A Kind Reader alerted me to this excellent fodder for a television movie of the week about a librarian in Round Lake, NY. Like many compelling narratives, the movie of the week could begin in medias res, with an angry group of protesters gathered at a library board meeting shouting about something. The camera fades in to discover angry faces, hostile arm gestures and muttering in the background, etc. I don’t know if there were really shouts or hostile arm gestures, but it would play much better that way on television. A board meeting is tedious, so we need some action. The storms of protest fade to a flashback of actual storms, with dark, aggressively moving clouds and tornadoes touching down. Perhaps we go back and forth a few times to develop atmosphere. Then we cut to a library, where an anxious librarian is scanning the sky and the weather radio reports. She was probably just looking at a computer screen, but again, we need movement and drama. “Tornado warnings...” we ...
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The ebook revolution we’ve all been told is coming seems to be sputtering out before it can even begin, all because of fear and greed, which is probably what stops most revolutions. Read this very informative story at Wired: Why Book Publishers Are Still Dragging Their Heels on Selling You E-Books. It's a depressing statement of how competition stifles innovation these days. Here’s the juicy center: Some of the problem stems from tradition. The people drawn to publishing as a professional are, by and large, book lovers, and as such, often as attached to books’ physicality as to their text. More is paranoia: unlike music, whose digital age developed largely in response to an already thriving pirate industry, book publishing has held back, waiting for reliable DRM that seems unlikely to materialize.... The technology of digital publishing is awkward and inconsistent. The closest thing to a single file standard, e-pub, is still far from platform-agnostic and notorious for ...
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You’re probably aware that last week the news broke that the NSA has been collecting telephone information about all Verizon customers for the past seven years, specifically “telephony metadata” such as which numbers called which other numbers at which time. Oh, and they can access all the stuff on Google, Facebook, and Apple servers. The news has shocked people who have been paying no attention to the government’s actions over the past decade. We certainly can’t say that about the ALA, which has kept a close watch on the Patriot Act from the beginning. Thus, it’s not surprising that they released a statement in response calling for “accountability and transparency in nation’s surveillance laws.” But it might be that the ALA is concerned over nothing. C’mon, let’s think about it. First, it’s not the content of the phone calls themselves, at least not yet. It’s not even the names of the people who are making the calls, at least not yet. It’s just numbers. ...
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A Kind Reader forwarded an email about some new cutting edge research by a couple of librarians. It’s the sort of research that will be sure to increase their chances of tenure. As with so much research done by librarians, it consists of a rigorous and scientific survey at Surveymonkey. Before you click through and take the survey, or just not bother to like I did, here’s the main part of the email. The email wants to request your participation in a study to examine librarian dress codes and the value of a professional code. We hope that results of this research will help the perception and open a discussion of whether the library profession should have a standard dress code that is endorsed by the American Library Association. Our research will also discuss if business attire will lead to increased salaries and increased professional status of librarians. The results of this survey are intended for publication. Speaking personally, that’s just what I think we’ve been ...
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Here’s a potential book challenge for the ALA OIF to think about. A school board in Ohio that allegedly wants to teach their children to think critically is considering a new policy “recognizing that many important areas of study involve issues on which differing positions are held by individuals or groups.” So far, so good. Supposedly, when “Properly introduced and conducted, the consideration of such issues can help students think critically, learn to identify important issues, explore fully and fairly all sides of an issue, weigh carefully the values and factors involved, and develop techniques for formulating and evaluating positions.” That sounds almost reasonable. “All sides” of issues are worth exploring, right? That’s only fair. Then we get the list of supposedly controversial issues, some of which are “controversial” only in the sense that many uninformed people disagree with people who know what they’re talking about. For purposes of this policy, ...
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The paperless public library is preparing to rear it’s paperless head again according to this BBC article. The comparison to the paperless office is amusing because I don’t think many offices have managed to accomplish that feat. The soon to be paperless library will be in Bexar County, TX, which apparently has never had a library before. Since San Antonio is in Bexar County, and San Antonio definitely has public libraries, I’m assuming this means a county library system everyone could access regardless of whether they live in San Antonio proper. Nevertheless, the library’s "first branch will be in a relatively poor district on the city of San Antonio's South Side.” It will have 100 e-readers on loan, and dozens of screens where the public will be able to browse, study, and learn digital skills. However it's likely most users will access BiblioTech's initial holding of 10,000 digital titles from the comfort of their homes, way out in the Texas hinterland. As of the ...
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