LJ Insider

News, opinions and links of interest from Library Journal staffers covering budgets, collections, careers, ebooks, buildings, and more, across public, academic, and special libraries. Email suggested stories to ljnews@mediasourceinc.com.

One First-Time World Book Night Giver’s Experience | LJ Insider

By Meredith Schwartz on April 24, 2013 1 Comment

Hands giving out World Book Night flyers

Last night I celebrated World Book Night (WBN) by handing out 20 copies of one of my favorite books, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens, adjacent to the subway entrance at New York City’s Union Square. Objectively speaking it didn’t take me long at all to give out my copies—my box was emptied in time for me to attend the World Book Night kickoff party across the park at Barnes & Noble, if I hadn’t needed to get home to dinner. But subjectively speaking, it seemed to take much longer, and presented a capsule case study in reasons for, and methods of, rejection.

Filed Under: LJ Insider Tagged With: World Book Night

Five Great Things Libraries Are Doing With Old Books | LJ Insider

By Meredith Schwartz on April 12, 2013 1 Comment

Library book sales (and their descendants, such as Better World Books) are a great institution, but they’re not the only thing libraries can do—or help their patrons do—with obsolete titles besides the dumpster. Here are five creative reuses from real libraries.

Filed Under: Library Services, LJ Insider

Print Title Goes High Tech with Near Field Communication | LJ Insider

By Matt Enis on January 24, 2013 1 Comment

In recent TV ads for Samsung Galaxy smartphones, two actors exchange a music playlist simply by tapping their phones together. This quick and easy method for exchanging information is enabled by Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. It isn’t a particularly prevalent feature on smartphones yet. But given NFC’s functionality—it is particularly useful for applications like secure contactless payment—it seems likely to be a ubiquitous feature on smartphones in the future.

Filed Under: LJ Insider, Publishing, Technology Tagged With: near field communication, QR Codes, TDS-LJ

Can You Explain First Sale Using Only the Ten-Hundred Most Common Words?

By Josh Hadro on January 24, 2013 2 Comments

I think we can all agree: First Sale is important. But can you explain it in the simplest terms possible? We aimed to find “The Story of ‘First Time Buying’ Idea for Book-Sharing Places”

Filed Under: Academic Libraries, Copyright and Fair Use, Litigation, LJ Insider Tagged With: first sale, Kirtsaeng, Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, up-goer 5, xkcd

Kno’s Extextbook Analytics and Social Media Features Offer Better Privacy Options | LJ Insider

By Matt Enis on January 9, 2013 Leave a Comment

Among the many gadgets and gewgaws announced this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a debut that may be a boon to students getting more comfortable with digital textbooks. A new etextbook dashboard tool, which will be an included feature in all etextbooks distributed by Kno Inc., will allow students to keep study analytics information private, or to opt-in to share their study results with peers and classmates.

Filed Under: Academic Libraries, Ebooks, LJ Insider, Publishing, Technology Tagged With: analytics, etextbooks, Kno, TDS

Year in Review: Top Articles of 2012 (Plus a Free Ebook) | LJ Insider

By Josh Hadro on January 3, 2013 Leave a Comment

Everyone does a year-end list, and I don’t like being left out. But I also don’t like lists that are short on context, or worse, short on content. So I channeled my inner Nate Silver and sliced the LJ universe of data in a couple of ways that I hope are more illuminating than just a raw list of articles that got a lot of attention.

Filed Under: Featured, Industry News, LJ Insider, Publishing

Browser Extension Encourages Amazon Searchers to Head to Their Library | LJ Insider

By Matt Enis on January 2, 2013 4 Comments

Avid readers who have made New Year’s resolutions to visit their local library more often might be interested in the Library Extension for Google Chrome. The free extension lets users know whether specific books, ebooks, audiobooks, and music CDs are available at their local library while they browse for those titles at Amazon.com.

Filed Under: Ebooks, LJ Insider, Opinion Tagged With: amazon, Google Chrome, kindle, TDS-LJ

Was It “Write An Article About Libraries” Week? | LJ Insider

By Meredith Schwartz on December 31, 2012 1 Comment

Maybe it was just a slow news week between Christmas and New Year’s, causing editors to pull out the evergreen (pardon the pun) articles. But this past week has been a big one for thinky pieces about the future of libraries in the mainstream media. There’s nothing much new here for the plugged-in librarian, but there may be much that you’ve long been grappling with that patrons are now hearing for the first time. So if you’ve been offline for the holidays, here’s what you missed:

Filed Under: LJ Insider

Ten Awesome Gifts for Librarians | LJ Insider

By Meredith Schwartz on December 12, 2012 2 Comments

Inspired by School Library Journal’s 2012 Librarian Lump of Coal Gift Guide, and selected by the completely subjective methodology of “I thought it was cool,” here are 10 gifts for the librarian you actually like.

Filed Under: LJ Insider

LJ’s Best Books and Media of 2012

By LJ on December 6, 2012 2 Comments

The LJ Reviews staff has been busily considering and compiling their selections for the top titles of 2012 (the cover of our December 2012 issue in this post lists the first line of each of our top ten picks—do you recognize them?).

Filed Under: Industry News, LJ in Print, LJ Insider, Publishing Tagged With: Best Books, Best of 2012