Libraries on the book case for overdue fines

Crack down on scofflaws
by: Jessica Heslam

With the crippled economy forcing more Bay Staters to dust off library cards, local lending institutions are throwing the book at overdue scofflaws, turning them over to the cops and courts in a hard-nosed bid to collect fines and recover costly tomes and DVDs.

“The value of the materials is fairly high. We need to replace them,” said Martha Holden, director of the Peabody Institute Library, which has sent the law after a trio of overdue culprits.

The Peabody library filed criminal complaints against 19-year-old Alyssa Toste and 23-year-old Jeramie Crane on Dec. 15. Despite repeated notices, both Toste and Crane failed to return more than $500 worth of overdue books, DVDs, music CDs, books on tape and other items, Holden said.

Toste and Crane did not respond to requests for comment.

Some of the overdue items were taken out recently while some go back a year or two, said assistant library director Gerri Guyote.

The pair have been summoned to appear at a hearing before a clerk magistrate for failing to return library materials. A criminal complaint was filed more than a month ago against a third library member who’s been hoarding $1,000 worth of coveted library material.

It’s the first time Holden has turned to the criminal justice system for help. “It’s the responsibility I feel like I have to other borrowers and taxpayers,” Holden said. “It’s money the taxpayers put aside to purchase materials.”

The severe steps to retrieve borrowed materials comes as cash-strapped public libraries statewide are busier than ever.

Bay Staters borrowed 57 million items from libraries in fiscal 2009, up from 54 million in fiscal 2008, according to Celeste Bruno, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. Meanwhile, state aid to libraries dropped to $6.8 million in fiscal 2010 from nearly $10 million in fiscal 2009.

“They want their materials back. The idea behind libraries is that community ownership saves us all money,” Bruno said. “When people don’t return their items, they’re keeping it from the rest of the library community and residents.”

In Westminster, the Forbush Memorial Library also is turning to the men in blue to track down wrongdoers. Just before Thanksgiving, director Margaret Howe-Soper gave police the names of nine people who have owed between $50 and $300 in library items for “many, many months.”

The cops called them or hand-delivered letters from the library to their doorsteps. So far, four accounts have been settled in full while two others are paying it down slowly, Howe-Soper said.

And for the first time in a decade, the library will begin charging late fines next year.

The economy has more people borrowing new books and job-search tomes, Howe-Soper said. “Instead of going to the movies, they’re borrowing DVDs,” she said.

Howe-Soper said the library can’t afford to keep replacing overdue books and other items.

“We’ve had budgets cuts. The town is very much in need of all the funds it can get,” she said.

Some libraries aren’t turning to the legal system just yet.

“We trust our customers to return them,” said Boston Public Library spokeswoman Mary Bender.

from: Boston Herald

Most literate cities in the US

Central Connecticut State University has just come out with its annual list of the most literate US cities. This is the fifth year of the study, in which Seattle has come out on top for three of those years. Minneapolis beat it out for top honours in 2007.

The rankings are based on the following per capita factors:

• Number of booksellers
• Education level
• Number of internet book orders and visitors to the city’s newspaper Web site
• Number of libraries, volumes held, circs and library professional staff
• Newspaper circulation
• Number of magazine publishers

The top five cities in terms of libraries are:

1. Cleveland, OH

2. St. Louis, MO

3. Pittsburgh, PA

4. Seattle, WA

5. Cincinnati, OH

Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer dominate sales in Canada

by: Mark Medley

There are no surprises on BookNet Canada's list of top-selling books in Canada for 2009. The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown's long-awaited follow-up to The DaVinci Code, was this year's best-selling book.

While Brown captured the number one spot, it could be argued Stephenie Meyer had an even better year: her young adult novels Breaking Dawn, Eclipse, and New Moon took spots two, three, and four.

Rounding out the top five was an actual Canadian author: Lawrence Hill, for The Book of Negroes.

Here are the top-selling books, from January 1, 2009 to the week ending December 13, 2009

Top 5 Overall, All Categories:
• The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown
• Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer
• Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer
• New Moon, Stephenie Meyer
• The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill

Top 5 Canadian-Authored, All Categories:
• The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
• The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity, William P. Young
• Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
• Playing With Fire, Theo Fleury
• Always Looking Up, Michael J. Fox

Top 5 Trade Paperback Adult Fiction:
• The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
• The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity, William P. Young
• The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
• My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer

Top 5 Trade Paperback Non-Fiction:
• Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time, Greg Mortenson
• Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama
• The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Eckhart Tolle
• The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
• The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama

Top 5 Hardcover Adult Fiction:
• The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown
• The Host, Stephenie Meyer
• An Echo in the Bone, Diana Gabaldon
• The Associate, John Grisham
• Twenties Girl, Sophie Kinsella

Top 5 Hardcover Non-Fiction:
• Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
• Guinness World Records 2010, Craig Glenday
• Playing With Fire, Theo Fleury
• Always Looking Up, Michael J. Fox
• Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom

Top 5 Juvenile:
Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer
Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer
New Moon, Stephenie Meyer
Twilight, Stephenie Meyer
The Last Straw, Jeff Kinney

“Once again this year vampires feature heavily on the bestselling lists, with three of the top selling books of the year featuring the undead.” said BookNet CEO Noah Genner in a press release. “The strong showings by Playing With Fire, Always Looking Up, Outliers and The Book of Negroes give a decidedly Canadian feel across many of the lists.”

from: National Post

Bookstore Night in Buenos Aires encourages reading

In Argentina over the weekend, Buenos Aires held its annual Noche de las Librerias — Bookstore Night. The city closes a main avenue, and places sofas and chairs where cars and trucks normally idle. People with books from the many bookstores lining the avenue, lounge in the seating and a festival atmospherel replaces traffic.

from: NPR

Former NFL star auctions rare children's books collection

It seems an odd combination but really why shouldn’t a professional football player collect books?

Pat McInally did that. In 1975, after signing a rookie contract with the Cincinnati Bengals, did he rush out to buy a snazzy car or upgrade his living accommodations? Nope - he bought a rare book collection because he wanted the edition of Winnie the Pooh it included.

A couple of years later, he took a day trip by plane from Cincinnati to the West Coast so that he could bid on two James Bond books, Casino Royale and Live and Let Die, inscribed by Ian Fleming.

Over the past 35 years, McInally has put together quite an impressive rare books collection. But in a move to “tidy up” his collection, he auctioned off 101 of the books.

The auction which included Beatrix Potter’s personal copy of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, a first edition The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, signed copies of Winnie the Pooh, and a deluxe Harry Potter set inscribed by J.K. Rowling.

“The hardest thing to sell is Beatrix Potter’s ‘Peter Rabbit,’” McInally said. “That was her personal copy that she had bound. No one even knew it existed until six years ago or so. If I hadn’t made the commitment to (auction house) Profiles in History to give them some unusual material, that’s the one I would have kept.”

The auction took place yesterday and you can see the list of the books McInally parted with and the prices each sold for, on the auction website.

from: Abebooks

Author's toothpick sells for thousands

An ivory and gold toothpick once owned by Charles Dickens has sold at auction in New York City for $9,150 (£5,625).

The item is engraved with the English author's initials. It was sold by heirs to the Barnes and Noble family.

The pre-sale estimate was $3,000 to $5,000. The auctioneer, Bonhams, said the buyer did not want to be named.

An authentication letter from Dickens's sister-in-law says the author of Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol used the toothpick up to his death in 1870.

The author, also known by the pen-name of Boz, created some of the most memorable fictional characters of all time.

Dickens's work - which also includes Oliver Twist and David Copperfield - has enjoyed enormous popularity in America since the author's own lifetime.

He visited the country and wrote the travelogue American Notes.

From: BBC

Reader's Remorse

Are there books you regret reading? You're not alone. GoodReads has a user generated list of books readers most regret reading. It's not surprising that Twilight tops the list. After perusing the list, I have to admit to being surprised that Catcher in the Rye is higher on the list than Confessions of a Shopaholic.

France pledges $1.1B to digitize books

by: Ron Nurwisah

The French aren't surrendering to Google or are they? French President Nicolas Sarkozy announce on Monday that his country would pledge some $1.1-billion to digitize that country's archives but didn't rule out the search engine giant as a partner to the grand project.

From the New York Times:
The money pledged Monday will finance a public-private partnership that will digitize the nation’s cultural works, Mr. Sarkozy said. Yet that partnership might well involve Google.

“The question remains open,” said Bruno Racine, president of the National Library, in a telephone interview. He emphasized the “necessity of a partnership with the private sector” in order to secure the capital needed for vast digitization projects.

Sarkozy drew the ire off France's literary community when he announced in August that Google was in talks with the National Library to digitize works. France isn't the only country that has a cool relationship with Google. Germany has also been a vocal critic of that company's plans to scan books and offer them up to those using search engines.

from: National Post

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo to become Hollywood Film

The best-selling novels of Stieg Larsson, the Swedish crime writer, are to be turned into a Hollywood film franchise.
by: Anita Singh

Sony Pictures is planning to bring Larsson's Millennium series to the screen, beginning with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest complete the trilogy.

The heroine of the books is Lisbeth Salander, a delinquent computer hacker with a photographic memory, who joins forces with investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist to solve crimes.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has already been turned into a Swedish language film, which has taken more than $100 million in Europe. Swedish actress Noomi Rapace played the lead role, but she is likely to be replaced by a well-known Hollywood actress when the movies are remade. Kristen Stewart, the young star of the Twilight films, has been linked to the role.

Steven Zaillian, the Oscar-winning writer of Schindler's List, is in talks to adapt Larsson's books and they will be produced by Doug Belgrad, who described the series as "nothing short of amazing. The novels are very cinematically told, with fantastic characters and page-turning plots."

Negotiations to option the rights are in their final stages.

Larsson, a journalist and political activist, died suddenly of a heart attack in 2004 at the age of 50, before seeing his first volume in print.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was published a few months later and became an instant success.

His global sales have topped 23 million and last year Larsson was the second-best-selling author in the world after Khaled Hosseini.

A row has broken out in Sweden over the proceeds from the sale of his books, which are thought to total £20 million. Larsson was not married to his partner of 32 years, Eva Gabrielsson, and died without making a will, so the proceeds defaulted to his family.

"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" to be made into a movie

by: Jason Boog

Last month, we reported how Quirk Books screened its book trailer for "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" in theaters around the country. Now, the whole book will play in theaters--as a feature film starring and produced by Star Wars' Natalie Portman. Coincidence?

CNN delivered the adaptation news is a single sentence: "Portman has signed on to produce and star in the movie version of the best-selling book 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,' written by Seth Grahame-Smith and, uh, Jane Austen."

The publishing world's reaction to this little book has been mixed, but nobody can deny it has been a banner year for the Little Zombie Book That Could. The news finishes a magical run: the title went from GalleyCat feature to bestselling book to publishing trend. Link via Powell's.

from: GalleyCat

Book 99 years overdue returned to Massachusetts library

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (AP) -- The book returned to the New Bedford Public Library in Massachusetts this week wasn't overdue by a week, a month or even a year. It was nearly a century overdue, and the fine came to $361.35.

"Facts I Ought to Know about the Government of My Country" was supposed to have been returned by May 10, 1910.

Stanley Dudek told the Standard Times newspaper he came across the book while going through things that had belonged to his mother, who died about 10 years ago. He decided that returning the book to the city was the right thing to do.

The overdue book fine was a penny a day in 1910. But Dudek wasn't asked to pay it.
The library plans to display the book in its special collection.

from: AP

Google's Personalized Results

Over at Searchengineland, Danny Sullivan explains why libraries might care about what he calls "the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines" Google's Personalized Results.

Parents want school libraries unlocked

With no librarians, books sit behind closed doors.
By: Erin Fitzgerald, Canadian Gazette

While the public school board wrestles with how to make school libraries functional for the digital age, many across the board sit locked up tight.

Ross Button fears his daughter will complete her high school education without having open access to the school library.

Button serves as co-chair of the Carleton Place High School council. He has a daughter in Grade 10 at the school. He also has children attending Beckwith Public School.

He says it is “absolutely unacceptable” that students don’t have unfettered access to their school libraries.

Ian Carswell, associate director of the Upper Canada District School Board, says the CPHS library is available for teachers to bring their classes to on scheduled visits, but is not open otherwise. Almonte and District High School’s library is slightly more accessible. It is open Tuesdays, Thursdays, alternate Fridays and teachers are able to bring their classes for a scheduled visit.

“The idea of a librarian being present all day, every day is behind us in terms of staffing resources,” Carswell says.

“You have to ask whether you want a teacher to stand in the library all day or stand in the classroom and teach.”

He says teacher-librarians are in scarce quantity.

The board says its challenge is to make school libraries relevant in this technological era.

“We are all wrestling with how we make 21st century libraries for 21st century learners,” Carswell says.

Button realizes today’s students are the Wikipedia and Google generation, but he says this type of research needs to be supplemented by borrowing from the old school approach of taking a book off a shelf.

He says his eldest daughter used to try spending her free time in the library, but found the door locked for the most part.

Beckwith students rely on parent volunteers to keep the libraries organized, but these volunteers cannot play a supervisory role so time spent in the library is minimal, Button says.

The severity of the problem is not lost on the school board. On Dec. 2, more than 50 community representatives gathered to discuss the issue. Teachers, mayors, counsellors, librarians and students all gathered at a roundtable discussion entitled, The Books, Blogs and Tweets Forum.

Delegates say they want greater access to online resources and new technology.

The board plans to analyze input from the forum to improve the way libraries work in the board.
Despite what the library of the future may look like, the problem of dark, locked libraries remains.

Local trustee Patti Lennox says student access to libraries is a problem across the board.

However, she is remaining hopeful that students will soon see positive changes in their libraries.

“We have everyone working together and we know what the students are looking for and what they need,” she says.

Button is looking forward to a solution, but is not overly optimistic.

“There’s something wrong in the system. The Ministry of Education says literacy is important and they send money to keep the library staffed, but there is no mandatory requirement for schools to use the funding for what it’s for,” he said.

NEXT STEP

Closed libraries are cheating high school students of their ability to learn proper research skills and universities are noticing this.

University of Ottawa librarian Valerie Critchley says when first-year students walk through the library doors they are often overwhelmed by the amount of information around them.

“Most students coming into first year haven’t dealt with research libraries regardless of their high school access,” she says.

However Critchley says there is a link between a student’s ability to evaluate resources who has spent time in a school library and the student who has little to no experience.

“Knowing what to do with all the resources and how to evaluate and use critical decision making (can be learned in high school),” she says.

On the other hand, Critchley knows school librarians are a vanishing breed.

“I would love to see every school have a proper library with proper library staff,” she says.

Although this is not the case, Critchley says there are opportunities to pick up important research skills in university or college.

“How many times have you heard someone say, ‘you can find it on Google,’”she says.
“It’s true, but we want to help you.”

From: YourAlmonte

Library ban for 'pungent body odor' man

Library officials in Leicestershire have banned a regular reader from their building following complaints about his "pungent" body odour.

The council said they were forced to act as visitors left Wigston Library when Stuart Penman, 27, arrived.

Staff said they have advised him about his personal hygiene, but it had not improved after a year.

Mr Penman has now been banned from the building for six months. He reportedly said he felt picked on.

Mr Penman, who came forward to highlight his complaints in the media, said: "I went in there on Monday with my wife and they told me I was barred because of my feet."

'Using deodorant'

Margaret Bellamy, head of the county council's library services, said: "He has been using the library for a while and we've been getting complaints about his personal hygiene for about a year.

"We've sat down with him to see what can be done and even asked him if he's been washing, using deodorant and regularly changing his clothes.

"We've had people leaving and saying it's because of the smell.

"I feel very sorry about the whole situation and it's not a decision we took lightly but we've done all we can to help and it's still not getting any better.

"When people were refusing to come into the library we felt we had no other option."

from: BBC

Map Reveals Which Countries Wikipedia Discusses Most - And Least

The blog Zero Geography has created a heatmap illustrating the total number of Wikipedia articles tagged to each nation that reveals surprising facts about the content, and oversight, of the online encyclopedia.

In building the map, the creator discovered that there are more articles about imaginary places, like "Middle Earth." than numerous countries in Africa, which on the whole are poorly represented on Wikipedia:

"Remarkably there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than all but one of the fifty-three countries in Africa (or perhaps even more amazingly, there are more Wikipedia articles written about the fictional places of Middle Earth and Discworld than about many countries in Africa, the Americas and Asia)."

The designer also found that the United States had the most number of articles (about 90,000), and that Anguilla had the fewest geotagged entries (just four).

Here's the map showing the number of Wikipedia entries by country:

And here's a representation of the data -- the number of Wikipedia articles -- mapped against population. The creator's finding:

"Here countries with small populations and large landmasses rise to the top of the rankings.Canada, Australia and Greenland all have extremely high levels of articles per every 100,000 people. "

Read more about the Wikipedia maps, and how they were created, here.

From: Huffington Post

The End of Late Fees (Really)

by: Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn


Is the upcoming holiday season infecting people with unusual goodwill toward man? Last month, New York City approved a five-minute grace period for parking meters. In October, an I.R.S. amnesty program for tax evaders with offshore accounts brought some fifteen thousand contrite Americans forward to disclose their illegal holdings. Now, San Francisco, perhaps inspired by the news last month that a library book fifty years overdue was returned to an Arizona school along with one thousand dollars in late fees, is extending this altruistic attitude to books with their own amnesty program for book borrowers. Between May 3rd and 16th, the library will accept overdue books, no questions asked, and restore borrowing privileges to naughty book thieves. (It’s already begun advertising the program with a contest for the best excuses, as well as a series of “celebrity” excuse videos, probably the best of which is Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger chiding, “Maybe you’re just trying to think up a really, really good excuse, like it got lost in the Hudson River?”)


For those who think that this isn’t “Pay It Forward”: the last time the San Francisco Library held an amnesty program was in 2001. In all, the library received five thousand books, worth a total of one hundred thousand dollars. Perhaps, sometimes, good acts make good sense.

from: The New Yorker

King County Library System Opens Unstaffed "Express" Branch

Residents of new development said they wanted holds pick-up above all else.
by: Norman Oder

• Residents preferred walking to driving
• Cameras maintain security without staff
• Other libraries offer different "Express" branches

So, how to expand library service on a tight budget? Some libraries have tried vending machines (such as the Go Library/Library-a-Go-Go) or kiosks. The King County Library System (KCLS), WA, just opened an unstaffed 300-square-foot Library Express @ Redmond Ridge, in partnership with the Redmond Ridge Residential Owners Association.

The new mini-branch was inspired by a survey of community residents; some 95 percent said they would rather pick up their holds in a nearby unstaffed library than drive to a full-service library. Redmond Ridge is a 1,228-unit master-planned community.The Library Express does offer services beyond holds pick-up. Two computers provide access to the library catalog, and there’s a browsing collection of paperbacks. To reach a librarian patrons can use a dedicated phone and contact the nearby Redmond Regional Library.

To get into the building, patrons must scan or type in their library card number, but books can be returned via a book drop outside. How to maintain security? Cameras both inside and outside the building.

Other "Express" libraries

Some other libraries use the “Express” name but with different configurations. For example, Houston Public Library offers HPL Express, a small but staffed facility intended to be installed within existing buildings, multi-service centers, office buildings, shopping malls, and airports.

The Wake County Public Libraries, NC, offers Express Library Fayetteville Street inside the Wake County Office Building. And an Express branch of the Douglas County Library System, Castle Rock, CO, is planned for a new development called Georgetown Village.

From: Library Journal

Mexico opens library for detained aliens

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Foreign migrants caught while in Mexico illegally can now at least fight boredom while mourning their bad fortune.

Mexico's National Immigration Institute says it has installed a library with 1,000 pieces of reading material at its holding station in eastern Mexico City. It's named "Looking South," even if many of the migrants caught were looking north, hoping to cross Mexico to reach the United States.

The agency says the project is meant to give the detained migrants what it calls "elements of distraction and cultural enrichment during their stay."

Spain's international development agency is helping finance the project that opened Friday.

The involuntary visitors can also watch DVDs or television and use a computer at the facility.

from: AP

Some E-Readers May Become Obsolete or Lack Compatibility

by: Geoffrey A Fowler

Books are having their iPod moment this holiday season. But buyer beware: It could also turn out to be an eight-track moment.

While e-reading devices were once considered a hobby for early adopters, Justin Timberlake is now pitching one on prime-time TV commercials for Sony Corp. Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-reading device has become its top-selling product of any kind. Forrester Research estimates 900,000 e-readers will sell in the U.S. in November and December.

But e-reader buyers may be sinking cash into a technology that could become obsolete. While the shiny glass-and-metal reading gadgets offer some whiz-bang features like wirelessly downloading thousands of books, many also restrict the book-reading experience in ways that trusty paperbacks haven't, such as limiting lending to a friend. E-reader technology is changing fast, and manufacturers are aiming to address the devices' drawbacks.

"If you have the disposable income and love technology—not books—you should get a dedicated e-reader," says Bob LiVolsi, the founder of BooksOnBoard, the largest independent e-book store. But other people might be better-off repurposing an old laptop or spending $300 on a cheap laptop known as a netbook to use for reading. "It will give you a lot more functionality, and better leverages the family income," he says.

For gadget lovers, several factors are converging to make e-reading devices alluring this holiday season. More such devices are debuting than ever to challenge Amazon's Kindle, notably the Nook from Barnes & Noble Inc. Sony also recently launched three new versions of its Reader, which will be sold—along with devices from smaller makers like Irex Technologies BV—in dedicated e-book sections of Best Buy Co. stores. Already, these devices are beginning to sell out: Barnes & Noble says people who ordered the Nook after Nov. 20 won't get one until the week of Jan. 4, and Sony says that it can't guarantee delivery of its high-end wireless Reader by Christmas.

There's also more selection of books for the devices, with most popular publishers now selling e-books. Also, library-scanning efforts by Google Inc. is producing more than a million out-of-copyright books like "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" that people can download free. There are only a few holdouts against e-books, including "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling.

Prices for e-book readers are also dropping. Amazon recently cut the price of the international Kindle to $259 from $279, while Sony sells a new entry-level model for $199. A refurbished first-generation Kindle retails on Amazon for $219. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores are also discounting prices on best-selling e-book titles to $10 to lure more readers.

Still, it's unclear how—and on what sort of device—most people will be comfortable reading e-books. Many people seem perfectly happy reading books on their PCs: Reading Web site Scribd.com, which offers millions of amateur and professional works, is attracting 50 million readers each month. LibreDigital Inc., a distributor of e-books for publishers, says the overwhelming majority of e-book buyers are women who read e-books on an ordinary computer screen, mostly between 4 p.m. and 11 p.m. A growing number of readers are also perusing books on cellphones.

Most of the current crop of dedicated e-reading devices try to replicate the traditional reading experience with a screen that's about the size of a paperback novel that displays black-and-white (or, rather, dark grey and light grey) text and graphics. You turn the page by clicking on a button, or using your finger or a stylus to touch the screen. You can buy books online and transfer to them your device with a cable or, on some models, download them directly via a wireless connection. Most e-books, which cost about $10 for popular new titles, are yours at least for the life of your device, though some models let you borrow books for a short period of time from libraries or a friend.

Fans of e-readers acknowledge the devices have their flaws. Dianna Broughton, a 45-year-old stay-at-home mom in Lancaster, S.C., bought a Kindle last year and says she now "reads more, and my kids read more."

But Ms. Broughton says she can't recommend the Kindle to people who aren't technically savvy and might want to purchase their books anywhere other than the Amazon store. That's because the Kindle doesn't read copyright protected files from other bookstores or libraries. It also makes it tough for parents to monitor what their children are reading, if a child has a Kindle that is registered to his parent's Amazon account.

"The parent's entire e-book archive is accessible to that child's Kindle–individual titles can't be locked out," says Ms. Broughton. "Parental controls are one of the most wished-for features." There are technical work-arounds for some of these issues, but they require downloading unofficial software.

Indeed, many e-book readers place limits on how and where consumers can use them. Only the Nook allows people to share some of their books with a friend by wirelessly transmitting them—and even then, you can share each book just once and only for 14 days. And only Sony's Readers make it easy to check out free books from Overdrive Inc., the e-book service used by many public libraries.

The e-book market is also caught up in a format war, with different companies limiting their devices to certain kinds of e-books, with file types such as .azw and mobipocket on the Kindle and .epub and Adobe Digital Editions on Sony. As a result, there's no guarantee an e-book bought from one online store will work on devices sold by a competitor.

Sony has tried to differentiate itself in e-books by supporting an open industry standard called Epub and digital-rights-management software from Adobe. Barnes & Noble recently said it will do the same. But Amazon, which dominates the e-reader market, has so far shown no signs of changing from its own proprietary format.

Amazon says it is working on making Kindle books play on more devices, including iPhones, BlackBerrys and PCs.

"Our goal is to create the best possible reading experience for customers," says Amazon's vice president of Kindle, Ian Freed. "Along the way, we have figured out that it is pretty important to do that with a range of devices."

For now, the lack of interoperability in e-books has tripped up readers like Maria Blair, a 61-year-old lab technician in Baltimore. She decided to switch from the Kindle to the Sony Reader last year, because she preferred the weight and feel of the Sony. But now, "I'm not able to read the books I bought for the Kindle on my Sony," she says.

Future e-book readers may be a lot more interactive. Plastic Logic says it will launch a business-oriented reading device early next year that will offer the largest screen yet (8½ inches by 11 inches), along with tools to help business people manage their documents on the go. And while all of the dedicated e-book readers on the market this holiday season use black-and-white screens, color screens are coming late next year.

Next year, Apple Inc. is also expected to debut a tablet device that can be used for reading, watching movies, surfing the Web and other interactive tasks.

from: Wall Street Journal

That musty smell may be the key to preserving old books

by: Jeannine Stein

The nose knows when it comes to detecting the condition of old books. A new study finds that the familiar musty smell old books give off may be a better way to tell their condition than traditional ways that typically destroy part of the document.

Researchers from the UK and Slovenia developed a new technique called "material degradomics," which examines the gasses old books and paper documents produce as they degrade. For the study they examined 72 19th and 20th century historic papers that included paper made with wood fiber, gelatin and rosin-sized papers and coated and uncoated papers, and identified 15 volatile organic compounds that act as degradation markers used to detect decaying paper. In the study the authors described the smell of old books as "A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness," which sounds like some wines we've had.

Among the compounds on the list were furfural (an industrial chemical compound stemming from agricultural byproducts), acetic acid (an organic acid), and products derived from lipid peroxidation, a process of cell damage caused when free radicals take electrons from cell membrane lipids.

Books are usually assessed for stability by removing samples of paper and then analyzing them with lab tools. But this process is less invasive, and may be used to help protect other antique artifacts.

The study appeared in a recent issue of the journal Analytical Chemistry.

from: LA Times

Forgotten Bookmarks

The blog of someone who works in a used and rare bookstore and posts the interesting (described on the blog as "personal, funny, heartbreaking and weird") things left behind in books by the people who sell their books to the store. Check it out here.

Backcheck: a Hockey Retrospective/Regard Sur le Hockey

"This digital project's primary focus is on the early days of hockey" in Canada. Contains information and materials on the French-Canadian tradition; women's hockey; and "kids' teams, junior teams, company teams, town teams, [and] prisoners' teams." Includes a children's version. In English and French.



From Library and Archives Canada

These aren't your geek's graphic novels

by: Harriet Reisen

For me, there's no page turner quite like a graphic novel. A good one takes me back to the forbidden story-form joys of my childhood — comic books, movies and True Confessions magazines.

The trouble is, I'm not crazy about tales involving superpowers, fantasy worlds, horror, sci-fi or armed combat, which leaves out about nine-tenths of the genre. My heart belongs to women's stories about their own flawed selves and their tribulations in the big bad world.

'Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic'
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel, paperback, 232 pages, Mariner Books, list price: $13.95

Fun Home: a Family Tragicomic, is Alison Bechdel's coming-of-age tale about growing up in a household where the truth is as dressed up and silenced as the people in the caskets in the family funeral business — what the kids call the "Fun Home."

In their real home, the roost is ruled by dad's obsession with decorative perfection. He restores the gingerbread to their denuded Victorian, and surrounds it with the perfume of flowers. Inside, floral wallpapers cover the truth — that where dad really lives is in the darkness of the closet homosexual, furtively seducing young boys.

Alison is also gay, but she has no idea what that is until she reads a book in college and recognizes herself.

The pictures in Fun Home, in black and blue on white, are as matter-of-fact as the evidence the heroine sifts to get to the bottom of the mystery of how she became herself.

'La Perdida'
La Perdida, by Jessica Abel, paperback, 288 pages, Pantheon, list price: $14.95

The first-person heroine of La Perdida, ("the lost one") by Jessica Abel, looks for her identity in Mexico, birthplace of her absent father. She carelessly crashes at an old casual boyfriend's apartment in Mexico City, pitching in sex in lieu of rent. With Frida Kahlo, the flamboyant painter and Stalinist as spiritual guide, she soon mistakes a nasty drug dealer for a fiery revolutionary. With her judgment in complete suspension, she winds up as an accomplice in criminal violence; she's lucky to escape with everything but her innocence. Abel tells her tale in English and in Spanish, with pictures that have the specificity and shadows of film noir.

'Cancer Vixen: A True Story'
Cancer Vixen: A True Story, by Marisa Acocella Marchetto, paperback, 224 pages, Pantheon, list price: $16.95

The drawings in Marisa Acocella Marchetto's Cancer Vixen are colorful, cartoonish, supremely stylish and totally delightful. They tell the story of a kid from the Jersey shore in love with New York's fashionable life, whose days are spent spoofing it for glossy magazines and queuing up on Tuesdays at the famous New Yorker market for cartoons — pardon me, drawings. Her life deepens in meaning after Sept. 11, when she turns the raw pain on the New York streets into her best work, and when, at 43, she finds the love of her life. On the verge of their wedding, she is diagnosed with cancer. Cancer Vixen is the story of what happened after that.

What's missing for me when I read good graphic novels is the pleasure of passing them on and getting leads to more. I don't know anybody else with my literary taste who cares about them. Months and months go by between good reads. If you've got a recommendation, I sure would like to know about it.

From: NPR

Twitter new, helpful tool for county libraries

by: Kevin Spradlin

CUMBERLAND — Interested in meeting the Allegany County Bookmobile at Hannah Plaza in Cresaptown but running late?

Now you can simply log on to Twitter and see if the Bookmobile is on schedule.

The Allegany County Library System is using Twitter and other social networking sites as yet another way to bring the library experience closer to patrons — wherever they may be.

“I was familiar with Twitter but didn’t see the applications for it for us until reading some articles about how other libraries are using Twitter,” said Lisa McKenney, public services coordinator for the Allegany County Library System. “With these ideas, I started an account” using her e-mail “handle,” aclslisam.

McKenney “began posting messages about library events, new features on our Web site and catalog, new materials just received at the library ... and announcements. I include some personal reviews of books I’ve personally enjoyed reading or music that I would recommend to others to try.

”From that single account, two more have been established to help further the library system’s goal of serving as many patrons as possible in any way imaginable. John Taube, system director, created alleganylibrary, and Regina Spiker, who teaches the library system’s public computer classes, created one for teens with the handle spibrarian.

The Bookmobile can be reached on Twitter by searching for the handle alleganybkm.The Bookmobile’s account is the newest and has just four followers. Alleganylibrary has eight followers, while spibrarian has 30 followers. McKenney’s aclslisam has 50 followers and has posted more than 200 “tweets,” or comments, online.

“I’m a small librarian in a small library in a small town,” Spiker announced on a Web page devoted to industry news.

But that doesn’t mean small towns can’t go high-tech in a big way.

“Twitter provides a quick, current and immediate way to get the word out to everyone about what’s new at the library,” McKenney said. “So far, our followers continue to grow and we welcome the community to set up Twitter accounts and follow our postings. We continually explore new technologies that can help us bring the library programs, materials and services to our patrons and community.”

The potential is apparent. The Enoch Pratt Free Library System in Baltimore has more than 1,100 followers and has posted 3,341 tweets — from holiday greetings and schedules to announcing award-winning staff members’ accomplishments.

It’s a relatively simple process. With an e-mail account and Internet access — both of which can be created and found, respectively, at your local library — a computer user executes an easy search by the name of a person or business or by using an e-mail address.

With a single click of the mouse, the user can follow another Twitter user and be kept up to date on the goings-on of the library.

From: Cumberland Times-News

Hayward libraries to borrow Netflix model

by: Eric Kurhi

HAYWARD — City libraries soon will offer a new borrowing system that borrows from Netflix, the mail-based, no-late-fee movie rental service.

For a monthly fee, library users will be able to check out a limited number of materials for an unlimited amount of time. The optional system will eliminate due dates and overdue fees, asking for money upfront in return for no worries later. Pricing would begin at $2.99 a month for up to three items out at a time.

"About 20 percent of our library users are blocked from further checkouts because of the fines they have accrued," said acting library director Sean Reinhart, whose idea was approved by the City Council last week.

"These days, a lot of people want to do things on their own time frame. They're busy. Returning materials can be kind of low on their priority list and they end up with fines, and stop coming."

While other libraries around the nation have adopted the other part of the Netflix model — sending materials through the mail — Reinhart said Hayward won't be doing that for now.

"That's a whole other level of logistical problems," he said. "Books are different sizes and weights, and a whole lot heavier than DVDs. Some libraries have tried the mail system and some of them have worked, but a lot have failed."

That difference may mean that the Hayward model will be the first of its kind in the nation. Reinhart could not find a similar system for comparative purposes, and Sari Feldman, president of the national Public Library Association, said she hadn't heard of it before.

"I am very interested and very curious," said Feldman, director of Cuyahoga County libraries, serving the suburbs of Cleveland. "Sean is looking at what makes sense for his customer base, and offering a new convenience that makes the library increasingly attractive. I will circle back to hear how it works."

Reinhart said if a book is checked out on the "Fines-Free" plan for an extended period, and enough other customers request it, the library will purchase a new copy.

But Cal State East Bay head librarian Linda Dobb expressed concern that the open-ended checkout potentially could take research materials away from the public indefinitely.

"What if somebody really needed a particular item, and Hayward Public is one of the few places that has it?" she said. "If somebody absolutely has to have something and it is unique, there have always been ways for a library to recall an item."

Reinhart said the library's reference section is for in-house use only, and they stock very few out-of-print items in the first place.

"We simply do not have the space in our buildings nor the demand from our community to justify storing older, little-used items for very long," he said.

Reinhart said he's looking forward to seeing the results once the program starts, which will be before Christmas.

He said that if only 2 percent of library users opt into the program, it will more than match $94,000 the library took in from late fees last year. And the other 98 percent of users who don't opt to go fines-free will still be putting in money the old-fashioned way.

"I think the results will be eye-opening for libraries around the nation," Reinhart said.

From: Mercury News

Ringing the changes: phone box becomes mini-library

Village that was set to lose its traditional red phone box and library service comes up with a plan to save both.
By: Steven Morris

When the mobile library stopped visiting, it was a blow for the villagers of Westbury-sub-Mendip. And when they found out they could lose their beloved red phone box, there was something of an outcry.

Happily a bright spark in the Somerset village (population 800) hatched a clever plan to tackle both difficulties. Why not buy the phone box and use it to set up a mini-library?

Today, the small but perfectly formed Westbury book box was doing a brisk trade. Adults were bringing in thrillers, romances and true-crime books, leaving them on the four wooden shelves and choosing another to take home. Young book fans were hunting around in the children's section – a big red box on the floor – for Roald Dahl and Horrid Henry favourites.

Parish councillor Bob Dolby, who cleans and polishes the phone box/library with his wife, Lyn, beamed with pride. "It has really taken off," he said. "Turnover is rapid and there's a good range of books, everything from reference books to biographies and blockbusters."

The scheme was the brainchild of resident Janet Fisher, who lives opposite the phone box. She floated the idea at a village tea party in August and the concept was accepted on the spot.

So the parish council bought the box, a Giles Gilbert Scott K6 design, for £1, and Dolby screwed the four shelves into place. A local business donated a sign and a wag added a "Silence please" notice. Residents donated books to get the project going and it became an instant hit, all for an outlay of just £30.

Fisher popped across the road today to swap an Ian Rankin novel. She was hoping to pick up a Michael Connelly book – "Some of the girls said there was one here" – but it had gone. She rejected the book on the life of Fred West and plumped for another American detective novel.

Fisher's neighbour, Angela Buchanan, strolled over to see what was new. She picked up a Penelope Lively the other day. Nobody has yet been tempted by the audio book she left of Laurence Olivier reading Charles Dickens. "It's such a brilliant idea. Our nearest library is Wells, four miles away, so if you don't want to go into the town but have run out of something to read, it's great you can use this. All sorts of interesting books turn up – manuals, picture books, good literary novels."

And unlike the library in Wells, the phone box library is open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day – and is lit at night. There is a regular check on it to see if some titles are not moving. These are then shipped on to a charity shop to keep the phone box collection fresh.

BT has received 770 applications for communities to "adopt a kiosk". So far 350 boxes have been handed to parish councils. Ideas for their afterlife have included a shower, art installations, even a toilet. Dolby said he was just pleased that a piece of street architecture in Westbury had been put to good use. "It's very pleasing that the phone box has been saved but is also being used to provide a service for the village."

from: the Guardian

Popular Author's Audiobook Tries New Format: Vinyl

by: Andrew Adam Newman

As physical formats and devices have shrunk, revenues for the audiobook industry have grown, since it is more convenient to listen to an iPod while exercising and commuting than fiddling with CDs. Digital downloads grew to 21 percent of the industry’s total sales in 2008, from 6 percent in 2004, according to the Audiobook Publishers Association.

It is all the more odd, then, that Hachette Audio recently announced that the latest audiobook by David Sedaris, “Live for Your Listening Pleasure,” which features readings before audiences, would be available on the least portable of formats: vinyl.

Reminiscent of Blue Note albums from the 1950s and 1960s, the cover features a photograph of a woman sprawled on a white shag rug with a come-hither look, albums strewn about.

Albums are enjoying something of a renaissance, posting $57 million in sales in 2008, more than double the previous year and the best for the format since 1990, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The format is so rare for audiobooks, however, that the Audiobook Publishers Association has never even tracked its sales.

But Maja Thomas, senior vice president for digital and audio publishing at the Hachette Book Group, said she was drawn to the idea precisely because it was quirky. Mr. Sedaris’s “audience is very attuned to irony and is going to find this funny,” Ms. Thomas said.

The 31-minute album, which will be released on Jan. 5 and cost $24.98, will include only two of the five essays on the CD version of the audiobook, but will feature a code enabling purchasers to digitally download the entire program.

Hachette was less kind to another past-its-prime format in 2008. Upon releasing “Sail,” a novel by James Patterson and Howard Roughan, in a cassette version, it declared it would no longer release in the format and held a mock funeral for cassettes in its Manhattan office.

“We had a funeral for one format, but you can think of this as the ultimate zombie,” Ms. Thomas said. “The record is coming back from the dead.”

From: NYTimes

Stephen King planning possible sequel to The Shining

by: James Grainger

Last night at Toronto’s packed Canon Theatre, fans of Stephen King were treated to a 15-minute reading from the author’s new novel, Under the Dome, and nearly an hour’s worth of typically funny anecdotes and keen observations during an on-stage interview with director David Cronenberg. Then King dropped a fan bombshell on the crowd by casually describing a novel idea he began working on last summer. Seems King was wondering whatever happened to Danny Torrance of The Shining, who when readers last saw him was recovering from his ordeal at the Overlook Hotel at a resort in Maine with fellow survivors Wendy Torrance and chef Dick Halloran (who dies in the Kubrick film version). King remarked that though he ended his 1977 novel on a positive note, the Overlook was bound to have left young Danny with a lifetime’s worth of emotional scars. What Danny made of those traumatic experiences, and with the psychic powers that saved him from his father at the Overlook, is a question that King believes might make a damn fine sequel.

So what would a sequel to one of King’s most beloved novels look like? In King’s still tentative plan for the novel, Danny is now 40 years old and living in upstate New York, where he works as the equivalent of an orderly at a hospice for the terminally ill. Danny’s real job is to visit with patients who are just about to pass on to the other side, and to help them make that journey with the aid of his mysterious powers. Danny also has a sideline in betting on the horses, a trick he learned from his buddy Dick Hallorann.

The title for King’s proposed sequel? Doctor Sleep.

Perhaps sensing that he’d let the cat out of the plot bag a little early, King then told Cronenberg and the audience that he wasn’t completely committed to the new novel, going so far as to say, “Maybe if I keep talking about it I won’t have to write it.”

Let’s hope King doesn’t have too many interviews booked in the next six months.

From: Torontoist

Ames library to keep teen sex magazine on shelves

by: Jennifer Meyer

A magazine about sex will stay where teens can find it at the Ames Public Library.

The Library Board of Trustees voted 6-1 Thursday to support Director Art Weeks’ recommendation to continue openly displaying and offering free copies of Sex, Etc. in the teen section.

Trustee Melody Warnick, however, said she agonized over the issue before casting the dissenting vote.

“It is very frank and honest in a way that teens need,” Warnick said, “but I agree with the Bannantines’ complaint … that we’re privileging this magazine over everything else that we have in the library.”

Joyce and John Bannantine presented a petition to the board last month with signatures of 118 parents with concerns about the topic and treatment of the magazine, which is written for teens by teens under the oversight of Answer, a national sexuality organization at Rutgers University.

“It is about this periodical being elevated above and beyond others,” John Bannantine said Thursday.

Sex, Etc. is displayed in a rack in the teen section with about a dozen other magazines. Ten copies for which the library pays $15 are also placed two at a time with information teens can take home without requiring sign-out.

“We’re simply asking that it would not be given preferential treatment,” said Tim Borseth, particularly since the articles can be “very difficult for some to read, offensive and biased.”

However, most of the 15 people who spoke at the board meeting attended by about 40 people disagreed.

“Libraries are not just where we keep the books, it’s where we keep the information, and we’ve believe the information at libraries is factual,” Susan Wallace, a writer and editor, said.

After reading the magazine, Wallace said, “I thought, ‘Wow, this is wonderful.’ It is peer to peer. It is professionally reviewed. I would urge you to keep this publication visible, accessible, open.”

Kate Dobson, a junior at Ames High, said cataloguing Sex, Etc. with other periodicals would make it more difficult for teens to access information they need.

“More recently than most people in this room, I went through sex education,” Dobson said. “I came home from school in fifth grade with lots of questions, and I wasn’t sure where to go for that information.”

Etta Thornburg, another young woman, said she sought out that information from romance novels, but “I don’t want kids … getting their information from romances, because quite honestly, it’s not accurate and it’s not very realistic.”

Harold Ault recalled getting information about sex through “word of mouth and the National Geographic magazine.”

“If it was called Comments on Social Interactions from Rutgers University, I don’t think people would get to it,” he said. But in response to the Bannantines’ fears that younger teens not seeking out the information could stumble upon the magazine, he said, “I had to hunt around the room to find it.”

Ray Rodriguez, a parent and sexual-health professional, said that not only do many 12-year-olds know about sex, but “many of them … engaging in sexual behavior are doing so based on myths … that Sex, Etc. and its articles do a lot to dispel.”

Tina Hopkins, who works in teen pregnancy prevention with Youth and Shelter Services, said, “It would be great if they got (accurate information) at home, but that’s not what’s happening.”

Parent Justine Dvorchak-Rodriguez told the board, “Sex, Etc. can help my daughter deal with some of the questions she may not feel comfortable talking with me.”

Trustee Sherry Meier addressed parents who asked the library to restrict access to Sex, Etc. to allow “the parents to be the parents.” She said they can do that by monitoring what their child is reading.

Trustee Al Campbell, said, “This is a library and this is about access to information.”

Trustee Harry Budd said he read two issues of the magazine, which publishes three times each year. An article in one issue made him a little uncomfortable, he said.

“Thankfully,” Budd said, “not everything in this library conforms with my beliefs and values.”

from: Ames Tribune

Borders Website Suspends Book Sales

Borders has stopped taking orders for new books on its website while the retailer "is in discussion with potential buyers".

The firm said that existing customer orders are also being delayed but will be fulfilled.

The Borders Entertainment part of the site - which sells DVDs, CDs and electrical items - continues to operate as normal.

Some publishers are also reported to have severed links with the retailer.

When customers try to order a book on the website they receive a message saying: "Sorry, title cannot be purchased."

Potential buyers

Reports have suggested that Borders, which has 45 stores in the UK, does not have enough cash to last until Christmas. It is thought it could go into administration if no buyer is found.

Talks with WH Smith reportedly collapsed last week. There is also speculation that HMV, the owner of Waterstones, is in talks to buy some of the stores. HMV refused to comment.

Borders, which also owns Books Etc, has suffered from increased competition from online retailers, such as Amazon, as well as supermarkets.

The Borders chain was originally owned by the US book giant of the same name but was sold in June 2007 to Risk Capital Partners.

Risk Capital then sold it on to the private equity firm Valco earlier this year.

From: BBC

Libraries turn Arizona Highways into shopping bags

by: Edythe Jensen

Old Arizona Highways magazines donated to Chandler libraries are never trashed; they're taken apart and turned into shopping bags.

The practice is expected to save the downtown library's gift shop $200 a year, said shop manager Suzanne Kinsinger. Volunteers transform the colorful magazine pages into bags by using natural folds and taping the bottoms.

Now the magazine bags are bringing more compliments from customers than some of the items sold in the gift shop, she said. The project started about a year ago after Kinsinger visited Seattle where she noticed that city's library had shopping bags made from discarded paper items including posters.

Also coordinator for Friends of the Library used book sales, Kinsinger said large quantities of Arizona Highways magazines are donated to the sales but only the most recent ones and vintage issues are popular with buyers.

The magazine bags are ideal for purchases made from the gift shop's large greeting card collection, although more sturdy bags are required for larger items, she said. Sales at the shop and from the book sales support library programs that include children's reading programs, classes and computer labs. Library Manager Brenda Brown said the Friends group contributed $23,500 to those programs this year.

from: azcentral.com

Purdue students protest librarian's blog post

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Some Purdue University students have called for a faculty member to be fired after he posted comments online urging discussion on what he called the economic cost to society of homosexuality.

Purdue officials said they would not discipline Bert Chapman, who is the university's government information and political science librarian and does not have a classroom teaching assignment.

Chapman wrote last month on the townhall.com Web site that money spent on AIDS would be better used for other health initiatives, such as cancer or heart disease research, and that the current health care debate needed to address "an economic case against homosexuality."

Purdue senior Kevin Casimer on Wednesday started a petition urging the university to take action against Chapman, saying his comments were embarrassing and detrimental to the school's reputation.

"People have confused what we are doing as attacking free speech," Casimer said. "But freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences."

Chapman, who has worked at Purdue for 15 years and has written three books about the military, describes himself on the blog as a conservative Christian. He says he started the blog two years to express his views.

The student newspaper has published several letters urging the university to fire him. Chapman said he was surprised at the backlash.

"It is sad we live in a time when truly free and open debate on controversial issues is characterized by such virulence," he said. "If gay rights opponents advocate removing First Amendment rights of gay rights proponents, there would be justifiable outrage over attempts to abridge their constitutional rights."

Purdue history professor Yvonne Pitts, who is a lesbian, said she totally disagreed with everything Chapman wrote, but that if the university disciplined him for his views it could chill others in the academic community.

"I would be disturbed if he lost his job because I would fear that my job could be in jeopardy for my activism," she said. "It is really good for students to be having this debate. But you can't call for his job."

University spokeswoman Jeanne Norberg said Chapman acted within university policy by including a disclaimer on his blog that his viewpoints do not necessarily reflect those of the institution.

"There are many things on the Internet that would be offensive to many but that are protected by the First Amendment," Norberg said. "The best response is to speak up, which is exactly what our students and some faculty are doing."

from: Chicago Tribune

Library employees fired over censorship of graphic novel

by: Amy Wilson

NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. — Sharon Cook is either a hero or a villain.

She is either due your thanks for doing everything in her power to protect children from obscenity or she is due your disdain for wantonly taking away the constitutional rights of the people of Jessamine County.

She never meant to do the latter. She absolutely meant to do the former.

It all started in the fall of 2008, and she is still doing it. The proof is in her knapsack, in a bright yellow flexible file folder, hidden from prying eyes. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume IV: The Black Dossier. It has pink and yellow highlighter tags sticking out, marking the pages that contain explicit sexual content.

It is the Jessamine County Public Library's copy, which she has checked out and not returned. She is being fined 10 cents a day for her breach of library contract — and for her moral stand.

She was, she says, simply appalled that a child could find a book that contained so many outright visually obscene graphics in the Jessamine library where she worked. So nine months ago, she challenged its right to be included in the collection, and when that failed, she simply checked it out herself.

In effect, she removed the book from circulation. She checked it out over and over and over with her library card until a patron of the library, unaware of the circumstances of the book, put a hold on it, asking to be the next in line to check it out.

When Cook went to renew The Black Dossier on Sept. 21, the computer would not allow it because of the hold. Cook used her employee privileges to find out that the patron desiring the book was an 11-year-old girl.

This would not do.

On Sept. 22, Cook told two of her colleagues at the library about her dilemma, and Beth Boisvert made a decision. She would take the book off hold, thus disallowing the child — or the child's parents — ever to see the book.

On Sept. 23, both Cook and Boisvert were fired. They were told by library director Ron Critchfield the firings were a decision of the library board.

Cook, 57, and Boisvert, 62, suddenly got support from people they didn't even know who heard about it on the Web or at church or in the news.

What followed has become a battle of principles that is larger than the women ever imagined.

It has become a question of what public libraries are enshrined to do, what role they are to play in monitoring children and whether they get to decide what people get to read.

What complicates this is that the graphic novel in question meets no standard of obscenity by the law.

While it does contain many images of varied and explicit sexual behavior, it has been the subject of academic study. It was named by Time Magazine as one of its Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2007 and called "genius," applauded for its ability to "pluck out the strange and angry and contradictory bits that underlie so much of the culture we live and think with today."

On Oct. 21, at its first meeting after the firings, the library board of directors found they needed a policy for public comment. Fifty people showed up unannounced to tell the library what they thought on the board's recent personnel actions.

Also on hand were Cook and Boisvert, who had prepared a power-point presentation of their case. It wasn't, they say, about keeping their jobs. It was about the fact that they had thought the book they found on the shelves of the library had originally been a mistake.

And the shock, they say, was that it wasn't. (The book had been bought originally because a patron had requested it.)

The presentation was created to explain that the Jessamine library's collection "currently contains material, readily available on its shelves, that is improper for children to view."

Moreover, they say they wanted to warn the library board that Kentucky law prohibits distribution of pornographic material to a child and they are concerned that the Jessamine library could be in felony violation.

They wanted to offer a plan for resolution: Because the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1973 that obscenity could be determined by local community standards, Jessamine County citizens should determine what they want their children to have access to.

They wanted to then suggest that the library change its policy on censorship.

Boisvert said she wanted them to know that "because we are a conservative community, we will choose to have our children protected."

Cook and Boisvert were never given the opportunity to speak. Neither was anyone else in the gallery. The reason given: It was not on the agenda.

People left really, really riled.

Director Critchfield has repeatedly said the library will not comment on personnel matters. The library, instead, has been left to try to speak through its policies.

The one most often pointed to is that any child 17 or under must have the consent of a parent or guardian to have a library card. And no child under 11 should be in the library unsupervised. (Parents choose if their children can access the Internet or if they can check out DVDs.)

Last week, new 81/2-by-17-inch posters went up around the library. "Parents and guardians, did you know?" they blare, explaining the policy the parents signed when their children took out cards and how to review the materials the child has checked out.

The Jessamine library had, before any complaint, adopted the American Library Association's policy manual and code of ethics as its own. (It is also the policy and code of ethics adopted by the state library association.)

It states: "Expurgation of any parts of books or other library resources by the library, its agent, or its parent institution is a violation of the Library Bill of Rights because it denies access to the complete work, and, therefore, to the entire spectrum of ideas that the work was intended to express."

Further, in the ALA's Code of Ethics: "We distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representations of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources."

Critchfield has made a form of public comment: an open letter in the Jessamine Journal. In part, he wrote:

"As customers of a public library there is a First Amendment expectation to respect the rights of all persons — what one person might view as questionable might be quite important and relevant to another."

As to the charge about Cook's concern that the library was in violation of the state obscenity laws?

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, acting director of the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom, says no U.S. library employee has ever been charged with that in a situation like this. Most states, including Kentucky, have written in an exclusion provision to that law, barring prosecution of libraries and education and scientific institutions.

Cook and Boisvert are not librarians. Generally, you must have a master's degree in library science to merit the professional title "librarian." The majority of library employees do not have an MLS. These paraprofessional positions go by a variety of titles depending on the library system.

Cook and Boisvert do not pretend to be librarians. Cook was a full-time employee of the library for four years before her firing. Boisvert worked 11 hours a week for more than two years before she was let go. Both women live in Jessamine County.

Cook says she consulted with a manager at the library at almost every step in her decision-making process about the graphic novel. She says when it first came to her attention, "someone suggested we spill a cup of tea on it. Instead I checked it out."

She then went through the proper procedure of challenging the book, something any patron can do. That required a committee, including Cook, to read the book.

"People prayed over me while I was reading it because I did not want those images in my head," she says.

Read more at Kentucky.com

From: McClatchy

Toronto private school ditches textbooks for digital books

by: Steph Davidson

Students at a Toronto private school are trading in their textbooks for e-books today.

Blyth Academy, which has campuses in Yorkville, Thornhill and at the ROM, is the first in the world to switch to the new technology.

The move will save students hundreds of dollars in textbook fees, according to Sam Blyth, the school’s managing director. He said students spend about $700 a year on traditional texts.

“It will eliminate the cost of textbooks,” said Blyth. “It’s completely free.”

Each student will receive a Sony Reader Digital Book for the duration of their studies. Required e-books will be loaded every term, and students can keep the readers during school holidays. Students will also have access to free e-books via the Sony bookstore and the Toronto Public Library.

Grade 12 students at the academy have the first 150 readers, and the rest of the student body will receive theirs within a couple months, said Mr. Blyth.

Mr. Blyth said the devices were paid for by “the school and Sony. The school paid for most of them. I don’t really want to get into the internal arrangement with Sony.”

Candice Hayman, a public relations specialist for Sony, also refused to ‘‘disclose the financial agreement between the two.”

from: National Post

E-Book Market Rekindled in Canada

by: Marc Lostracco

Remember how Canadians were locked out from the worldwide Kindle launch last month? Well, whatever was happening behind the scenes conveniently got worked out in time for the holiday shopping season, so Amazon's Kindle e-book reader is now being shipped to that primitive backwater known as Canada. The thing about e-books is that they last for weeks between charging, can be read in direct sunlight, and product can be downloaded via 3G networks "over the air" without syncing with your computer. If you want a Kindle, be prepared to pony-up a cool US $259, plus import fees (what free trade?), which, in Canadian dollars, is a little over three hundred smackers. Don't discount Sony's similar e-book offerings, but Barnes & Noble's sexy little nook isn't on its way north any time soon.

from: Torontoist

New Oxford American Dictionary Picks Word of the Year

by: Jason Boog

Choosing from a crowded field of brand new words that included "hashtag," "paywall," and "sexting," the New Oxford American Dictionary has picked its highly anticipated Word of the Year: "unfriend."

The term has become linguistic shorthand for breaking off a friendship in virtual space, the end of a social networking relationship on Facebook or other site. It was chosen for "currency and potential longevity," according to the press release. GalleyCat caught up with Rebecca Ford, the senior OUP blog editor, to find out more about behind-the-scene deliberations at the dictionary. She explained the creation of the master list: "They pull in sources from blogs, magazines, books, and give us a list of words that are buzzing in new and interesting ways. We sit around and discuss the list--deciding which ones we think are most important."

"It's my favorite time of year," she concluded. "It's a lot of fun, especially when you come up with a list with a word like sexting on it. When we discuss, you have to decide--do you want to go for the word that is most sensational, or the word that will have the most longevity in the language?"

from: GalleyCat

Online "Best of 2009" Book Lists

Over at Largehearted Boy, they're compliling a list of every single online "best of 2009" book lists. The list is continually updated as lists appear onine, so keep checking back to see if something new has appeared. Comments noting online lists that have been missed are also welcome. Check it out here.

Thanks to TOSnob for the link.

Bookless libraries?

by: Steve Kolowich



Denver - When does a library cease to be a library?



What started as a debate over whether brick-and-mortar libraries would survive much further into the 21st century turned into an existential discussion on the definition of libraries, as a gathering of technologists here at the 2009 Educause Conference pondered the evolution of one of higher education’s oldest institutions.



“Let’s face it: the library, as a place, is dead,” said Suzanne E. Thorin, dean of libraries at Syracuse University. “Kaput. Finito. And we need to move on to a new concept of what the academic library is.”



Thorin prefaced her comments by saying that for the purposes of the debate she would be taking an extreme position on the fate of libraries. But her argument tapped into theories about the obsolescence of libraries — traditionally defined — that have grown along with the emergence of Web-based reference tools, e-books, digitized and born-digital content, and other technologies that some see as changing essential library functions.



“The scientists have mostly gone online with their library needs,” Thorin said. “Cutting-edge scholars in the humanities are building new disciplines and online environments are are, in effect, libraries themselves; they are diffuse, collaborative, non-hierarchical, always changing.”



Certain major research universities, she noted, have even begun moving their books to off-campus storage facilities due to space issues and a diminishing need for on-site hard copies. Libraries everywhere are eliminating pricey subscriptions to printed academic journals, often opting for less expensive digital versions.



Despite the objections of “a minority of very loud faculty members,” Thorin said, the days of wandering through the stacks are over. “People,” she told the audience, of whom many were librarians, “the world has changed, and so have your students, and so have your faculty!”



Richard E. Luce, director of university libraries at Emory University, countered that just because libraries are transitioning from print to online does not mean they will cease to be libraries.



“The issue is really about library as place, whether you need the bricks and mortar,” Luce said. “So let’s look at that.” Why did thousands of college technologists come to Educause? “To interact with one another — to talk, to collaborate, to think, to communicate, to be with one another,” he said. “Isn’t that what we do in our best libraries?”



The library still is, and will continue to be, the centerpiece of a campus, Luce said. The history of libraries, he said, has been marked by evolution: They were founded as places where materials were collected and stored. Then they shifted their focus toward connecting clients with resources. Then, with the addition of creature comforts such as coffee shops, they became "experience" centered, effectively rendering student unions obsolete.



“Now, in the fourth generation, we’re really seeing the library as a place to connect, collaborate, learn, and really synthesize all four of those roles together,” said Luce. “How do you do that without bricks and mortar?”



One audience member commented that libraries are defined more by what they do than what they look like. While new technologies might be replacing print collections, she said, they are not replacing librarians — whose roles as research guides have become more even important as available resources have multiplied.



“I think it’s important to look at the type of reference question that’s asked,” she said. “If you look at the READ Scale, which is a tool used to assess the complexity of a question that is asked, the number of directional and simple … questions has dropped, because we’ve provided the tools to make answering those questions easy.



“If you look at the number of more difficult, research-oriented questions,” she continued, “we find it has grown as the complexity of the tools to provide answers to those questions has become more intense.”



Although they nominally represented opposing sides of the debate, Thorin and Luce agreed that while the functions and appearance of libraries will likely change, nobody’s about to tear them down just because they have fewer books and more social spaces.



“Maybe the whole idea of ‘Is the library, as a place, dead or not,’ maybe this is a red herring,” Thorin said. “…Maybe the question is, ‘Who knows what the library means anymore?’ ”



from: Inside Higher Ed

My Wrestle With The Reluctant Reader

by: Dean Pitchford

For over twenty-five years I have worked at creating the most compressed form of popular art -- the three-minute pop song. Recording artists, publishers and record execs have always demanded the instantly catchy 'hook', the immediately memorable title. "Please don't bore us," goes the old saw, "get to the chorus!" It was drummed into my head from very early on that the audience for which I was writing had a limited attention span, and it was my challenge to provide them with something ear-catching and infectious. In one hundred and eighty seconds.

Go!


Now that I've begun to write and publish young adult literature, I find that my quarter century in the music biz serves me well... up to a point. I know that I have a precariously short amount of time -- just a few pages, really -- in which I must seize the imagination of a reader as firmly as my songs have grabbed listeners' ears. But that's only the beginning of the battle; for, you see, I have found myself writing for a young readership that comes to me with arms folded and a cocky, "Oh, yeah?" curl on its lip.


These are the 'reluctant readers.'


I'd never encountered the term until my first novel The Big One-Oh was published in 2007, and "...this is a great read for the reluctant reader!" popped up in several reviews. Savvy literary types informed me that "reluctant reader" is industry code for... are you sitting down?... boys. Yup. Boys' reading habits are so specific that they have merited their very own euphemism.

Actually, 'boys' reading habits' is misleading, for what I also discovered is that, by and large, boys don't really have reading habits. The lament of modern educators is that boys at all levels of education are lagging further and further behind girls. Who or what is to blame? Is it the six hundred channels of television? The proliferation of video games? Ubiquitous cell phones? Twittering? Texting? What?


The answer is likely 'all of the above.' The hole in the dike has grown too large for a little boy's finger to matter anymore; the flood of technology is reshaping the personalities of today's youngsters in a way that the creators of the Mouseketeers, Sesame Street and Barney -- whose creations deeply affected previous generations -- never dreamed.


On a recent trip to Japan I was struck by a sight I first observed in Tokyo and then saw repeated in city after city. At the end of the school day, armies of uniformed middle-grade students crowded in and around a bus stop shelter, spilling onto the sidewalk and into the street. But these kids didn't talk or joke or roughhouse, the way kids do (or did.) Instead, they waited for their bus in eerie silence, each of them hunched over a handheld device, ear buds firmly in place, fingers flying. The fact that their school uniforms were snow white added a ghostly, other-worldly dimension to this and the rest of my sighting; tableaux of schoolmates with nothing to say to each other. Schoolmates who weren't making any memories together. Schoolmates who could hardly be called 'mates.'


Those images flash through my mind every time I stand up before a classroom of kids or a book store full of parents and children. I recognize the awesome opportunity I am being given, of actually speaking to youngsters who, left to their own devices, would happily return to... well, to their own devices. I've got to act fast!


Here's the interesting part: in all the years I have written pop songs, I have never faced my audience. I have never met (most of) the people who bought seventy million of my records. I enjoyed my relative anonymity, happy to sit home (or in a recording studio), crank out the hits, check the charts in Variety and Billboard, and then deposit the checks.


from: the Huffington Post