desk. As with many other libraries engaged in such a change, Frankfort developed its
own taxonomy based on Dewey categories, the BISAC standards, and various alternatives. In conclusion, the librarians reflect
on the benefits they have seen, including positive feedback from patrons, but admit they don’t know how well their Dewey
Free classification system will work. Nevertheless, they insist that “decoding the system provides all patrons, regardless
of educational, social, or cultural background, equal footing as they walk through the collections” (14).  Part II:
Assessment  The Dewey controversy is of major concern for many public libraries. However, as noted by Library Journal’s
Francine Fialkoff in an editorial response to “The Dewey Dilemma,” “Simplifying Dewey isn’t so revolutionary” (8). Indeed,
if we claim that a core competency of librarianship is the ability to conduct bibliographic instruction (Core Competency
5D), then simplifying or discarding Dewey for the use of patrons is not the answer; rather, empowering patrons through
education of Dewey classification (as part of the reference interview, for instance) more effectively meets that role of
librarianship.  As most of the authors I read have noted, there are a variety of things bookstores have borrowed from
libraries and vice-versa – comfortable seating, discussion groups, and so forth (Fialkoff 8). We should remember, though,
that public libraries in particular are not in the sales business, even when circulation statistics are so heavily prized.
Specifically, I recall the words of Rangeview Library’s director Pam Sandlian Smith from “The Dewey Dilemma:” “Customers
often comment that when they visit bookstores, they can find things easily and would like that ease of use in libraries”
(qtd. in Fister 23). This statement is unsurprising. Bookstores, along with the public relations and marketing firms that
guide their corporate philosophies, have invested heavily in selling an experience to customers. That experience includes
the notion that the customer has found exactly what was wanted or needed: a manufactured need. Whether or not the item the
customer takes home is what the customer wanted or needed in the first place – if, in fact, the customer wanted or needed
anything in the first place – is irrelevant, because bookstores are designed to make the customer take something home (after
paying for it, of course). In Wayne Wiegand’s words, “In general, bookstores do a better job of identifying newer titles
relevant to their customers’ interests, but that doesn’t mean they understand those interests. They are mostly responding to
a market demand” (qtd. in Fister 23). Circulation is a vital part of any good library system, but it is still one part only.
There is no ostensible reason to cast a library’s organization of information to the wayside in order to drive circulation
statistics. Tom Eland laments this fact when he states, “Too bad for the people who are trying to do real research, or who
want to explore a specific domain of knowledge by going to the shelves and browsing by classification area” (qtd. in Fister
23).  The question of true, serendipitous findability remains, even for librarians, perhaps especially for librarians. A
masterful librarian likely needs years to know most information packages in even a modestly sized collection. No
classification system is perfect (Fister 23), and the ones we have were developed to solve the cataloguing problems of the
day. Dewey is old and its problems are not necessarily overstated. The numbers themselves do not have any readily apparent
meaning – there is no reason why, for instance, 921 must be “biography” any more than 610, which actually looks like “bio.” 
We may remember that Melvil Dewey was a pioneer, and many industries have long ago turned to innovation to build on a
pioneering foundation. Still, it is unclear to me how the oft-proposed BISAC standards or some mash-up of them and DDC is
superior to true, systematic organization, even for browsing. Dewey is as flexible and any other system, and this
flexibility allows librarians to catalog items based on common convention or local needs (Hassett 47). Additionally, there
are many things libraries could do to make their collections more accessible from the moment the patron enters the building.
Increased signage is often mentioned as helpful, and admittedly whenever I enter an unfamiliar bookstore or a library, the
first thing I look for is signage. Entry to a bookstore usually disorients me with items for sale everywhere; in a library,
all I need is to see is where the catalog is and where the Dewey numbers begin. Some would argue that learning how to use
those things is too much to ask. I disagree. The power of those tools far outweighs any perceived convenience derived from
being able to see popular books upon entry to the library.  From a professional point of view, a Dewey call number for a
book is extremely helpful to me if a patron is looking for a book that my library doesn’t carry, but another library in the
consortium does (and of course, subject headings work this way for me, too). I can use that other library’s call number to
find something appropriate on the shelf at my library. If a situation were to arise when the only library that had a
particular book on a topic had that book labeled with a category, and not a Dewey number, it would be more difficult for me,
for a patron, or for whomever to find an equivalent or nearly equivalent title on the shelves at hand. This is probably the
biggest practical problem I see with ditching Dewey, particularly for consortial libraries that are nearby to each other,
that work together, and which rely on copy cataloguing and a shared catalog.  What is the solution to this dilemma? There is
no silver bullet. It is unreasonable to say that DDC is all that public libraries can and should ever use, particularly
since electronic resources now present so many varied challenges. Robust catalogs which allow for extensible metadata entry
by professionals or others can often mediate problems with any cataloguing scheme. It would be the same for Dewey as for
BISAC. No matter where the book goes on the shelf, if there are not reliable and various means to point people in the
direction of what they would like to find, then the organization of information has failed.  Works Cited  Casey, Michael,
and Michael Stephens. “It’s Fine To Drop Dewey.” The Transparent Library. Library Journal 134.12 (2009): 19. Library and
Information Science FT. Web. 23 November 2009.  Fialkoff, Francine. “It’s Not About Dewey.” Editorial. Library Journal
134.18 (2009): 8. Library and Information Science FT. Web. 23 November 2009.  Fister, Barbara. “The Dewey Dilemma.” Library
Journal 134.16 (2009): 22-25. Library and Information Science FT. Web. 23 November 2009.  Hassett, Bob. “The Joys of
Deweying.” Another Opinion. Library Media Connection 26.3 (2007): 47. Library and Information Science FT. Web. 23 November
2009.  Rice, Melissa, and Joanna Kolendo. “Transition and Reflection: Frankfort Public Library District’s Decision to Go
Dewey Free.” ILA Reporter 27.3 (2009): 12-15. Library and Information Science FT. Web. 23 November 2009. 


--Blogging By Hand
- http://lisnews.org/node/36071/
-Blog Entry by StephenK Posted Thursday February 25th at 6:57 PM
-Read 118 times - 0 Comments
Power outages during snow storms are not fun.  While power has been restored (for now?), the following handwritten bit of
blogging is posted as an attached PDF talking about format diversification.


--Don't Do It Just Because You Can
- http://lisnews.org/node/36069/
-Blog Entry by level250geek Posted Thursday February 25th at 3:29 PM
-Read 268 times - 0 Comments
Technological advancements made in the past decade have certainly made librarians and libraries more efficient, more
varied, and more approachable in the delivery of their services.  Social networking allows for the online promotion of
programs and services, as well as a way to communicate with others in the profession to exchange ideas.  Vodcasting,
podcasting, and blogs have allowed librarians to create material of their own and distribute it openly over the Internet,
expanding their community far beyond their immediate geography.  Video games have become a viable part of a library’s
offerings; they represent the increasing amount of technology that libraries are making available to their patrons and the
increasing diversity of collection development and programming. All in all, there are few faults to find with the grand role
that technology and new media plays in the daily life of a librarian.  However, there is one form of media that librarians
should approach with caution and that should not be engaged in simply for the sake of progress: e-books.  While resistance
is ultimately futile, libraries should not rush to integrate e-books into their offerings.  The majority of patrons don’t
even own e-books readers (or e-readers) as of yet, and purchasing these devices to loan out to patrons could prove
problematic.  Unlike and Xbox 360 or a desktop computer, which is going to remain in place at the library and not be put
solely into the hands of a patron, an e-reader is highly portable—and therefore highly fragile.  They are quite expensive;
the combination of fragility and cost represents a grim prospect for something that would be circulated as often as a book. 
Libraries could be staring down significant loss recovery budgets should their stock of e-readers falter.  The reason of
fiscal awareness, however, is not the primary reason for avoiding e-books and e-readers for now.  Put simply, libraries
could find themselves getting the raw end of the deal when it comes to developing their e-book collection due to digital
rights management, or DRM.  DRM is the bane of all consumers of electronic media, be it music, movies, or video games.  The
easiest way to understand DRM is that it is something that restricts how may devices a given piece of electronic media can
be installed on.  Inherently, it’s to prevent piracy and the breaching of copyright law: to keep me from installing an MP3
on my iPod, my friend’s iPod, his cousins, iPod, and so on.  While the base reasons for DRM are understandable, some
publishers are absolutely paranoid about piracy (or are simply, to be blunt, overcome with greed) and go above and beyond
understandable measures to protect their copyrights.  This hinders library service.  Take, for example, Amazon’s Kindle. 
The Kindle only supports Amazon’s native format of e-books, so everything one purchases for the Kindle must be purchased
from them.  Libraries stocking Kindles for distribution cannot search for the best price on the e-books they wish to install
on the device.  One can only download a book a certain number of times, so if you want to download To Kill a Mockingbird to
multiple devices, you will eventually have to repurchase it.  This is true even if you re-format a device and wish to
re-install the e-book to it.  What’s worse: at no point in time during the purchase is the customer informed of this (Cohen,
2009).  It’s easy to see then, why e-books should be something libraries approach with caution.  Strict DRM gives a
publisher almost total control over how a user buys, stores, and shares content—even after said user has paid for it.  This
translates into more costs for libraries, and if not more cost then certainly underserved patrons, as this service would be
limited in number.  With that being said, there’s no need for libraries to shun them completely.  There are e-book readers
that support DRM-free formats, such as the simple .PDF used by Adobe Reader.  There are apps available for other devices,
such as the iPod Touch or Black Berry smartphones, which function as e-readers.  There are publishers that release e-books
free of DRM, and there is a multitude of books (especially those in the public domain) that are sometimes only available in
a digital format.  If your library is fully depleted of your copies of a work by Homer, and a student needs it for a
classroom reading, then a quick Google search could generate numerous sources to find these works online; if this student
has a portable device with an e-reader, they could walk out of the library with a portable, paper-free, convenient copy of
the work they need.  Unfortunately, e-books are still in something of infancy.  The dedicated e-reader is a fairly new
concept for a mobile device, and publishers are still fearing (or exploiting) the digital frontier.  It’s best for libraries
to wait and exercise caution now, so that they are not engaged in aggressive damage control later.     References Cohen,
Dan.  (2009, June 19).  Kindle’s DRM Rears Its Ugly Head… And It IS Ugly.  Article posted to http://www.geardiary.com/ 


--Behind the Wheel of a Bookmobile
- http://lisnews.org/node/36067/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Thursday February 25th at 2:20 PM
-Read 290 times - 1 Comments
>From Book Patrol:  It started innocently enough. Over dinner a friend mentioned that he saw a used bookmobile for sale on
Craigslist and wished he could by it.  That was all the impetus Tom Corwin needed.  He was soon off to suburban Chicago to
buy the decommissioned bookmobile. He paid $7500 for it.  Corwin has already garnered the support of the National Book
Foundation, the Association of American Publishers and the American Library Association for the project and has signed a
deal with Whitewater Films in Los Angeles for the documentary which will be titled "Behind the Wheel of the Bookmobile." The
film will also include information on the history of bookmobiles.  Authors that have already signed up in support include
Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Junot Diaz, Tom Robbins and Scott Turow, with many of them to take a turn at the wheel...here
they are.  Follow the tour on the website and on Twitter. 


--Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars
- http://lisnews.org/node/36066/
-Blog Entry by Bibliofuture Posted Thursday February 25th at 12:43 PM
-Read 144 times - 1 Comments
Book:  Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates   Since the rise of Napster and other file sharing
services in its wake, most of us have assumed that intellectual piracy is a product of the digital age and that it threatens
creative expression as never before. The Motion Picture Association of America, for instance, claimed that in 2005 the film
industry lost $2.3 billion in revenue to piracy online. But here Adrian Johns shows that piracy has a much longer and more
vital history than we have realized—one that has been largely forgotten and is little understood.   Piracy explores the
intellectual property wars from the advent of print culture in the fifteenth century to the reign of the Internet in the
twenty-first. Written with a historian’s flair for narrative and sparkling detail, the book swarms throughout with
characters of genius, principle, cunning, and outright criminal intent: in the wars over piracy, it is the victims—from
Charles Dickens to Bob Dylan—who have always been the best known, but the principal players—the pirates themselves—have long
languished in obscurity, and it is their stories especially that Johns brings to life in these vivid pages.   Brimming with
broader implications for today’s debates over open access, fair use, free culture, and the like, Johns’s book ultimately
argues that piracy has always stood at the center of our attempts to reconcile creativity and commerce—and that piracy has
been an engine of social, technological, and intellectual innovations as often as it has been their adversary. From
Cervantes to Sonny Bono, from Maria Callas to Microsoft, from Grub Street to Google, no chapter in the story of piracy
evades Johns’s graceful analysis in what will be the definitive history of the subject for years to come.  


--Library Signals Hope for Tamil Minority in Sri Lanka
- http://lisnews.org/node/36064/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Thursday February 25th at 11:36 AM
-Read 201 times - 0 Comments
Decades of civil strife have left their mark on Jaffna, the heartland of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. Bombed-out buildings
are a reminder of the fierce battles waged over the historic city.  The most potent symbol of the struggle, and the uneasy
peace since fighting ended last May, is Jaffna’s public library, which was torched in 1981 by an anti-Tamil mob. Nearly
100,000 books and manuscripts, including irreplaceable palm-leaf Tamil texts, went up in smoke. It was an act of cultural
vandalism that fed the Tamil resistance movement.  Eventually the library was rebuilt by Sri Lanka’s government and reopened
in 2003. It has plenty of new books in Tamil and English on its wooden shelves. But restoring the spirit of the library
presents a far greater challenge, says the chief librarian, S. Thanabaalasinham.  C.S. Monitor has the full story.


--Embezzlement or Cash Advances? NY Librarian Due in Court
- http://lisnews.org/node/36063/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Thursday February 25th at 10:52 AM
-Read 279 times - 0 Comments
Record Online reports: (Upstate NY) TUXEDO - Town police said a former librarian in the Tuxedo School District embezzled
more than $12,000 from the district’s teachers union while serving as its president and treasurer. Police said Teresa E.
Haslam, 45, of Chester, issued herself 20 checks and one electronic transfer from the union’s account between November 2008
and May 2009, when she left the district. According to the union, all but $645.98 has been repaid.  Haslam, who’s charged
with grand larceny, a felony, turned herself in Wednesday. She was issued an appearance ticket and is due back in Town Court
on March 18.


--"This Book is Overdue" Getting Tons of Ink---USA Today & New Yorker
- http://lisnews.org/node/36060/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Thursday February 25th at 7:52 AM
-Read 476 times - 1 Comments
"WESTMINSTER, Md. — Bryan Hissong is 31, happily married, and the father of a 2-year-old named Olivia. He seems quite
content with his life.  But Marilyn Johnson, who is not his wife, loves him and has said so very publicly. It doesn't matter
that she has never met him. Hissong is a librarian.  He doesn't look like the clichéd librarian of old. He favors plaid
shirts and is sporting a beard on his babyface — but that doesn't matter to Johnson, either. She's well aware that
librarians wear many disguises these days. Often they're pierced, tattooed, punk with bright blue hair. She loves them all. 
Who knew librarians had become so ... cool?" asks USA Today (we did).    Johnson does an interview with Jon Michaud in this
week's New Yorker blog. Here's a snippet: Ever think of becoming a librarian yourself?  I worked as a page at my local
library when I was in high school. I earned 95 cents an hour. After a year, I asked for a raise; I wanted to earn a dollar
an hour. They turned me down, so I quit. And that was the end of my library career. I’m really sorry now I played hardball
over a nickel. I’m never more at home than when I’m in a library.  How nice to have the reading public recognize the
intrinsic value of your profession and the many marvelous examples of librarianship at work. 




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