Those Occupy Wall Street librarians or “librarians” or whatever you want to call them just won’t quit. Last week they set up another library in Union Square Park. The library in Zuccotti Park at least lasted a few weeks. This time the library didn’t even last a day. The police cleared almost the whole library out by the end of the day. According to the protesting tweets, “Once again the #NYPD has destroyed The People's Library.” "Once again." What a surprise. One of their “librarians” was even arrested, and can now feel very morally superior indeed. At this point, it’s more amusing than anything else that these ragtag “librarians” think they are accomplishing anything by putting some books up on a table in a park and calling it “The People’s Library.” These poor rebels are rebelling by providing a service absolutely no one in the city needs. “Look, we have a pile of free books on a table!” they say. “Look, we have millions of ...
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There’s been some brouhaha about this story in the past couple of weeks, but not enough. It explains how SABAM wants Belgian libraries to pay them for the right for volunteers to read books to children. Crazy, right? Well, yes and no. SABAM is sort of a Belgian combination of the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers, and you can only imagine how much hatred for libraries would be contained within one organization if those two groups joined together.. From what I can tell, the claim is that reading books to children constitutes a public performance of the work in question, and the library should thus pay a fee. In another article about SABAM’s assault on children’s literacy, a SABAM spokesperson claims, “For libraries there are no exceptions to the law. They are public places and so royalties must be paid for a public reading session.” But that couldn’t happen in America, right? We all know how crazy those Belgians are. They ...
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ALA elections are coming up, and I’ve been thoroughly entertained by all the campaign commercials appearing on television. At least you don’t get so many negative ads from librarians as you do from real politicians. LJ has an interview with the two candidates for ALA President. They both seem like they would be fine. They gave slightly different answers to the questions, but all of them were okay. I’m sure the also have websites laying out their strengths and explaining why they should be ALA President. Reading the interviews, I was struck by one thing. It won’t make an iota of difference which candidate gets elected. There’s nothing one of them could do that the other couldn’t, and there’s not much either of them can do anyway. For example, they both talked about the hot button library issue of the day: ebook publishers and their arm’s-length relationship to libraries. We need leadership, etc., to solve this problem, etc. etc. Except no amount ...
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While there are librarians out there who think academic and public libraries have so much in common they should crowd together under one big tent, I tend to think they’re different enough that the elbowing and clawing in the tent would be unbearable. However, I agree that both public and academic and probably most other sorts of librarians have one thing in common: they tend to be invisible and they desperately want to be liked. Academic librarians are especially vulnerable and insecure. Public librarians don’t really have any professional peers in their institutions that aren’t librarians. Neither do academic librarians, but they believe they do, which is why they’re always comparing themselves to faculty. Some of them even believe that having “faculty status” means that the real teaching faculty believe they really are faculty. It’s crazy. Through Infodocket comes this article from a university news site that is a case in point: Librarians save ...
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The big Google news relevant to libraries is that Google is slowing down its book scanning project. After scanning over twenty million books in six years, they’re probably just tired. I know I would be. After six years, the thrill of anything is gone. If you don’t believe me, stay in your current job for six years. Google books has proven to be popular, with probably many more users than Google Plus, though that’s not saying much. However, there are some naysayers. One person commented on the article above, claiming that, “Librarians have this delusion that all information can be transferred into electronic data bases.” Do librarians have that delusion? It seems to me most of the information transferred to databases hasn’t been done by librarians. Elsevier and Google have done considerably more than most libraries put together. Also, is it even a delusion? All information can be transferred to databases, at least theoretically. The comment goes ...
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In the last post, I talked about librarians whining about ebook price increases for libraries. “Boo hoo, if we don’t get these ebooks we’ll die and Random House is being so mean! Wahhhhh!” It’s not a pretty sight. But gosh darn it, some of these librarians aren’t going to sit idly by whining and complaining. They’re going to get the law on their side. This story from Nashville is both inspiring and pathetic. It’s good that librarians are getting the news out to the public about ebooks and libraries. The librarian sounded tough: “if prices continue to remain high, the library will not be able to purchase eBooks.” I’ve been questioning all along why libraries are spending public money on ebooks they don’t really own and can’t do much with, and it’s nice to see a librarian taking a stand in public and saying that at some point enough is enough. However, the final paragraph, which I assume must have also come from the library ...
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