Titles within a Tale
by: Ed Park
Chances are you haven’t read Margery McIntyre Flood’s young adult oeuvre, which includes “You Can’t Do Anything Right,” “Mom’s Coffee Smells Like Gin” and “You Would if You Loved Me,” otherwise known as “the birth-control one.” Somehow you missed Jean Fung’s “Protracted” (“about hooking up and engineering at a prestigious university, written by the former sex columnist for The California Tech”) and Pamela McLaughlin’s “Strip Tease” (one of her popular Trang Martinez mysteries), Cubby Greenwich’s “One O’Clock Jump” and John Clitherow’s “Mr. Bluebird.”
Though all these titles appeared this year, you won’t find them at the bookshop or at the Kindle store, because they belong to what might be called the invisible library. This library contains books that exist only between the covers of other books — as descriptions, occasionally as brief excerpts, often simply as titles.
The books named above come from three very different sources. Flood figures in Caitlin Macy’s story “Bad Ghost” (from her collection “Spoiled”), a psychologically astute story in which a young woman recalls a fraught spell baby-sitting the author’s daughter. The précis of “Protracted” and a tough-as-leather passage of “Strip Tease” are among the many faux fictions in Steve Hely’s “How I Became a Famous Novelist,” a gleeful skewering of the publishing industry and every cliché of the writing life. And Greenwich and Clitherow (as well as Greenwich’s children’s-book-writing wife, Penny Boom, creator of “The Other Side of the Woods”) are characters in Dean Koontz’s “Relentless,” whose plot spirals out from a best-selling author’s bloody feud with a sinister critic to describe a vast cultural conspiracy. (Appropriately enough, it hit the top spot of the real Times best-seller list.) In 2009, the invisible library is as vibrant as ever, with new acquisitions in every genre.
Novelists have long tucked made-up fictions inside their real ones. Sometimes these interior texts inform the plot or enhance the theme, other times they are just lively bursts of color, sparks thrown off during the authorial process. It’s easy to understand the appeal of creating these miniatures. A few deft lines can conjure perfect examples of untutored rawness (Mattie Ross, the 14-year-old heroine of Charles Portis’s “True Grit,” has a manuscript entitled “You will now listen to the sentence of the law, Odus Wharton, which is that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead! May God, whose laws you have broken and before whose dread tribunal you must appear, have mercy upon your soul. Being a personal recollection of Isaac C. Parker, the famous Border Judge”), sublime dullness (“The Purpose of Clothing Is to Keep Us Warm,” in Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy-Casares’s “Chronicles of Bustos Domecq”) or anything in between. Why write the whole book when you can get so much mileage out of the title alone?
Most such inventions have one foot in the comic. We can imagine Nabokov chuckling over Udo Conrad’s “Memoirs of a Forgetful Man” (in “Laughter in the Dark”) and Clare Quilty’s “Fatherly Love” (“Lolita”) — not to mention the alter-Nabokovian bibliography that kicks off his last complete book, “Look at the Harlequins!,” in which “The Gift” (“Dar” in Russian) becomes “The Dare,” and so on.
Aldous Huxley’s very funny first novel, “Crome Yellow” (1921), features not just a varied smattering of invisible books and books-in-progress (Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s “Pipe-Lines to the Infinite,” Henry Wimbush’s history of the town of Crome), but what might be called second-degree invisibles: a bookcase of pageless spines — 10 volumes of “Thom’s Works and Wanderings,” seven of “Tales of Knockespotch” — camouflaging a secret door. These books are fake even in the fictional world where they sprout.
In Raymond Chandler’s posthumously published notebooks, we find 36 unused titles, from “The Man With the Shredded Ear” to “The Black-Eyed Blonde,” as well as reference to Aaron Klopstein, author of such books as “Cat Hairs in the Custard” and “Twenty Inches of Monkey” (a title derived from a catalog listing monkeys for vivisection at a dollar per inch). For all their loopy humor, such jeux d’esprit also suggest a haunting: all the books a writer will never get the time to write.
Indeed, invisible books are charged with the uncanny. No one can possibly have read, or even heard of, every book ever written, so how can we distinguish the fake from the real? H. P. Lovecraft used this ambiguity to great effect in his stories. In “The Haunter of the Dark” (1936), the unfortunate protagonist stumbles upon shelves of “mildewed, disintegrating books” — “the banned and dreaded repositories of equivocal secrets and immemorial formulae.” These include “a Latin version of the abhorred ‘Necronomicon,’ the sinister ‘Liber Ivonis,’ the infamous ‘Cultes des Goules’ of Comte d’Erlette, the ‘Unaussprechlichen Kulten’ of von Junzt, and old Ludvig Prinn’s hellish ‘De Vermis Mysteriis.’ ” The titular details — the sinister-looking double i’s in “Mysteriis,” the rebarbative German tag of von Junzt’s work — are arguably as chilling as the overwrought prose Lovecraft sometimes discharges.
Browsing through the invisible library, one can imagine endless classifications, an alternate Dewey Decimal System for invisible books whose titles double as those of the books that contain them (Nicole Krauss’s “History of Love,” Douglas Adams’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”); phantom books in movies (the self-help books in “Synecdoche, New York”) and on TV (“Tapping a Maple on a Cold Vermont Morning,” published in The Atlantic Monthly by one of the account executives on “Mad Men”); bogus books that are the subject of fictitious reviews (“Idiota,” “Being Inc.” and 13 others in Stanislaw Lem’s “Perfect Vacuum”). Then there are invisible books that later lend their titles to actual books: David Means’s story collection “The Secret Goldfish” takes its name from the collection written by Holden Caulfield’s brother, D.B.; Martin Amis, an avowed Nabokovophile, wrote a novel called “Success” — also the title of an invisible book mentioned in Nabokov’s novel “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.”
Lurking somewhere behind these invented books is an anxiety. Any writer walking through a dusty row of library stacks, or glancing at a title on Amazon with a sales rank in the mid-millions, feels the insignificance of his or her endeavor. Why write more? How can one possibly expect to make a dent in the culture, or even get read by anybody outside one’s immediate family?
Generating titles for an invisible library is perhaps the unconscious acknowledgment of this depressing reality. The fact that one’s characters can be moved by some unlikely volume — the way Kurt Vonnegut’s Eliot Rosewater gushes over the invisible science fiction writer Kilgore Trout’s dystopian “2BRO2B” in “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” — might be a secret wish for the book that’s really being written to find its own champions. It’s a small hedge against oblivion. And in the end, as even our hazy notions of literary history suggest, one can ask whether such invented books are any less real than the titles lost forever at Alexandria — or those residing on your Kindle when it goes dark.
From: the NYTimes
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
India's Literary Leaders
By: Menachem Kaiser
Vikas Swarup, the author of “Six Suspects” and “Q & A” (the book that became “Slumdog Millionaire”), has just been named India’s Consul General in Osaka, Japan. With the appointment, Swarup joins a long tradition of Indian authors-turned-government officials. Most prominently, there’s Shashi Tharoor, the Minister of State for External Affairs, who wrote “The Great Indian Novel,” and “Show Business” (which was made into the film “Bollywood”).
There’s also Pavan Varma, the Director General of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, who wrote “The Art of Making Love to a Woman,” an updated adaptation of the “Kama Sutra.” Navtej Sarna, who penned the novel “We Weren’t Lovers Like That” has, according to his Web site, served as a diplomat in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Geneva, Tehran, Washington, D.C., and as India’s Foreign Office Spokesman in New Delhi. He’s now the Indian ambassador to Israel. The late Nina Sibal, who was the first secretary of the Indian delegation to the U.N., wrote the novel “Yatra.” The country has also attracted foreign literary-inclined diplomats: Octavio Paz, the Nobel Prize-winning writer and poet, served as the Mexican ambassador to India from 1962-1968.
What’s going on here? Do Indian writers feel that they must supplement their work with a more respectable profession? Or is an Indian diplomatic position cushy enough to allow novels to be written on the job? Tharoor, in a 2004 article published in The Hindu, has a more charitable rationale:
"Are diplomats uniquely suited—provided they have the gift to begin with—to be good creative writers? My friend and former United Nations colleague Jayantha Dhanapala, a former Sri Lankan Ambassador in Washington who is now his Government’s envoy in the ongoing peace process, certainly thinks so. He argues that the professional diplomat, like the sensitive writer, has to be able to mix with both elites and masses; be firmly rooted in his own culture while open to the experience of others; have inner resources to fall back upon in coping with the isolation of a foreign posting (what Auden called “this nightmare of public solitude”). And most tellingly, as Dhanapala put it in a 1997 lecture, diplomats see creative writing as an escape valve for their professional compromises and frustrations—“an act of expiation for the bruising of the soul they have experienced in their working life.” The alternative, for less talented diplomats, has often been alcohol."
From: the New Yorker
Vikas Swarup, the author of “Six Suspects” and “Q & A” (the book that became “Slumdog Millionaire”), has just been named India’s Consul General in Osaka, Japan. With the appointment, Swarup joins a long tradition of Indian authors-turned-government officials. Most prominently, there’s Shashi Tharoor, the Minister of State for External Affairs, who wrote “The Great Indian Novel,” and “Show Business” (which was made into the film “Bollywood”).
There’s also Pavan Varma, the Director General of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, who wrote “The Art of Making Love to a Woman,” an updated adaptation of the “Kama Sutra.” Navtej Sarna, who penned the novel “We Weren’t Lovers Like That” has, according to his Web site, served as a diplomat in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Geneva, Tehran, Washington, D.C., and as India’s Foreign Office Spokesman in New Delhi. He’s now the Indian ambassador to Israel. The late Nina Sibal, who was the first secretary of the Indian delegation to the U.N., wrote the novel “Yatra.” The country has also attracted foreign literary-inclined diplomats: Octavio Paz, the Nobel Prize-winning writer and poet, served as the Mexican ambassador to India from 1962-1968.
What’s going on here? Do Indian writers feel that they must supplement their work with a more respectable profession? Or is an Indian diplomatic position cushy enough to allow novels to be written on the job? Tharoor, in a 2004 article published in The Hindu, has a more charitable rationale:
"Are diplomats uniquely suited—provided they have the gift to begin with—to be good creative writers? My friend and former United Nations colleague Jayantha Dhanapala, a former Sri Lankan Ambassador in Washington who is now his Government’s envoy in the ongoing peace process, certainly thinks so. He argues that the professional diplomat, like the sensitive writer, has to be able to mix with both elites and masses; be firmly rooted in his own culture while open to the experience of others; have inner resources to fall back upon in coping with the isolation of a foreign posting (what Auden called “this nightmare of public solitude”). And most tellingly, as Dhanapala put it in a 1997 lecture, diplomats see creative writing as an escape valve for their professional compromises and frustrations—“an act of expiation for the bruising of the soul they have experienced in their working life.” The alternative, for less talented diplomats, has often been alcohol."
From: the New Yorker
Monday, July 27, 2009
Deadline
Recently, there has been much discussion around the web over the cover of the above book. A book that is not by Dan Brown, but by Simon Kernick.
However there is a silver lining. The bloggers Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have launched a Simon Kernick is Awesome Photoshop Contest. It invites readers to create deceptive book covers similar to the one above. Check it out for yourself (you'll laugh out loud) and then vote for your favourite.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
A blog of awful library books
Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner are public librarians in Michigan and cannot understand why librarians won’t weed the junk from circulating collections. The authors sincerely hope that public librarians will embrace maintaining a quality collection and share similar examples of awful library books.
Go here to find out what is making their list.
Go here to find out what is making their list.
If you find an awful library book lurking in your stacks, feel free to submit it to the awful books website and don't be ashamed to submit it to this very blog - we could all use a good laugh!
1,000 Words: Stand Tall
A sculpture commemorating German writers and poets in the Bebelplatz, in Berlin. The sculpture was made by the German design team Sholz & Friends, as part of a 2006 project called the “Walk of Ideas.” The Bebelplatz is also recognized as the location of a Nazi book-burning in 1933, when over twenty-thousand books were burned in a single day.photo credit: “Book Burning Memorial” by Venana, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
From: the New Yorker
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Harlequin ventures into YA market
Harlequin ventures into YA market
by: Suzanne Gardner
In the hopes of capitalizing on the popularity of the Harry Potter books and the Twilight series, Harlequin Books is launching a new imprint this fall targeted at the young adult market. The imprint, called Harlequin Teen, will publish novels in several genres, including science fiction, fantasy, and mystery.
The imprint has been in the planning stages for several years now, according to Harlequin staffers, but it didn’t receive the green light until 2008. In the early days of development, editors from various Harlequin imprints were all asked to acquire titles for the new line. Within a few months, however, senior editor Natashya Wilson, who is based in the New York office, was given sole responsibility for Harlequin Teen.
“I’ve always been a YA reader, I never stopped reading it since I was young,” explains Wilson. “I’m familiar with a lot of the authors […] and I’m also probably one of the three biggest Twilight fans in the whole company.” Wilson is currently the only dedicated staffer assigned to Harlequin Teen, with support coming from employees at both the Canadian and U.S. offices. According to Wilson, more full-time employees may be brought in to work on the line, but no decisions will be made until after sales figures begin to roll in.
The program will kick off with three urban fantasy novels: Rachel Vincent’s My Soul to Take, which launches in August; Gena Showalter’s Intertwined in September; and a reprint of a 2004 Harlequin Luna novel by P.C. Cast called Elphame’s Choice in October. Print runs have not yet been determined. Going forward, Wilson says she is currently planning 17 books for 2010, and 18 to 20 books for 2011.
In order to set the teen line apart from the company’s many adult lines, titles will not be stocked in Harlequin racks or in romance sections – they will be shelved in YA sections as standalone titles. Although each book will be identified as a Harlequin Teen novel by a logo on the spine, they will not have a distinct series look.
In addition to marketing through Facebook and MySpace, the company has created an online focus group of almost 300 youths, who will be asked to voice their opinions on potential covers and story lines. A digital prequel to the imprint’s first book, My Soul to Take, will also be available in July as a free e-book and audio book.
From: Quill & Quire
by: Suzanne Gardner
In the hopes of capitalizing on the popularity of the Harry Potter books and the Twilight series, Harlequin Books is launching a new imprint this fall targeted at the young adult market. The imprint, called Harlequin Teen, will publish novels in several genres, including science fiction, fantasy, and mystery.
The imprint has been in the planning stages for several years now, according to Harlequin staffers, but it didn’t receive the green light until 2008. In the early days of development, editors from various Harlequin imprints were all asked to acquire titles for the new line. Within a few months, however, senior editor Natashya Wilson, who is based in the New York office, was given sole responsibility for Harlequin Teen.
“I’ve always been a YA reader, I never stopped reading it since I was young,” explains Wilson. “I’m familiar with a lot of the authors […] and I’m also probably one of the three biggest Twilight fans in the whole company.” Wilson is currently the only dedicated staffer assigned to Harlequin Teen, with support coming from employees at both the Canadian and U.S. offices. According to Wilson, more full-time employees may be brought in to work on the line, but no decisions will be made until after sales figures begin to roll in.
The program will kick off with three urban fantasy novels: Rachel Vincent’s My Soul to Take, which launches in August; Gena Showalter’s Intertwined in September; and a reprint of a 2004 Harlequin Luna novel by P.C. Cast called Elphame’s Choice in October. Print runs have not yet been determined. Going forward, Wilson says she is currently planning 17 books for 2010, and 18 to 20 books for 2011.
In order to set the teen line apart from the company’s many adult lines, titles will not be stocked in Harlequin racks or in romance sections – they will be shelved in YA sections as standalone titles. Although each book will be identified as a Harlequin Teen novel by a logo on the spine, they will not have a distinct series look.
In addition to marketing through Facebook and MySpace, the company has created an online focus group of almost 300 youths, who will be asked to voice their opinions on potential covers and story lines. A digital prequel to the imprint’s first book, My Soul to Take, will also be available in July as a free e-book and audio book.
From: Quill & Quire
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Banned Political Books in China Thrive in Hong Kong
China's Bookstore
Why the Chinese-reading world still flocks to Hong Kong
by: Jonathan Cheng
HONG KONG -- This former British colony, famous as a global financial hub, is best known in Chinese political circles as something else: a supplier of the Chinese-speaking world's most sensitive books.
Even after returning to Chinese rule, Hong Kong retained its own laws, including generally wide-open rights to publish, other than some pornography restrictions. In China, by contrast, the government licenses publishing houses and has the power to censor or ban any book. So Hong Kong's bookstores attract large numbers of mainland Chinese travelers who use trips here to stock up on books they can't get back home, from virulent attacks on Mao Zedong to tomes on the three Ts of contemporary Chinese taboo: Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen.
Even Hong Kong's airport bookstores are stocked with shelves of books banned in the mainland, mostly purporting to spill the beans on top Chinese leaders. China also prohibits carrying banned books into the country, but with the volume of traffic at the border making detection highly unlikely -- and with the consequences generally limited to confiscation -- readers seem willing to risk it.
"My bookstore could only thrive in a place like Hong Kong," says Paul Tang, founder of People's Recreation Community, a bookstore cafe in downtown Hong Kong with a Mao-themed decor and a focus on political books, including a wealth of titles published in the simplified Chinese script of mainland China -- but banned there. Mr. Tang, a 34-year-old former Starbucks shop manager who started his business -- then mainly a cafe -- in 2002, says mainland Chinese visitors account for 70% of his sales.
Attendance at Hong Kong's bustling book fair, whose 20th annual edition opens next week, jumped nearly 18% after Beijing liberalized travel policies for mainland Chinese visitors to Hong Kong in 2004. It has grown steadily since, last year hitting a record 829,967 -- more than four times the 200,000 that showed up at the first fair in 1990.
The event regularly draws informal "tour groups" of politically savvy mainland Chinese to snap up copies of books they can't buy back home, and this year fair organizers, in addition to promoting the event in mainland China, have lined up travel agents in Guangzhou and Shanghai, as well as Taipei, to organize package tours.
"Hong Kong is a free society, and we don't have any censorship," says Raymond Yip, who oversees the fair for the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. "The book fair is a truly diversified event in terms of accomodating books from different backgrounds, views and orientations." One of the speakers at last year's fair was Chinese-born novelist Ha Jin, who now lives in the U.S. and some of whose books have been banned in China.
Dozens of Hong Kong publishing houses churn out everything from slapdash exposés of mainland corruption to autobiographies. Blockbuster Chinese-language editions first published in Hong Kong in recent years include "Mao: The Untold Story" by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday in 2006 and "The Tiananmen Papers" by Zhang Liang (a pseudonym) in 2001. And this year there were the secret memoirs of late Chinese Communist Party secretary Zhao Ziyang, smuggled out of mainland China on audiocassettes and published by Hong Kong's New Century Publishing in May. Mr. Zhao's memoirs, which tell of deep divisions in the Chinese leaders' handling of the 1989 student movement, sold out instantly in Hong Kong. (An English-language version, "Prisoner of the State," was published by Simon & Schuster in May.)
Hong Kong has long been fertile ground for political dissent. Anti-Manchu revolutionary Sun Yat-sen made a base here at the beginning of the 20th century, and every June since the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989 a candlelight vigil has been held to mark the anniversary; this year's drew tens of thousands of residents to a public park.
Hong Kong's freedoms set it as an island of contrast against mainland China's strict regime. Until the 1980s, even Taiwan banned works ranging from 1920s short stories by Lu Xun -- revered in mainland China -- to books and articles advocating independence for the island, including several written by Chen Shui-bian, who would later be elected president. (Even today, Taiwan's government screens and restricts certain political publications, though the scope is far narrower than it once was.)
For decades, that made Hong Kong the only place in greater China where literary heroes of both Communist and anti-Communist persuasion could be published. And the ability to publish sensitive books and magazines is seen as an important barometer of freedom in a city that is vigilant about any erosion since the return to China in 1997.
"Hong Kong is the region's central hub for the free flow and dissemination of information, and that to me is Hong Kong's most core value," says Ho Pin, a mainland-born businessman who in 1990 founded Hong Kong-based Mirror Publishing. "The fact that Mirror hasn't been subject to any overt political pressure in Hong Kong all these years is a testament to that freedom." His house has been responsible for some of the most explosive political memoirs of the past two decades, including the Chinese version of "The Tiananmen Papers."
That freedom includes the freedom to be politically neutral. Both Mr. Ho and Mr. Tang, the bookshop owner, say they aren't particularly motivated by ideology, and Mr. Tang, for one, is happy to offer books from across the political spectrum -- though his most popular titles tend toward unauthorized biographies of Chinese leaders like Zhou Enlai and exposés of the reportedly prodigious sex life of Chairman Mao (a subject that drives a whole cottage industry).
"It doesn't matter whether you're left-wing or right-wing," he says. "The books are all here -- whatever sells best."
From: WSJ
Why the Chinese-reading world still flocks to Hong Kong
by: Jonathan Cheng
HONG KONG -- This former British colony, famous as a global financial hub, is best known in Chinese political circles as something else: a supplier of the Chinese-speaking world's most sensitive books.
Even after returning to Chinese rule, Hong Kong retained its own laws, including generally wide-open rights to publish, other than some pornography restrictions. In China, by contrast, the government licenses publishing houses and has the power to censor or ban any book. So Hong Kong's bookstores attract large numbers of mainland Chinese travelers who use trips here to stock up on books they can't get back home, from virulent attacks on Mao Zedong to tomes on the three Ts of contemporary Chinese taboo: Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen.
Even Hong Kong's airport bookstores are stocked with shelves of books banned in the mainland, mostly purporting to spill the beans on top Chinese leaders. China also prohibits carrying banned books into the country, but with the volume of traffic at the border making detection highly unlikely -- and with the consequences generally limited to confiscation -- readers seem willing to risk it.
"My bookstore could only thrive in a place like Hong Kong," says Paul Tang, founder of People's Recreation Community, a bookstore cafe in downtown Hong Kong with a Mao-themed decor and a focus on political books, including a wealth of titles published in the simplified Chinese script of mainland China -- but banned there. Mr. Tang, a 34-year-old former Starbucks shop manager who started his business -- then mainly a cafe -- in 2002, says mainland Chinese visitors account for 70% of his sales.
Attendance at Hong Kong's bustling book fair, whose 20th annual edition opens next week, jumped nearly 18% after Beijing liberalized travel policies for mainland Chinese visitors to Hong Kong in 2004. It has grown steadily since, last year hitting a record 829,967 -- more than four times the 200,000 that showed up at the first fair in 1990.
The event regularly draws informal "tour groups" of politically savvy mainland Chinese to snap up copies of books they can't buy back home, and this year fair organizers, in addition to promoting the event in mainland China, have lined up travel agents in Guangzhou and Shanghai, as well as Taipei, to organize package tours.
"Hong Kong is a free society, and we don't have any censorship," says Raymond Yip, who oversees the fair for the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. "The book fair is a truly diversified event in terms of accomodating books from different backgrounds, views and orientations." One of the speakers at last year's fair was Chinese-born novelist Ha Jin, who now lives in the U.S. and some of whose books have been banned in China.
Dozens of Hong Kong publishing houses churn out everything from slapdash exposés of mainland corruption to autobiographies. Blockbuster Chinese-language editions first published in Hong Kong in recent years include "Mao: The Untold Story" by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday in 2006 and "The Tiananmen Papers" by Zhang Liang (a pseudonym) in 2001. And this year there were the secret memoirs of late Chinese Communist Party secretary Zhao Ziyang, smuggled out of mainland China on audiocassettes and published by Hong Kong's New Century Publishing in May. Mr. Zhao's memoirs, which tell of deep divisions in the Chinese leaders' handling of the 1989 student movement, sold out instantly in Hong Kong. (An English-language version, "Prisoner of the State," was published by Simon & Schuster in May.)
Hong Kong has long been fertile ground for political dissent. Anti-Manchu revolutionary Sun Yat-sen made a base here at the beginning of the 20th century, and every June since the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989 a candlelight vigil has been held to mark the anniversary; this year's drew tens of thousands of residents to a public park.
Hong Kong's freedoms set it as an island of contrast against mainland China's strict regime. Until the 1980s, even Taiwan banned works ranging from 1920s short stories by Lu Xun -- revered in mainland China -- to books and articles advocating independence for the island, including several written by Chen Shui-bian, who would later be elected president. (Even today, Taiwan's government screens and restricts certain political publications, though the scope is far narrower than it once was.)
For decades, that made Hong Kong the only place in greater China where literary heroes of both Communist and anti-Communist persuasion could be published. And the ability to publish sensitive books and magazines is seen as an important barometer of freedom in a city that is vigilant about any erosion since the return to China in 1997.
"Hong Kong is the region's central hub for the free flow and dissemination of information, and that to me is Hong Kong's most core value," says Ho Pin, a mainland-born businessman who in 1990 founded Hong Kong-based Mirror Publishing. "The fact that Mirror hasn't been subject to any overt political pressure in Hong Kong all these years is a testament to that freedom." His house has been responsible for some of the most explosive political memoirs of the past two decades, including the Chinese version of "The Tiananmen Papers."
That freedom includes the freedom to be politically neutral. Both Mr. Ho and Mr. Tang, the bookshop owner, say they aren't particularly motivated by ideology, and Mr. Tang, for one, is happy to offer books from across the political spectrum -- though his most popular titles tend toward unauthorized biographies of Chinese leaders like Zhou Enlai and exposés of the reportedly prodigious sex life of Chairman Mao (a subject that drives a whole cottage industry).
"It doesn't matter whether you're left-wing or right-wing," he says. "The books are all here -- whatever sells best."
From: WSJ
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Graphic novel version of 'Twilight' on the way!
'Twilight' exclusive: Graphic novel version on the way!
by: Tina Jordan
For those of you who can’t get enough Edward and Bella, EW can announce — exclusively — that Yen Press will be publishing Twilight in graphic-novel form, publication date still to be determined. Though Korean artist Young Kim is creating the art, Meyer herself is deeply immersed in the project, reviewing every panel.
Take a close look at the biology-class sketch we’ve obtained (that’s an empty dialogue bubble between their heads, if you’re wondering). What’s interesting to me is that it doesn’t look simply like an artist’s rendering of Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson. In fact, the characters seem to be an amalgam of Meyer’s literary imagination and the actors’ actual looks. The description of Edward from biology class: “His dazzling face was friendly; open, a slight smile on his flawless lips. But his eyes were cautious.” And Bella: “I was ivory-skinned …. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete…” To me, this graphic-novel Bella seems much closer to me to Meyer’s book than to Stewart’s sultry portrayal. The Edward shown is closer to Pattinson, but not a real duplicate; there’s something very winning in the sketch that I don’t see in Pattinson’s all-too-perfect tousled bronze locks and piercing eyes.
What do you think? If you’d like to see more before weighing in, pick up a copy of EW magazine, which will hit newsstands on Friday, July 17 — it contains finished illustrations of Edward, Bella, and Jacob.
From: EW
Saturday, July 18, 2009
A fee to use the public library?
City manager's suggestion gets cool reception
By Chad Lawhorn
As City Hall contemplates a new fee for sidewalk maintenance and higher fees for parks and recreation services and downtown parking, here’s a new one to consider: A public library user fee.
City Manager David Corliss is suggesting that the city’s library board study the idea of a “modest membership fee” to reduce the library’s reliance on city property taxes, which have become a less stable funding source as the real estate market has suffered.
Thus far, the idea is being greeted a lot like a Dan Brown reading at a Shakespeare conference.
“I haven’t had time to really examine it, but at first glance, it seems like a very bad idea,” said City Commissioner Aron Cromwell.
Library board members said the library is serving larger numbers of low-income or unemployed people who likely would be hard-pressed to pay a new fee.
“I think there would be quite a backlash if we started charging user fees,” said Michael Machell, vice-chair of the library board.
But Corliss said he would like library leaders to keep an open mind to the idea. He said the library board could create its own rules on who would be required to pay the fee.
“We clearly want any child, regardless of income, to be able to check out a book at the library,” Corliss said. “I clearly agree with that value. But maybe there are ways to create a system for those who can afford to pay a fee.”
Ultimately, it will be up to the library board, not the City Commission, to determine whether a fee is appropriate. Unlike other city boards, the Public Library Board is not an advisory board. Its members — who are appointed by the City Commission — are charged with making the final decisions on how the library operates.
It’s not clear how much a new fee could generate because no specific fee amount has been proposed. But the library loaned out about 1.2 million items in 2008, and averaged about 9,100 visitors per week. The library receives about $3 million per year in city property tax dollars, which accounts for about 90 percent of the library’s overall budget.
Library board members said they are appreciative of Corliss’ concerns about the future of property tax revenues for the library, especially in 2011 when home values are expected to fall even farther.
“But a user fee would be a huge shift in philosophy for us to consider,” said Deborah Thompson, a library board member. “I think we would look at all kinds of funding options before we would look at charging fees.”
Cromwell said he thinks as the economy improves in the next couple of years, the community at large will be ready to consider new funding sources for an improved library.
“I’m very optimistic that we’re going to have a proposal to improve the library and improve its funding in the next two years,” Cromwell said. “If there isn’t one by then, I’ll bring one forward.”
From: LJWorld.com
By Chad Lawhorn
As City Hall contemplates a new fee for sidewalk maintenance and higher fees for parks and recreation services and downtown parking, here’s a new one to consider: A public library user fee.
City Manager David Corliss is suggesting that the city’s library board study the idea of a “modest membership fee” to reduce the library’s reliance on city property taxes, which have become a less stable funding source as the real estate market has suffered.
Thus far, the idea is being greeted a lot like a Dan Brown reading at a Shakespeare conference.
“I haven’t had time to really examine it, but at first glance, it seems like a very bad idea,” said City Commissioner Aron Cromwell.
Library board members said the library is serving larger numbers of low-income or unemployed people who likely would be hard-pressed to pay a new fee.
“I think there would be quite a backlash if we started charging user fees,” said Michael Machell, vice-chair of the library board.
But Corliss said he would like library leaders to keep an open mind to the idea. He said the library board could create its own rules on who would be required to pay the fee.
“We clearly want any child, regardless of income, to be able to check out a book at the library,” Corliss said. “I clearly agree with that value. But maybe there are ways to create a system for those who can afford to pay a fee.”
Ultimately, it will be up to the library board, not the City Commission, to determine whether a fee is appropriate. Unlike other city boards, the Public Library Board is not an advisory board. Its members — who are appointed by the City Commission — are charged with making the final decisions on how the library operates.
It’s not clear how much a new fee could generate because no specific fee amount has been proposed. But the library loaned out about 1.2 million items in 2008, and averaged about 9,100 visitors per week. The library receives about $3 million per year in city property tax dollars, which accounts for about 90 percent of the library’s overall budget.
Library board members said they are appreciative of Corliss’ concerns about the future of property tax revenues for the library, especially in 2011 when home values are expected to fall even farther.
“But a user fee would be a huge shift in philosophy for us to consider,” said Deborah Thompson, a library board member. “I think we would look at all kinds of funding options before we would look at charging fees.”
Cromwell said he thinks as the economy improves in the next couple of years, the community at large will be ready to consider new funding sources for an improved library.
“I’m very optimistic that we’re going to have a proposal to improve the library and improve its funding in the next two years,” Cromwell said. “If there isn’t one by then, I’ll bring one forward.”
From: LJWorld.com
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Smell of Books
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Working the Social: Twitter and FriendFeed
Let these social networking services do the filtering for you.
By: Laura Carscaddon & Colleen S. Harris
Information overload is so five years ago, but the problem it describes is all too real. Fortunately, there's hope yet for the savvy librarian: Twitter and FriendFeed turn information dissemination on its head, using friends and subscribers as a filter for the best, most credible, and most engaging information out there. As Clay Shirky said at the Web 2.0 Expo keynote in January, the problem isn't “information overload. It's filter failure.”
Like other social media sites, Twitter and FriendFeed are excellent personal and professional social outlets, connecting users to friends and colleagues regardless of boring problems like geography. But they also connect users to the content those friends and colleagues share, clueing them into their network's likes and dislikes and jacking them in to the editorial decisions those in their network make about the stories and content that matter to them most.
The best part? Everything about these services is eminently customizable, depending on which and how many followers you choose to include in your stream. You can use Twitter and FriendFeed to get the play-by-play of conference updates remotely, or keep tabs on any of a number of ongoing topics of interest. If you're publishing inclined, you can use these social content filters to track your favorite authors and publishers, or simply to get the latest updates from your favorite blogs and publications.
Twitter: tweeters do it in smaller spaces
By now, most of us are familiar with blog posts, which can ramble between a paragraph and a missive. Similar to traditional blogs in that their purpose is still to convey information, microbloggers simply do it in a smaller format. Launched in July 2006, the frontrunner of microblogging applications (which also include Plurk and Jaiku) is Twitter, an application that allows users to send brief text updates of up to 140 characters. These updates are viewable by “followers,” or people who have signed up to receive your messages. Users can send and receive these short messages (referred to as “tweets”) through Twitter's web interface, SMS, or any number of external applications. Librarians, information professionals, educators, and others have found Twitter a concise way to start conversations, to keep folks updated about their whereabouts when at industry conferences, and to post links to recent happenings in the field.
Hey there, tweetheart: getting started
Anyone can go to twitter.com and set up a free Twitter account. You may choose to make your Twitter account public (anyone may add you and read your posted messages), or if you choose “protect my updates,” your account is private, in which case people must request authorization to follow your Twitter updates. After you choose your username and password, you can start following folks. If you're an old hand at 2.0 technologies, you might start by searching Twitter for the usernames of folks you know reside on the web whom you're interested in following. (This is one more particularly good reason to maintain the same username across different services!) You can use Twitter's search field to search by username or keyword.
Using the @ sign, you can directly address your message to another user by starting the message with @username. Note that using the @ sign, your message to that person is still viewable by your followers and is simply distinguished as a reply directly to that person. The “direct message” function allows you to send private messages to other users. You can also tag your tweets using hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a #. This allows users to search for tweets on a specific subject or related to a specific event (such as #internetlibrarian09, #ALA, #mothersday). Note that during conference time, Twitter use (particularly for librarians) goes through the roof. In fact, in the last two years, library conference hashtags have made it into the top ten “trending topics” across all of Twitter a number of times. You can restrict Tweets sent to your mobile device (or turn that function off completely) if you get overwhelmed during peak use of Twitter by your friends.
Twits on the go
If you prefer not to be tied to your computer screen to use Twitter, you can register your phone under Settings and Devices in the Twitter interface. From your mobile device, send an SMS message to 40404, and Twitter will post your tweet. It's worth getting used to the nonbrowser interface, since many useful messages are posted while on the move and away from your computer. This is perfect for meetings, because you'll want to stay abreast of which sessions are full, make last-minute lunch, dinner, or karaoke plans, and generally keep informed about plan changes during fast-paced gatherings.
Remember to check your SMS/text messaging plan with your provider before you choose to receive Twitter updates to your mobile device, as usage increases dramatically during conferences, new device and application releases, and any other event that gets your friends and followers chatting. You also can follow other people based on their phone number: SMS “add [phonenumber] to 40404” to follow the user with that phone number. If that person isn't yet a Twitter user, he/she will receive an invitation to join. A number of other services, including Facebook, FriendFeed, and several blogging services now offer to incorporate your Twitter updates, as long as those updates are public.
FriendFeed: all your social “are belong to us”
So, Twitter is nice when you're looking at short updates, Flickr is great for your photos. There's LibraryThing for the books you're reading, Delicious for your bookmarks, and so many other online social networks that surround specific aspects of our lives. It can all get a bit daunting at times, especially when many of your friends also cross from site to site. So where do you go to consolidate all these services? One answer to that is FriendFeed.
FriendFeed is a lifestreaming service or a “social aggregator” that allows you to pull content from multiple social networking sites to one place. Want to follow a specific person on Twitter, but you don't have (and maybe you don't want) a Twitter account? If those tweets are fed into FriendFeed, you can follow along there. Right now, there are 57 services that FriendFeed can pull in directly, along with the ability to pull in an RSS feed from any site that has one. You can also post original messages to FriendFeed, push a post automatically from FriendFeed to Twitter, or have other services use FriendFeed as a pass-through, so FriendFeed pulls your updates from other services and then pushes them out as tweets.
Let's talk and connect
A major benefit of FriendFeed is the ability to converse easily on a specific topic with threaded discussions. While with Twitter you can reply to a specific user, in FriendFeed you reply to the post, and your answer is threaded below it, letting you see the entire conversation, not just 140-character bits and pieces. You'll see responses made by people other than the original poster and yourself, again letting you see the full exchange and helping you find new people with interesting things to say.
FriendFeed also has a Groups (formerly known as Rooms) option, which are areas of the site set up for discussions around a specific topic, theme, or group. Anyone can set up a group and decide whether it will be Public, Standard Feed, or Private. Public groups allow posting and commenting by anyone, Standard Feeds allow only the owner to post but anyone can comment, and Private groups require an invitation to members before they can join and post.
Using groups can help you segregate your discussions and decide what will appear in your Home Feed (the page you see when you first log in). There are groups that discuss technology, like the iPhone group, or groups that want to discuss specific topics, like the Librariology group. Groups can also be set up surrounding specific events, like the ones for the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting and annual conferences. For those groups, the official tags/hashtags can feed into the group so that tweets, Flickr photos, blog posts, or other content tagged with the event's official tag can be automatically aggregated into the group, establishing one place to go to see all kinds of things about the conference. Tracking conference activity this way can help keep you from being inundated on other social networks, such as Twitter, during conferences. Instead of feeling like you need to read everything now, join the group and come back to it at any time. Groups can also be set up to avoid specific topics; around the time of the 2008 Presidential election, there was a “No Politics” room set up, for people who didn't want to see any conversation about politics.
Search and subscribe
As with Twitter and other online social networking sites, a good way to start is to search for a topic or a group you're interested in and see who's talking about it. Perhaps a big portion of your job involves training. Searching for training might lead you to the T Is for Training Group, where there is a community of people who use it as a space to discuss trends and issues in training from a library perspective. Once you find some people who say things that interest you, see who comments on their posts and who else they follow for additional folks to talk to in FriendFeed. Also, look for specific usernames from other sites, as often people try to use the same name across multiple sites, making it simpler to find them. Don't worry about getting stuck following a prolific poster: you can always unsubscribe to someone you've subscribed to or use your settings to hide some or all of their entries if you don't want to see them. The person won't be notified that you've hidden their posts or that you're no longer a subscriber.
Unlike Twitter, FriendFeed doesn't have a large number of iPhone apps available. A recent site upgrade allows mobile users to see a fully featured version of the site, rather than the previous scaled-down iPhone version, though the reduced version is still available at friendfeed.com/iphone. The newest site update includes IM and email posts to your discussions, if you prefer keeping up that way. Access through fftogo.com is another excellent option for BlackBerry and iPhone users. The fftogo interface is very simple but allows quick access to all your groups, friends, and the search function of FriendFeed.
Ready? Let's go!
To get started on FriendFeed, go to friendfeed.com and set up an account; decide whether you want a public feed or a private one. A private feed will give you some control over who is able to see your posts, and you will have to approve any followers. A public feed means that anyone can follow you, and you can provide a direct link to your posts on FriendFeed at friendfeed.com/username for those who don't have FriendFeed accounts. One thing to remember is that anything you feed into FriendFeed from a private account becomes public if your FriendFeed stream is public. What this means in reality is that if your Twitter account is private and you feed it into a public FriendFeed account, you've just made that private Twitter stream publicly available.
Next, choose what services you'll have feed in and what you'll push out, if any. FriendFeed will ask you for the specific information it needs to get the feed, whether that's the email address associated with the account, a username and password, or the RSS feed address. FriendFeed does take some effort; you can just set up an account and run with it, but it's worth it to feed more services in as a way to generate more conversation among the people in your network. Another way to share as you run across interesting web pages is to use the FriendFeed bookmarklet. Using the bookmarklet lets you post a link along with an optional image from the page and a comment to your FriendFeed account and any of the groups you belong to or, with the newest redesign, as a direct message to one or more of your FriendFeed friends.
Finally, take the time and explore! FriendFeed is an excellent service for conversation and networking. As we gear up for ALA annual in Chicago, find out who will be there. Especially for first-time attendees, FriendFeed can be an excellent way to locate other attendees and connect with them in person. Post to the ALA Group and see if you can get a group together for lunch or dinner and turn your online social network into an in-person one as well.
By: Laura Carscaddon & Colleen S. Harris
Information overload is so five years ago, but the problem it describes is all too real. Fortunately, there's hope yet for the savvy librarian: Twitter and FriendFeed turn information dissemination on its head, using friends and subscribers as a filter for the best, most credible, and most engaging information out there. As Clay Shirky said at the Web 2.0 Expo keynote in January, the problem isn't “information overload. It's filter failure.”
Like other social media sites, Twitter and FriendFeed are excellent personal and professional social outlets, connecting users to friends and colleagues regardless of boring problems like geography. But they also connect users to the content those friends and colleagues share, clueing them into their network's likes and dislikes and jacking them in to the editorial decisions those in their network make about the stories and content that matter to them most.
The best part? Everything about these services is eminently customizable, depending on which and how many followers you choose to include in your stream. You can use Twitter and FriendFeed to get the play-by-play of conference updates remotely, or keep tabs on any of a number of ongoing topics of interest. If you're publishing inclined, you can use these social content filters to track your favorite authors and publishers, or simply to get the latest updates from your favorite blogs and publications.
Twitter: tweeters do it in smaller spaces
By now, most of us are familiar with blog posts, which can ramble between a paragraph and a missive. Similar to traditional blogs in that their purpose is still to convey information, microbloggers simply do it in a smaller format. Launched in July 2006, the frontrunner of microblogging applications (which also include Plurk and Jaiku) is Twitter, an application that allows users to send brief text updates of up to 140 characters. These updates are viewable by “followers,” or people who have signed up to receive your messages. Users can send and receive these short messages (referred to as “tweets”) through Twitter's web interface, SMS, or any number of external applications. Librarians, information professionals, educators, and others have found Twitter a concise way to start conversations, to keep folks updated about their whereabouts when at industry conferences, and to post links to recent happenings in the field.
Hey there, tweetheart: getting started
Anyone can go to twitter.com and set up a free Twitter account. You may choose to make your Twitter account public (anyone may add you and read your posted messages), or if you choose “protect my updates,” your account is private, in which case people must request authorization to follow your Twitter updates. After you choose your username and password, you can start following folks. If you're an old hand at 2.0 technologies, you might start by searching Twitter for the usernames of folks you know reside on the web whom you're interested in following. (This is one more particularly good reason to maintain the same username across different services!) You can use Twitter's search field to search by username or keyword.
Using the @ sign, you can directly address your message to another user by starting the message with @username. Note that using the @ sign, your message to that person is still viewable by your followers and is simply distinguished as a reply directly to that person. The “direct message” function allows you to send private messages to other users. You can also tag your tweets using hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a #. This allows users to search for tweets on a specific subject or related to a specific event (such as #internetlibrarian09, #ALA, #mothersday). Note that during conference time, Twitter use (particularly for librarians) goes through the roof. In fact, in the last two years, library conference hashtags have made it into the top ten “trending topics” across all of Twitter a number of times. You can restrict Tweets sent to your mobile device (or turn that function off completely) if you get overwhelmed during peak use of Twitter by your friends.
Twits on the go
If you prefer not to be tied to your computer screen to use Twitter, you can register your phone under Settings and Devices in the Twitter interface. From your mobile device, send an SMS message to 40404, and Twitter will post your tweet. It's worth getting used to the nonbrowser interface, since many useful messages are posted while on the move and away from your computer. This is perfect for meetings, because you'll want to stay abreast of which sessions are full, make last-minute lunch, dinner, or karaoke plans, and generally keep informed about plan changes during fast-paced gatherings.
Remember to check your SMS/text messaging plan with your provider before you choose to receive Twitter updates to your mobile device, as usage increases dramatically during conferences, new device and application releases, and any other event that gets your friends and followers chatting. You also can follow other people based on their phone number: SMS “add [phonenumber] to 40404” to follow the user with that phone number. If that person isn't yet a Twitter user, he/she will receive an invitation to join. A number of other services, including Facebook, FriendFeed, and several blogging services now offer to incorporate your Twitter updates, as long as those updates are public.
FriendFeed: all your social “are belong to us”
So, Twitter is nice when you're looking at short updates, Flickr is great for your photos. There's LibraryThing for the books you're reading, Delicious for your bookmarks, and so many other online social networks that surround specific aspects of our lives. It can all get a bit daunting at times, especially when many of your friends also cross from site to site. So where do you go to consolidate all these services? One answer to that is FriendFeed.
FriendFeed is a lifestreaming service or a “social aggregator” that allows you to pull content from multiple social networking sites to one place. Want to follow a specific person on Twitter, but you don't have (and maybe you don't want) a Twitter account? If those tweets are fed into FriendFeed, you can follow along there. Right now, there are 57 services that FriendFeed can pull in directly, along with the ability to pull in an RSS feed from any site that has one. You can also post original messages to FriendFeed, push a post automatically from FriendFeed to Twitter, or have other services use FriendFeed as a pass-through, so FriendFeed pulls your updates from other services and then pushes them out as tweets.
Let's talk and connect
A major benefit of FriendFeed is the ability to converse easily on a specific topic with threaded discussions. While with Twitter you can reply to a specific user, in FriendFeed you reply to the post, and your answer is threaded below it, letting you see the entire conversation, not just 140-character bits and pieces. You'll see responses made by people other than the original poster and yourself, again letting you see the full exchange and helping you find new people with interesting things to say.
FriendFeed also has a Groups (formerly known as Rooms) option, which are areas of the site set up for discussions around a specific topic, theme, or group. Anyone can set up a group and decide whether it will be Public, Standard Feed, or Private. Public groups allow posting and commenting by anyone, Standard Feeds allow only the owner to post but anyone can comment, and Private groups require an invitation to members before they can join and post.
Using groups can help you segregate your discussions and decide what will appear in your Home Feed (the page you see when you first log in). There are groups that discuss technology, like the iPhone group, or groups that want to discuss specific topics, like the Librariology group. Groups can also be set up surrounding specific events, like the ones for the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting and annual conferences. For those groups, the official tags/hashtags can feed into the group so that tweets, Flickr photos, blog posts, or other content tagged with the event's official tag can be automatically aggregated into the group, establishing one place to go to see all kinds of things about the conference. Tracking conference activity this way can help keep you from being inundated on other social networks, such as Twitter, during conferences. Instead of feeling like you need to read everything now, join the group and come back to it at any time. Groups can also be set up to avoid specific topics; around the time of the 2008 Presidential election, there was a “No Politics” room set up, for people who didn't want to see any conversation about politics.
Search and subscribe
As with Twitter and other online social networking sites, a good way to start is to search for a topic or a group you're interested in and see who's talking about it. Perhaps a big portion of your job involves training. Searching for training might lead you to the T Is for Training Group, where there is a community of people who use it as a space to discuss trends and issues in training from a library perspective. Once you find some people who say things that interest you, see who comments on their posts and who else they follow for additional folks to talk to in FriendFeed. Also, look for specific usernames from other sites, as often people try to use the same name across multiple sites, making it simpler to find them. Don't worry about getting stuck following a prolific poster: you can always unsubscribe to someone you've subscribed to or use your settings to hide some or all of their entries if you don't want to see them. The person won't be notified that you've hidden their posts or that you're no longer a subscriber.
Unlike Twitter, FriendFeed doesn't have a large number of iPhone apps available. A recent site upgrade allows mobile users to see a fully featured version of the site, rather than the previous scaled-down iPhone version, though the reduced version is still available at friendfeed.com/iphone. The newest site update includes IM and email posts to your discussions, if you prefer keeping up that way. Access through fftogo.com is another excellent option for BlackBerry and iPhone users. The fftogo interface is very simple but allows quick access to all your groups, friends, and the search function of FriendFeed.
Ready? Let's go!
To get started on FriendFeed, go to friendfeed.com and set up an account; decide whether you want a public feed or a private one. A private feed will give you some control over who is able to see your posts, and you will have to approve any followers. A public feed means that anyone can follow you, and you can provide a direct link to your posts on FriendFeed at friendfeed.com/username for those who don't have FriendFeed accounts. One thing to remember is that anything you feed into FriendFeed from a private account becomes public if your FriendFeed stream is public. What this means in reality is that if your Twitter account is private and you feed it into a public FriendFeed account, you've just made that private Twitter stream publicly available.
Next, choose what services you'll have feed in and what you'll push out, if any. FriendFeed will ask you for the specific information it needs to get the feed, whether that's the email address associated with the account, a username and password, or the RSS feed address. FriendFeed does take some effort; you can just set up an account and run with it, but it's worth it to feed more services in as a way to generate more conversation among the people in your network. Another way to share as you run across interesting web pages is to use the FriendFeed bookmarklet. Using the bookmarklet lets you post a link along with an optional image from the page and a comment to your FriendFeed account and any of the groups you belong to or, with the newest redesign, as a direct message to one or more of your FriendFeed friends.
Finally, take the time and explore! FriendFeed is an excellent service for conversation and networking. As we gear up for ALA annual in Chicago, find out who will be there. Especially for first-time attendees, FriendFeed can be an excellent way to locate other attendees and connect with them in person. Post to the ALA Group and see if you can get a group together for lunch or dinner and turn your online social network into an in-person one as well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Laura Carscaddon (ellbeecee@gmail.com) is an Assistant Librarian at the University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, and goes by ellbeecee on most social networks. Colleen S. Harris (warmaiden@gmail.com) is the Associate Head of Access and Delivery Services at North Carolina State University, Raleigh
From: Library Journal
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Library and Archives Freezes Purchases
'It's like cutting the oxygen off,' former curator says
by: Patrick Dare
OTTAWA - A moratorium on buying new materials at Library and Archives Canada has some people wondering whether important cultural and historical documents could be lost to the country.
On May 19, an e-mail went out from Library and Archives informing its suppliers of an immediate halt to paid acquisitions as part of a review of policies by the new senior managers. It was a move that has shocked some librarians and archivists.
“It’s just not done. It’s just silly. It’s like cutting the oxygen off,” said Michel Brisebois, former curator of rare books at Library and Archives. “That’s not acceptable for a national library.”
Brisebois, who worked at the national library in Ottawa for 10 years until 2004, said Library and Archives has “a great collection.” But it needs to be in the marketplace for books and documents to ensure the country’s cultural memory is complete.
He said sending out a communication to suppliers that you are no longer buying will take Library and Archives off the radar of people such as rare booksellers. He said this is risky because there will be occasions when treasured cultural materials of national significance come on the market.
Sometimes the federal government decides to step in and set a onetime acquisition budget to get a special collection. But to get these national treasures, you have to be in tune with the market, says Brisebois.
“I think it’s very dangerous in the long run,” said Brisebois. “It’s a shock.”
Library and Archives Canada receives copies of books published in Canada and has material donated. But it relies on acquisitions for things such as books written about Canada abroad.
David Ewens, of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of Canada, said dealers such as himself have sold all kinds of Canadiana to Library and Archives over the years, including early Canadian election posters and advertising posters, photographs and maps.
Ewens noted the expenditures over the years have generally been small, though the government occasionally goes big with an acquisition such as the Peter Winkworth collection; 5,200 artworks, artifacts and historical documents acquired in 2008 to much acclaim at a cost of $6 million.
Ewens is concerned about the implications of Library and Archives no longer buying, including the possibility of rare booksellers going out of business.
“You just can’t stop preserving history,” said Ewens.
Liam McGahern, of Patrick McGahern Books in Ottawa, said important pieces of Canadian social history — even as simple as parish histories — find their way into booksellers’ stores. But he said there are other collectors in the world who will snap up interesting Canadian artifacts and books if Canada does not.
“Cultural items will be lost to the Canadiana collection,” said McGahern. “The cultural world doesn’t wait for Library and Archives Canada.”
Library and Archives declined to comment Friday.
Library and Archives Canada used to be two organizations; the National Library and the National Archives. The two — headed by national librarian and author Roch Carrier and national archivist Ian Wilson — were merged under Wilson’s leadership in May 2004.
Wilson retired last April and was succeeded by Daniel Caron, a 27-year public servant who most recently was a senior assistant deputy minister at Library and Archives.
Marianne Scott, Canada’s former national librarian — who is now president of the Friends of Library and Archives Canada — said the organization has limited funds and a lot of issues to sort out such as what to do about the burgeoning quantity of self-published materials.
But she said communication on the acquisition issue was “poor” and the lack of consultation took people by surprise.
“There has been a lack of communication about what and why,” said Scott, who met with Caron about a week ago. “There’s a great concern. There may be items that are going to be missed.”
She said that in the past, the National Library sometimes delayed purchases due to budget squeezes but never had a blanket policy against purchases. Scott said that in areas such as the rare-book market, collectors often have to move quickly or the buying opportunity is lost.
From: The Ottawa Citizen
by: Patrick Dare
OTTAWA - A moratorium on buying new materials at Library and Archives Canada has some people wondering whether important cultural and historical documents could be lost to the country.
On May 19, an e-mail went out from Library and Archives informing its suppliers of an immediate halt to paid acquisitions as part of a review of policies by the new senior managers. It was a move that has shocked some librarians and archivists.
“It’s just not done. It’s just silly. It’s like cutting the oxygen off,” said Michel Brisebois, former curator of rare books at Library and Archives. “That’s not acceptable for a national library.”
Brisebois, who worked at the national library in Ottawa for 10 years until 2004, said Library and Archives has “a great collection.” But it needs to be in the marketplace for books and documents to ensure the country’s cultural memory is complete.
He said sending out a communication to suppliers that you are no longer buying will take Library and Archives off the radar of people such as rare booksellers. He said this is risky because there will be occasions when treasured cultural materials of national significance come on the market.
Sometimes the federal government decides to step in and set a onetime acquisition budget to get a special collection. But to get these national treasures, you have to be in tune with the market, says Brisebois.
“I think it’s very dangerous in the long run,” said Brisebois. “It’s a shock.”
Library and Archives Canada receives copies of books published in Canada and has material donated. But it relies on acquisitions for things such as books written about Canada abroad.
David Ewens, of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of Canada, said dealers such as himself have sold all kinds of Canadiana to Library and Archives over the years, including early Canadian election posters and advertising posters, photographs and maps.
Ewens noted the expenditures over the years have generally been small, though the government occasionally goes big with an acquisition such as the Peter Winkworth collection; 5,200 artworks, artifacts and historical documents acquired in 2008 to much acclaim at a cost of $6 million.
Ewens is concerned about the implications of Library and Archives no longer buying, including the possibility of rare booksellers going out of business.
“You just can’t stop preserving history,” said Ewens.
Liam McGahern, of Patrick McGahern Books in Ottawa, said important pieces of Canadian social history — even as simple as parish histories — find their way into booksellers’ stores. But he said there are other collectors in the world who will snap up interesting Canadian artifacts and books if Canada does not.
“Cultural items will be lost to the Canadiana collection,” said McGahern. “The cultural world doesn’t wait for Library and Archives Canada.”
Library and Archives declined to comment Friday.
Library and Archives Canada used to be two organizations; the National Library and the National Archives. The two — headed by national librarian and author Roch Carrier and national archivist Ian Wilson — were merged under Wilson’s leadership in May 2004.
Wilson retired last April and was succeeded by Daniel Caron, a 27-year public servant who most recently was a senior assistant deputy minister at Library and Archives.
Marianne Scott, Canada’s former national librarian — who is now president of the Friends of Library and Archives Canada — said the organization has limited funds and a lot of issues to sort out such as what to do about the burgeoning quantity of self-published materials.
But she said communication on the acquisition issue was “poor” and the lack of consultation took people by surprise.
“There has been a lack of communication about what and why,” said Scott, who met with Caron about a week ago. “There’s a great concern. There may be items that are going to be missed.”
She said that in the past, the National Library sometimes delayed purchases due to budget squeezes but never had a blanket policy against purchases. Scott said that in areas such as the rare-book market, collectors often have to move quickly or the buying opportunity is lost.
From: The Ottawa Citizen
LibriVox
Book nerds, rejoice! You no longer have to lug around heavy books or drop $400 bucks on a Kindle to absorb your favorite titles. Now you can listen to them for free on LibriVox.
LibriVox offers up thousands of audio books for you to download and listen to online for free, but with a twist. It's a group effort, which means book lovers just like you take the time to read chapters from their favorite books out loud and record their voices to help complete a whole audio book.
This is great for two reasons: One, you can volunteer to record your own voice for LibriVox and satisfy your longtime dream to be a voice actor. And two, sometimes you'll get an amazing variety of voices and personalities reading to you before you finish a title. It's incredibly entertaining!
Found via: Geeksugar
LibriVox offers up thousands of audio books for you to download and listen to online for free, but with a twist. It's a group effort, which means book lovers just like you take the time to read chapters from their favorite books out loud and record their voices to help complete a whole audio book.
This is great for two reasons: One, you can volunteer to record your own voice for LibriVox and satisfy your longtime dream to be a voice actor. And two, sometimes you'll get an amazing variety of voices and personalities reading to you before you finish a title. It's incredibly entertaining!
Found via: Geeksugar
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Authors lobby government for statutory school libraries
Writers including Philip Pullman, Michael Rosen and Francesca Simon petition for universal provision.
by: Alison Flood
A high-profile group of children's authors, publishers, teachers and librarians is calling on the government to make school libraries statutory. Signatories to a petition to Number 10 include Philip Pullman, Horrid Henry creator Francesca Simon and former children's laureate Michael Rosen, as well as the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers Christine Blower, Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, top children's publishers and the directors of a raft of youth library associations.
The campaign's supporters, who also include the Carnegie medal winners Mal Peet and Beverley Naidoo, are concerned that while prisoners have the statutory right to a library, schoolchildren do not, and they believe it is essential that children get the habit of reading for pleasure. "[We] wholeheartedly support the right of prisoners to a library. It can be part of the process of rehabilitation through education. We are concerned however that school students do not have the same right. Research indicates that many young people who offend have low literacy levels," they say in a letter that will be sent to secretary of state for children, schools and families Ed Balls this evening by the campaign's head, the twice Carnegie-shortlisted author Alan Gibbons.
Only half of all secondary schools have a full-time librarian, they say, and only 28% have a qualified librarian. "Sadly, some of our schools still lack adequate library provision," they write. "It would not be expensive to rectify this situation, even in these difficult times. The social costs of poor literacy are significant."
Gibbons said this morning that the petition was only the start of a concerted campaign to make school libraries statutory. "When it's just the book world, particularly if it's just libraries, the government feels less pressure than if it is a broad cultural movement supporting literacy," he said. "That's why I've been working on publishers, teaching professionals and public service unions."
Last November Pullman told a comprehensive school in Chesterfield that it would become "a byword for philistinism and ignorance" if it went ahead with plans to close its school library. Since then, Gibbons said, there have been "worrying indications" that more school libraries are likely to close. "It's nibbling at the edges at the moment but the signs are there that they are being cut down," he said. "We want to at least get the discussion going about how to deal with it."
The petition itself – which calls on the government "to accept in principle that it will make school libraries, run by properly qualified staff, statutory" – will run until December, but by the end of the summer school term Gibbons hopes to have consolidated the support of the book world and to have started soliciting support from community figures, faith groups and celebrities within the wider community.
Harry Potter creator JK Rowling, he added, was top of his list. "We don't want to stand on the sidelines – we want to engage with government," he said.
From: The Guardian
by: Alison Flood
A high-profile group of children's authors, publishers, teachers and librarians is calling on the government to make school libraries statutory. Signatories to a petition to Number 10 include Philip Pullman, Horrid Henry creator Francesca Simon and former children's laureate Michael Rosen, as well as the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers Christine Blower, Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, top children's publishers and the directors of a raft of youth library associations.
The campaign's supporters, who also include the Carnegie medal winners Mal Peet and Beverley Naidoo, are concerned that while prisoners have the statutory right to a library, schoolchildren do not, and they believe it is essential that children get the habit of reading for pleasure. "[We] wholeheartedly support the right of prisoners to a library. It can be part of the process of rehabilitation through education. We are concerned however that school students do not have the same right. Research indicates that many young people who offend have low literacy levels," they say in a letter that will be sent to secretary of state for children, schools and families Ed Balls this evening by the campaign's head, the twice Carnegie-shortlisted author Alan Gibbons.
Only half of all secondary schools have a full-time librarian, they say, and only 28% have a qualified librarian. "Sadly, some of our schools still lack adequate library provision," they write. "It would not be expensive to rectify this situation, even in these difficult times. The social costs of poor literacy are significant."
Gibbons said this morning that the petition was only the start of a concerted campaign to make school libraries statutory. "When it's just the book world, particularly if it's just libraries, the government feels less pressure than if it is a broad cultural movement supporting literacy," he said. "That's why I've been working on publishers, teaching professionals and public service unions."
Last November Pullman told a comprehensive school in Chesterfield that it would become "a byword for philistinism and ignorance" if it went ahead with plans to close its school library. Since then, Gibbons said, there have been "worrying indications" that more school libraries are likely to close. "It's nibbling at the edges at the moment but the signs are there that they are being cut down," he said. "We want to at least get the discussion going about how to deal with it."
The petition itself – which calls on the government "to accept in principle that it will make school libraries, run by properly qualified staff, statutory" – will run until December, but by the end of the summer school term Gibbons hopes to have consolidated the support of the book world and to have started soliciting support from community figures, faith groups and celebrities within the wider community.
Harry Potter creator JK Rowling, he added, was top of his list. "We don't want to stand on the sidelines – we want to engage with government," he said.
From: The Guardian
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
On the Library Trucks, "Captain Ahab's Fine Seafood" and "Kafka's Pest Control"
On the library truck, "Captain Ahab's Fine Seafood" and "Kafka's Pest Control."
by: Norman Oder
Said County Librarian Donna Lauffer, "Often we promote all the services and resources the library has... We tend to overlook why most people come to the library: to find something good to read. We appreciate Barkley donating their time and talents for the campaign."
by: Norman Oder
It's time to soup up the library courier truck. The Johnson County Library, Shawnee Mission, KS, now has four specially decorated, literary-themed trucks: Captain Ahab’s Fine Seafood, Benjamin Button’s Diaper Service, Kafka’s Pest Kontrol, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s Pharmacy. Credit the Barkley Advertising Agency in Kansas City, MO, for the message and the photos.
Said County Librarian Donna Lauffer, "Often we promote all the services and resources the library has... We tend to overlook why most people come to the library: to find something good to read. We appreciate Barkley donating their time and talents for the campaign."
From: Library Journal
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