by: Mark Medley
Let the debate begin.
The 40-book longlist for this year’s Canada Reads competition has been revealed.
The annual literary competition is doing things a bit differently this year; instead of asking panelists to choose a book to defend, organizers asked readers from across the country to nominate and vote on their favourite books of the past decade. More than 6,000 nominations were received.
As expected, several prominent novels — and even some past Canada Reads winners — are on the list.
A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews (Winner of Canada Reads 2006)
Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall
Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright
Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant
Conceit by Mary Novik
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin
Elle by Douglas Glover
Essex County by Jeff Lemire
Far to Go by Alison Pick
February by Lisa Moore
Galore by Michael Crummey
Heave by Christy Ann Conlin
Inside by Kenneth J. Harvey
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill (Winner of Canada Reads 2007)
Moody Food by Ray Robertson
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
Room by Emma Donoghue
Shelf Monkey by Corey Redekop
Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb
The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
The Birth House by Ami McKay
The Bishop’s Man by Linden MacIntyre
The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou
The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill (Winner of Canada Reads 2009)
The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan
The Fallen by Stephen Finucan
The Girls Who Saw Everything by Sean Dixon
The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe
The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart
The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
Twenty-Six by Leo McKay Jr.
Unless by Carol Shields
from: National Post
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Would You Like Fries With That Checkout?
by: Andy
In watching the ever brilliant Sir Ken Robinson’s most recent TED talk (seriously, read this post and then go watch it, or vice versa), I thought of one question to ask my professional peers in libraryland:
Are you a fast food or Zagat/Michelin type of library?
Fast food is structured around standardization; the ability to create a reliable product quickly and efficiently. There are policies, there are rules, and there are no exemptions. It is about getting a product to a patron; they can take it or leave it.
A Zagat or Michelin restaurant is made around the local tastes and influences; in essence, a local experience. These are places where chefs create meals that resonate with the local populations, tailored and customized to the local flavors and traditions. It is about a personal product crafted to the person; it is made for them.
People can easily find a standard product for books, movies, magazines, and music in other places: it’s called a bookstore. Why on Earth would libraries attempt to recreate such a standard presentation and product? Is it the difference between doing what it easy and doing what is good?
So, I ask again: are you a fast food or Zagat/Michelin type of library?
from: Agnostic, Maybe
In watching the ever brilliant Sir Ken Robinson’s most recent TED talk (seriously, read this post and then go watch it, or vice versa), I thought of one question to ask my professional peers in libraryland:
Are you a fast food or Zagat/Michelin type of library?
Fast food is structured around standardization; the ability to create a reliable product quickly and efficiently. There are policies, there are rules, and there are no exemptions. It is about getting a product to a patron; they can take it or leave it.
A Zagat or Michelin restaurant is made around the local tastes and influences; in essence, a local experience. These are places where chefs create meals that resonate with the local populations, tailored and customized to the local flavors and traditions. It is about a personal product crafted to the person; it is made for them.
People can easily find a standard product for books, movies, magazines, and music in other places: it’s called a bookstore. Why on Earth would libraries attempt to recreate such a standard presentation and product? Is it the difference between doing what it easy and doing what is good?
So, I ask again: are you a fast food or Zagat/Michelin type of library?
from: Agnostic, Maybe
Friday, October 29, 2010
Amazon to introduce lending for Kindle
by: Jason Boog
In keeping with a tradition of quietly releasing news on Fridays, Amazon revealed last week they will soon allow readers to loan Kindle books to other users–one crucial feature that many readers have sought.
Amazon shared the news in a note to Kindle readers: “later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. Additionally, not all e-books will be lendable – this is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending.”
The news stirred up all sorts of opinions around the Internet over the weekend. What do you think? Will publishers let readers use the feature? Link via Sarah Wendell who tweeted: “IF publisher allows it. Not holding my breath.”
NOTE: This post has been updated.
from: GalleyCat
In keeping with a tradition of quietly releasing news on Fridays, Amazon revealed last week they will soon allow readers to loan Kindle books to other users–one crucial feature that many readers have sought.
Amazon shared the news in a note to Kindle readers: “later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. Additionally, not all e-books will be lendable – this is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending.”
The news stirred up all sorts of opinions around the Internet over the weekend. What do you think? Will publishers let readers use the feature? Link via Sarah Wendell who tweeted: “IF publisher allows it. Not holding my breath.”
NOTE: This post has been updated.
from: GalleyCat
Thursday, October 28, 2010
10 Things You Need To Do Now!
by: Nancy Dowd
Most everyone wants to know 10 things they can do to improve their lives. If they don't want 10 things, they certainly would like to know 5 things! Is your library taking advantage of that? Do you offer the top 5 things people can do to be healthy, get a job, write a paper, etc. and post them in your library and on the web? The yellow pages have a new site and they have the top DIY Halloween costumes. How practical. Of course they link to businesses they are adverting, but you can link to books and magazines. Encourage people to reserve the book online,create visual displays and tape the list in various sections around the library. Connect your products to people's needs in a way that makes sense to them and they will use them.
from: M Word
from: M Word
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children
by: Julie Bosman
Picture books are so unpopular these days at the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., that employees there are used to placing new copies on the shelves, watching them languish and then returning them to the publisher.
“So many of them just die a sad little death, and we never see them again,” said Terri Schmitz, the owner.
The shop has plenty of company. The picture book, a mainstay of children’s literature with its lavish illustrations, cheerful colors and large print wrapped in a glossy jacket, has been fading. It is not going away — perennials like the Sendaks and Seusses still sell well — but publishers have scaled back the number of titles they have released in the last several years, and booksellers across the country say sales have been suffering.
The economic downturn is certainly a major factor, but many in the industry see an additional reason for the slump. Parents have begun pressing their kindergartners and first graders to leave the picture book behind and move on to more text-heavy chapter books. Publishers cite pressures from parents who are mindful of increasingly rigorous standardized testing in schools.
“Parents are saying, ‘My kid doesn’t need books with pictures anymore,’ ” said Justin Chanda, the publisher of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. “There’s a real push with parents and schools to have kids start reading big-kid books earlier. We’ve accelerated the graduation rate out of picture books.”
Booksellers see this shift too.
“They’re 4 years old, and their parents are getting them ‘Stuart Little,’ ” said Dara La Porte, the manager of the children’s department at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington. “I see children pick up picture books, and then the parents say, ‘You can do better than this, you can do more than this.’ It’s a terrible pressure parents are feeling — that somehow, I shouldn’t let my child have this picture book because she won’t get into Harvard.”
Literacy experts are quick to say that picture books are not for dummies. Publishers praise the picture book for the particular way it can develop a child’s critical thinking skills.
“To some degree, picture books force an analog way of thinking,” said Karen Lotz, the publisher of Candlewick Press in Somerville, Mass. “From picture to picture, as the reader interacts with the book, their imagination is filling in the missing themes.”
Many parents overlook the fact that chapter books, even though they have more text, full paragraphs and fewer pictures, are not necessarily more complex.
“Some of the vocabulary in a picture book is much more challenging than in a chapter book,” said Kris Vreeland, a book buyer for Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif., where sales of picture books have been down. “The words themselves, and the concepts, can be very sophisticated in a picture book.”
They can, for example, be written with Swiftian satire, like “Monsters Eat Whiny Children” by Bruce Eric Kaplan, a new book about children who are nearly devoured as a result of bad behavior.
Each year, the coveted Randolph Caldecott Medal goes to the most distinguished picture book published in the United States. (This year it went to “The Lion and the Mouse” by Jerry Pinkney, an adaptation of the Aesop’s fable with luminous images and no words at all.)
Still, many publishers have gradually reduced the number of picture books they produce for a market that had seen a glut of them, and in an age when very young children, like everyone else, have more options, a lot of them digital, to fill their entertainment hours.
At Scholastic, 5 percent to 10 percent fewer hardcover picture books have been published over the last three years. Don Weisberg, the president of the Penguin Young Readers Group, said that two and a half years ago, the company began publishing fewer titles but that it had devoted more attention to marketing and promoting the ones that remain. Of all the children’s books published by Simon & Schuster, about 20 percent are picture books, down from 35 percent a few years ago.
Classic books like “Goodnight Moon” and the “Eloise” series still sell steadily, alongside more modern popular titles like the “Fancy Nancy” books and “The Three Little Dassies” by Jan Brett, but even some best-selling authors are feeling the pinch. Jon Scieszka, who wrote “Robot Zot,” said his royalty checks had been shrinking, especially in the last year.
“We see the stores displaying less picture books, and publishers are getting a little more cautious about signing up new projects,” Mr. Scieszka said. “You can feel that everyone’s worried.”
Borders, noticing the sluggish sales, has tried to encourage publishers to lower the list prices, which can be as high as $18. Mary Amicucci, the vice president of children’s books for Barnes & Noble, said sales began a slow, steady decline about a year ago. Since then, the stores have rearranged display space so that some picture books are enticingly paired with toys and games.
Other retailers have cut shelf space devoted to picture books while expanding their booming young-adult sections, full of dystopic fiction, graphic novels and “Twilight”-inspired paranormal romances.
“Young adult fiction has been universally the growing genre,” said Ms. Lotz of Candlewick, “and so as retailers adapt to what customers are buying, they are giving more space to that and less space to picture books.”
Some parents say they just want to advance their children’s skills. Amanda Gignac, a stay-at-home mother in San Antonio who writes The Zen Leaf, a book blog, said her youngest son, Laurence, started reading chapter books when he was 4.
Now Laurence is 6 ½, and while he regularly tackles 80-page chapter books, he is still a “reluctant reader,” Ms. Gignac said.
Sometimes, she said, he tries to go back to picture books.
“He would still read picture books now if we let him, because he doesn’t want to work to read,” she said, adding that she and her husband have kept him reading chapter books.
Still, many children are getting the message. At Winnona Park Elementary School in Decatur, Ga., a recent book fair was dominated by chapter books, said Ilene Zeff, who organized the fair.
“I’ve been getting fewer and fewer picture books because they just don’t sell,” Ms. Zeff said. “By first grade, when the kids go to pick out their books, they ask where the chapter books are. They’re just drawn to them.”
On a recent discussion board on Urbanbaby.com, a Web site for parents, one commenter asked for recommendations for chapter books to read to a 5-year-old, and was answered with suggestions like the 272-page “Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster and “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum — books generally considered more appropriate for children 9 to 11.
Jen Haller, the vice president and associate publisher of the Penguin Young Readers Group, said that while some children were progressing to chapter books earlier, they were still reading picture books occasionally. “Picture books have a real comfort element to them,” Ms. Haller said. “It’s not like this door closes and they never go back to picture books again.”
from: NY Times
Picture books are so unpopular these days at the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., that employees there are used to placing new copies on the shelves, watching them languish and then returning them to the publisher.
“So many of them just die a sad little death, and we never see them again,” said Terri Schmitz, the owner.
The shop has plenty of company. The picture book, a mainstay of children’s literature with its lavish illustrations, cheerful colors and large print wrapped in a glossy jacket, has been fading. It is not going away — perennials like the Sendaks and Seusses still sell well — but publishers have scaled back the number of titles they have released in the last several years, and booksellers across the country say sales have been suffering.
The economic downturn is certainly a major factor, but many in the industry see an additional reason for the slump. Parents have begun pressing their kindergartners and first graders to leave the picture book behind and move on to more text-heavy chapter books. Publishers cite pressures from parents who are mindful of increasingly rigorous standardized testing in schools.
“Parents are saying, ‘My kid doesn’t need books with pictures anymore,’ ” said Justin Chanda, the publisher of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. “There’s a real push with parents and schools to have kids start reading big-kid books earlier. We’ve accelerated the graduation rate out of picture books.”
Booksellers see this shift too.
“They’re 4 years old, and their parents are getting them ‘Stuart Little,’ ” said Dara La Porte, the manager of the children’s department at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington. “I see children pick up picture books, and then the parents say, ‘You can do better than this, you can do more than this.’ It’s a terrible pressure parents are feeling — that somehow, I shouldn’t let my child have this picture book because she won’t get into Harvard.”
Literacy experts are quick to say that picture books are not for dummies. Publishers praise the picture book for the particular way it can develop a child’s critical thinking skills.
“To some degree, picture books force an analog way of thinking,” said Karen Lotz, the publisher of Candlewick Press in Somerville, Mass. “From picture to picture, as the reader interacts with the book, their imagination is filling in the missing themes.”
Many parents overlook the fact that chapter books, even though they have more text, full paragraphs and fewer pictures, are not necessarily more complex.
“Some of the vocabulary in a picture book is much more challenging than in a chapter book,” said Kris Vreeland, a book buyer for Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif., where sales of picture books have been down. “The words themselves, and the concepts, can be very sophisticated in a picture book.”
They can, for example, be written with Swiftian satire, like “Monsters Eat Whiny Children” by Bruce Eric Kaplan, a new book about children who are nearly devoured as a result of bad behavior.
Each year, the coveted Randolph Caldecott Medal goes to the most distinguished picture book published in the United States. (This year it went to “The Lion and the Mouse” by Jerry Pinkney, an adaptation of the Aesop’s fable with luminous images and no words at all.)
Still, many publishers have gradually reduced the number of picture books they produce for a market that had seen a glut of them, and in an age when very young children, like everyone else, have more options, a lot of them digital, to fill their entertainment hours.
At Scholastic, 5 percent to 10 percent fewer hardcover picture books have been published over the last three years. Don Weisberg, the president of the Penguin Young Readers Group, said that two and a half years ago, the company began publishing fewer titles but that it had devoted more attention to marketing and promoting the ones that remain. Of all the children’s books published by Simon & Schuster, about 20 percent are picture books, down from 35 percent a few years ago.
Classic books like “Goodnight Moon” and the “Eloise” series still sell steadily, alongside more modern popular titles like the “Fancy Nancy” books and “The Three Little Dassies” by Jan Brett, but even some best-selling authors are feeling the pinch. Jon Scieszka, who wrote “Robot Zot,” said his royalty checks had been shrinking, especially in the last year.
“We see the stores displaying less picture books, and publishers are getting a little more cautious about signing up new projects,” Mr. Scieszka said. “You can feel that everyone’s worried.”
Borders, noticing the sluggish sales, has tried to encourage publishers to lower the list prices, which can be as high as $18. Mary Amicucci, the vice president of children’s books for Barnes & Noble, said sales began a slow, steady decline about a year ago. Since then, the stores have rearranged display space so that some picture books are enticingly paired with toys and games.
Other retailers have cut shelf space devoted to picture books while expanding their booming young-adult sections, full of dystopic fiction, graphic novels and “Twilight”-inspired paranormal romances.
“Young adult fiction has been universally the growing genre,” said Ms. Lotz of Candlewick, “and so as retailers adapt to what customers are buying, they are giving more space to that and less space to picture books.”
Some parents say they just want to advance their children’s skills. Amanda Gignac, a stay-at-home mother in San Antonio who writes The Zen Leaf, a book blog, said her youngest son, Laurence, started reading chapter books when he was 4.
Now Laurence is 6 ½, and while he regularly tackles 80-page chapter books, he is still a “reluctant reader,” Ms. Gignac said.
Sometimes, she said, he tries to go back to picture books.
“He would still read picture books now if we let him, because he doesn’t want to work to read,” she said, adding that she and her husband have kept him reading chapter books.
Still, many children are getting the message. At Winnona Park Elementary School in Decatur, Ga., a recent book fair was dominated by chapter books, said Ilene Zeff, who organized the fair.
“I’ve been getting fewer and fewer picture books because they just don’t sell,” Ms. Zeff said. “By first grade, when the kids go to pick out their books, they ask where the chapter books are. They’re just drawn to them.”
On a recent discussion board on Urbanbaby.com, a Web site for parents, one commenter asked for recommendations for chapter books to read to a 5-year-old, and was answered with suggestions like the 272-page “Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster and “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum — books generally considered more appropriate for children 9 to 11.
Jen Haller, the vice president and associate publisher of the Penguin Young Readers Group, said that while some children were progressing to chapter books earlier, they were still reading picture books occasionally. “Picture books have a real comfort element to them,” Ms. Haller said. “It’s not like this door closes and they never go back to picture books again.”
from: NY Times
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
School's call to unplug welcomed by some, unanswered by others
by: David Abel
WORCESTER — They posted quotes around campus from Henry David Thoreau. Meditation groups discussed Buddhist techniques of emptying the mind and overcoming attachment. Some sipped organic tea or took knitting and crocheting classes. The dean took off his shoes and socks and led students in qigong, a traditional Chinese breathing exercise to promote awareness of body and mind.
Still, no matter how much administrators at Clark University sought to promote their Day of Slowing — 24 hours without texting or checking Facebook or listening to an iPod — nearly every student in the academic commons of the main library yesterday was either talking on a cellphone, checking e-mail on a laptop, or otherwise connected to a digital device.
A few feet from a group downing herbal tea and discussing the difficulties of disconnecting, Jeremy Weyl, a 22-year-old graduate student, stood out as a model of apostasy, gabbing on a cellphone while tapping on his laptop, with earbuds plugged into the music port of his computer.
“I totally admit that some of this is an addiction,’’ said Weyl, reluctantly acknowledging sending several text messages and even more e-mails.
The Day of Slowing was sparked by new research that has shown how our brains are increasingly affected by the technology we use to get through the day, making it harder to focus. Some of the research has suggested that there are benefits to unplugging.
With that in mind, Sarah Buie, director of the Higgins School of Humanities at Clark, began planning the Day of Slowing, which she hoped would make students more aware of their relationship with technology as well as what they miss while stuck in their electronic bubbles.
“The only way for them to see that is to withdraw from the technology for a bit,’’ she said. “At least a certain part of American society is moving at a speed that is negative for our bodies and minds. I think when we slow down, our attention becomes more acute and we can become more aware of our senses.’’
As she spoke, her husband, Walter Wright, dean of the college, kicked off his shoes and led a group of seven students through qigong, while wearing a tie.
“It’s all about relaxation,’’ Wright told the students as they followed him, reaching skyward and making figure eights with their hands as they stretched to the ground.
Afterward, Yelena Finegold, a 19-year-old sophomore, said she felt tingly.
“It was good to feel the flow of energy in my limbs,’’ she said.
Adam Liptak, a 19-year-old freshman, said he was inspired to start a tai chi club. He said he wore special pants without pockets to keep him from reaching for his phone constantly, but he still kept it close by in his backpack. He said he sends and receives about 25 text messages a day.
“It’s weird not feeling my phone in my pocket, which is a problem,’’ he said. “It bothers me that I’m so dependant on my phone.’’
At the tea group in the academic commons, John Sarrouf, assistant director of the program that organized the slow day, said he relished the opportunity to talk to people face to face.
“I spend all day in a small office sending e-mails, and, really, I could be anywhere,’’ he said. “It’s nice to be able to share a smile with someone.’’
Elsewhere on the 123-year-old campus with 3,000 students, there were yoga sessions, walks through the rain, and gay students sharing stories about how they came out.
At the Higgins University Center, Faye Terry, a 19-year-old sophomore, stopped to use a graphite pen to draw her hand on a board set up for the day. The goal was to heighten her awareness of the creases and contours of her left hand, while not looking at what her right hand was drawing.
Like many others, she acknowledged carrying her phone and sending about five text messages earlier in the day. She needed the phone to arrange a study session.
“It’s not like I can send a carrier pigeon,’’ she said. “We need technology to accomplish what we’re expected to accomplish.’’
Then there were those who flaunted their obliviousness to the Day of Slowing. Lamar Duffy, a 21-year-old junior, sat in front of a laptop in the academic commons, a BlackBerry at his side, within eyeshot of the disconnected.
He said he could not remember the last time he shut down. It had been years, he said, since he went without using his cellphone or posting a message on Twitter or Facebook, which he does religiously. He said he sends and receives about 50 text messages a day.
“I like to be connected,’’ he said.
from: Boston Globe
WORCESTER — They posted quotes around campus from Henry David Thoreau. Meditation groups discussed Buddhist techniques of emptying the mind and overcoming attachment. Some sipped organic tea or took knitting and crocheting classes. The dean took off his shoes and socks and led students in qigong, a traditional Chinese breathing exercise to promote awareness of body and mind.
Still, no matter how much administrators at Clark University sought to promote their Day of Slowing — 24 hours without texting or checking Facebook or listening to an iPod — nearly every student in the academic commons of the main library yesterday was either talking on a cellphone, checking e-mail on a laptop, or otherwise connected to a digital device.
A few feet from a group downing herbal tea and discussing the difficulties of disconnecting, Jeremy Weyl, a 22-year-old graduate student, stood out as a model of apostasy, gabbing on a cellphone while tapping on his laptop, with earbuds plugged into the music port of his computer.
“I totally admit that some of this is an addiction,’’ said Weyl, reluctantly acknowledging sending several text messages and even more e-mails.
The Day of Slowing was sparked by new research that has shown how our brains are increasingly affected by the technology we use to get through the day, making it harder to focus. Some of the research has suggested that there are benefits to unplugging.
With that in mind, Sarah Buie, director of the Higgins School of Humanities at Clark, began planning the Day of Slowing, which she hoped would make students more aware of their relationship with technology as well as what they miss while stuck in their electronic bubbles.
“The only way for them to see that is to withdraw from the technology for a bit,’’ she said. “At least a certain part of American society is moving at a speed that is negative for our bodies and minds. I think when we slow down, our attention becomes more acute and we can become more aware of our senses.’’
As she spoke, her husband, Walter Wright, dean of the college, kicked off his shoes and led a group of seven students through qigong, while wearing a tie.
“It’s all about relaxation,’’ Wright told the students as they followed him, reaching skyward and making figure eights with their hands as they stretched to the ground.
Afterward, Yelena Finegold, a 19-year-old sophomore, said she felt tingly.
“It was good to feel the flow of energy in my limbs,’’ she said.
Adam Liptak, a 19-year-old freshman, said he was inspired to start a tai chi club. He said he wore special pants without pockets to keep him from reaching for his phone constantly, but he still kept it close by in his backpack. He said he sends and receives about 25 text messages a day.
“It’s weird not feeling my phone in my pocket, which is a problem,’’ he said. “It bothers me that I’m so dependant on my phone.’’
At the tea group in the academic commons, John Sarrouf, assistant director of the program that organized the slow day, said he relished the opportunity to talk to people face to face.
“I spend all day in a small office sending e-mails, and, really, I could be anywhere,’’ he said. “It’s nice to be able to share a smile with someone.’’
Elsewhere on the 123-year-old campus with 3,000 students, there were yoga sessions, walks through the rain, and gay students sharing stories about how they came out.
At the Higgins University Center, Faye Terry, a 19-year-old sophomore, stopped to use a graphite pen to draw her hand on a board set up for the day. The goal was to heighten her awareness of the creases and contours of her left hand, while not looking at what her right hand was drawing.
Like many others, she acknowledged carrying her phone and sending about five text messages earlier in the day. She needed the phone to arrange a study session.
“It’s not like I can send a carrier pigeon,’’ she said. “We need technology to accomplish what we’re expected to accomplish.’’
Then there were those who flaunted their obliviousness to the Day of Slowing. Lamar Duffy, a 21-year-old junior, sat in front of a laptop in the academic commons, a BlackBerry at his side, within eyeshot of the disconnected.
He said he could not remember the last time he shut down. It had been years, he said, since he went without using his cellphone or posting a message on Twitter or Facebook, which he does religiously. He said he sends and receives about 50 text messages a day.
“I like to be connected,’’ he said.
from: Boston Globe
Saturday, October 23, 2010
10 Ways Twitter Will Make You a Better Employee, Better at Your Job and Benefit Your Library
In my case this means my day, the 9 to 5 one, not the one on the side where I write this blog and other stuff and do workshops and present and read article and government reports, though it helps there too. For the sake of this post I’m focusing on my 9 to 5 job or more like 7 to 6 job.
Here are 10 ways Twitter has made me a better employee, better at my job and benefited my library.
1. Connection to experts.
Thanks to Twitter I can connect with experts it might take years to connect with otherwise. I might see them in passing at conferences (if I’m fortunate enough to attend) or exchange emails. But Twitter connections so much easier to make. No need to write a formal email, I respond to their tweets starting a conversation that is much faster and easier to maintain than formal emails. Through my tweets they get a feeling of what I am like professionally and as in individual.
These connections include those tweets that aren’t related to work or libraries, personal tweets help build a relationship between people who have never met face to face. They are the mortar between the bricks. Think of them as office cooler talk, it’s the grease that helps the wheels turn.
These connections are invaluable for asking questions, getting feedback and growing as a professional. It also means when my library is exploring a new project my network of experts to ask for advise is much, much larger than others. When we are researching a new service the first place I go is to my Twitter connections and I get accurate, up-to-date information faster and more efficiently. What boss wouldn’t love that?
2. Pool of information
The amount of information shared on Twitter is amazing. Even better because the information shared is first vetted by the individual who shared it I am assured of its accuracy timeliness and relevance.
3. Real time awareness of News
Your best bet for real-time, as it is happening awareness of news is Twitter. It is just better than newspapers, radio and TV for instant news. News my patrons are interested in, news my management team needs to know. News that effects the decisions we, the library, make.
4. Real time updates in technology and library issues.
Want to know what latest technology marvel Apple is unveiling that wont work with any of your library services but all your patrons will be asking about? Twitter. Want to know what is happening with Vendor issues like the JSTOR interface change? Or Libraries lending Netflix? Twitter.
5. Connection with patrons
Patrons ask me questions on Twitter all the time. Yes for real. Patrons go to the easiest, most convenient method for them, for some its Twitter.
Technically my librarianbyday twitter account is not related to my library in any way. It doesn’t matter, people who know me in the community know I work at the library, I’m their point of contact.
6. Professional development for free!
Hey budgets are tight. But it is important that we take time to develop our staff. Library staff members need professional development to best serve our patrons.
Twitter is no substitute for conferences or face to face training or workshops, but if money is tight it is better than nothing. I get to interact with my peers, exchange ideas and I get pointed toward important library developments without leaving my office.
7. Contact with local organizations and groups.
Because I live in my community I follow local organizations and groups I am interested in. I ask them questions, retweet their tweets and keep up with upcoming events. They know I’m a librarian that works at the library, they also know I am a customer/patron of theirs. When they have need than could be met by the library they’ll think of us first because they know me.
Twitter is a great way to build relationships with other organizations, something that is especially important in today’s economy. Even better you don’t have to spend two hours of work time eating bad food and listening to bad presentations.
8. I’m always learning
I think it would be next to impossible to be on Twitter and not learn something new. Librarians who are always learning are more flexible and open to change. One thing we know for sure about libraries right now is times are changing and staff need to be able to change too.
9. Keeps me in touch with the larger world.
As human being we tend to gravitate to people with similar ideas and interests. Twitter connects me with people I might not connect with otherwise, they might have completely different interests outside of libraries. Because I frequently interact by choice with people with ideals different than my own I’m better able to assist patrons with ideals who don’t align with me. Remember we are supposed to be warm and welcoming to everyone equally, even if you think their ideas are abhorrent.
10. Sharing and borrowing
Thanks to Twitter it is easy for me to share information about all the awesome things my library is doing and for others to share what their libraries are doing. Why reinvent the wheel when I can steal programming ideas from libraries who have already implemented them? Even better programs I might never have thought of.
Read more
Here are 10 ways Twitter has made me a better employee, better at my job and benefited my library.
1. Connection to experts.
Thanks to Twitter I can connect with experts it might take years to connect with otherwise. I might see them in passing at conferences (if I’m fortunate enough to attend) or exchange emails. But Twitter connections so much easier to make. No need to write a formal email, I respond to their tweets starting a conversation that is much faster and easier to maintain than formal emails. Through my tweets they get a feeling of what I am like professionally and as in individual.
These connections include those tweets that aren’t related to work or libraries, personal tweets help build a relationship between people who have never met face to face. They are the mortar between the bricks. Think of them as office cooler talk, it’s the grease that helps the wheels turn.
These connections are invaluable for asking questions, getting feedback and growing as a professional. It also means when my library is exploring a new project my network of experts to ask for advise is much, much larger than others. When we are researching a new service the first place I go is to my Twitter connections and I get accurate, up-to-date information faster and more efficiently. What boss wouldn’t love that?
2. Pool of information
The amount of information shared on Twitter is amazing. Even better because the information shared is first vetted by the individual who shared it I am assured of its accuracy timeliness and relevance.
3. Real time awareness of News
Your best bet for real-time, as it is happening awareness of news is Twitter. It is just better than newspapers, radio and TV for instant news. News my patrons are interested in, news my management team needs to know. News that effects the decisions we, the library, make.
4. Real time updates in technology and library issues.
Want to know what latest technology marvel Apple is unveiling that wont work with any of your library services but all your patrons will be asking about? Twitter. Want to know what is happening with Vendor issues like the JSTOR interface change? Or Libraries lending Netflix? Twitter.
5. Connection with patrons
Patrons ask me questions on Twitter all the time. Yes for real. Patrons go to the easiest, most convenient method for them, for some its Twitter.
Technically my librarianbyday twitter account is not related to my library in any way. It doesn’t matter, people who know me in the community know I work at the library, I’m their point of contact.
6. Professional development for free!
Hey budgets are tight. But it is important that we take time to develop our staff. Library staff members need professional development to best serve our patrons.
Twitter is no substitute for conferences or face to face training or workshops, but if money is tight it is better than nothing. I get to interact with my peers, exchange ideas and I get pointed toward important library developments without leaving my office.
7. Contact with local organizations and groups.
Because I live in my community I follow local organizations and groups I am interested in. I ask them questions, retweet their tweets and keep up with upcoming events. They know I’m a librarian that works at the library, they also know I am a customer/patron of theirs. When they have need than could be met by the library they’ll think of us first because they know me.
Twitter is a great way to build relationships with other organizations, something that is especially important in today’s economy. Even better you don’t have to spend two hours of work time eating bad food and listening to bad presentations.
8. I’m always learning
I think it would be next to impossible to be on Twitter and not learn something new. Librarians who are always learning are more flexible and open to change. One thing we know for sure about libraries right now is times are changing and staff need to be able to change too.
9. Keeps me in touch with the larger world.
As human being we tend to gravitate to people with similar ideas and interests. Twitter connects me with people I might not connect with otherwise, they might have completely different interests outside of libraries. Because I frequently interact by choice with people with ideals different than my own I’m better able to assist patrons with ideals who don’t align with me. Remember we are supposed to be warm and welcoming to everyone equally, even if you think their ideas are abhorrent.
10. Sharing and borrowing
Thanks to Twitter it is easy for me to share information about all the awesome things my library is doing and for others to share what their libraries are doing. Why reinvent the wheel when I can steal programming ideas from libraries who have already implemented them? Even better programs I might never have thought of.
Read more
Help a Librarian
Help A Librarian is an online tool that helps librarians share information and help each other. The project, which was founded earlier this year, began as a Facebook group, and eventually moved to a separate site on the web.
The idea behind the site is simple, to help one another. The site basically offers subscribers the ability to post questions and receive help from librarians across the world. Before you sign up, you can begin to see the type of questions that are being posted on the site, and the type of answers coming back. And from what I can see, the discussions always happen in English.
This project is very similar to Project Wombat. As far as I can tell the only difference is that Help A Librarian handles only questions directly related to libraries, while Project Wombat will try and resolve questions of any kind.
You can find Help A Librarian on Facebook, or directly sign up with them to start sharing information: Help a Librarian
The idea behind the site is simple, to help one another. The site basically offers subscribers the ability to post questions and receive help from librarians across the world. Before you sign up, you can begin to see the type of questions that are being posted on the site, and the type of answers coming back. And from what I can see, the discussions always happen in English.
This project is very similar to Project Wombat. As far as I can tell the only difference is that Help A Librarian handles only questions directly related to libraries, while Project Wombat will try and resolve questions of any kind.
You can find Help A Librarian on Facebook, or directly sign up with them to start sharing information: Help a Librarian
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Free Frontline Advocacy webinar to teach library staff how to promote the value of libraries everyday
Presented by Dr. Alire, dean emeritus at the University of New Mexico and Colorado State University; Julie Todaro, dean of library services at Austin Community College in Austin; Patty Wong, librarian/chief archivist of the Yolo County Library in California; and Marci Merola, director, ALA Office for Library Advocacy, this webinar will focus on techniques frontline advocates can use to promote the diverse professionals, resources and services of public, school, academic and special libraries every day.
Attendees will learn about the importance of this new level of library advocacy and how it differs from legislative advocacy; best practices on how to get frontline staff empowered and engaged to integrate frontline advocacy into patron and constituent interactions; and receive teaching and training guides for presenting content on a local level.
This webinar is targeted to educate and train librarians, administrators/managers, library educators, library school students, trainers/staff development personnel and public servicing library support staff from all types of libraries.
Read more
Attendees will learn about the importance of this new level of library advocacy and how it differs from legislative advocacy; best practices on how to get frontline staff empowered and engaged to integrate frontline advocacy into patron and constituent interactions; and receive teaching and training guides for presenting content on a local level.
This webinar is targeted to educate and train librarians, administrators/managers, library educators, library school students, trainers/staff development personnel and public servicing library support staff from all types of libraries.
Read more
Monday, October 18, 2010
Facebook 101 workshop with Chris Vollum
I just attended an excellent workshop called Facebook 101 at Fern Hill School in Oakville. It turns out that this workshop presented by Chris Vollum has been presented to pretty much all the students and parents at schools throughout Ontario. An excellent source of information and an eye opener to anyone of facebook. Although the workshop was geared at parents, he offers sessions for employers/employees as well as organizations. Definitely something to consider attending/organizing for other librarians in Mississauga.
To get more information visit www.socialmediatrust.net
To get more information visit www.socialmediatrust.net
Sunday, October 17, 2010
How Handwriting Trains the Brain
Forming Letters is Key to Learning, Memory, Ideas
by: Gwendolyn Bounds
Ask preschooler Zane Pike to write his name or the alphabet, then watch this 4-year-old's stubborn side kick in. He spurns practice at school and tosses aside workbooks at home. But Angie Pike, Zane's mom, persists, believing that handwriting is a building block to learning.
She's right. Using advanced tools such as magnetic resonance imaging, researchers are finding that writing by hand is more than just a way to communicate. The practice helps with learning letters and shapes, can improve idea composition and expression, and may aid fine motor-skill development.
It's not just children who benefit. Adults studying new symbols, such as Chinese characters, might enhance recognition by writing the characters by hand, researchers say. Some physicians say handwriting could be a good cognitive exercise for baby boomers working to keep their minds sharp as they age.
Studies suggest there's real value in learning and maintaining this ancient skill, even as we increasingly communicate electronically via keyboards big and small. Indeed, technology often gets blamed for handwriting's demise. But in an interesting twist, new software for touch-screen devices, such as the iPad, is starting to reinvigorate the practice.
Most schools still include conventional handwriting instruction in their primary-grade curriculum, but today that amounts to just over an hour a week, according to Zaner-Bloser Inc., one of the nation's largest handwriting-curriculum publishers. Even at institutions that make it a strong priority, such as the private Brearley School in New York City, "some parents say, 'I can't believe you are wasting a minute on this,'" says Linda Boldt, the school's head of learning skills.
Recent research illustrates how writing by hand engages the brain in learning. During one study at Indiana University published this year, researchers invited children to man a "spaceship," actually an MRI machine using a specialized scan called "functional" MRI that spots neural activity in the brain. The kids were shown letters before and after receiving different letter-learning instruction. In children who had practiced printing by hand, the neural activity was far more enhanced and "adult-like" than in those who had simply looked at letters.
"It seems there is something really important about manually manipulating and drawing out two-dimensional things we see all the time," says Karin Harman James, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Indiana University who led the study.
Adults may benefit similarly when learning a new graphically different language, such as Mandarin, or symbol systems for mathematics, music and chemistry, Dr. James says. For instance, in a 2008 study in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, adults were asked to distinguish between new characters and a mirror image of them after producing the characters using pen-and-paper writing and a computer keyboard. The result: For those writing by hand, there was stronger and longer-lasting recognition of the characters' proper orientation, suggesting that the specific movements memorized when learning how to write aided the visual identification of graphic shapes.
And one recent study of hers demonstrated that in grades two, four and six, children wrote more words, faster, and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand versus with a keyboard.
"Some patients bring in journals from the years, and you can see dramatic change from when they were 55 and doing fine and now at 70," says P. Murali Doraiswamy, a neuroscientist at Duke University. "As more people lose writing skills and migrate to the computer, retraining people in handwriting skills could be a useful cognitive exercise."
Handwriting-curriculum creators say they're seeing renewed interest among parents looking to hone older children's skills—or even their own penmanship. Nan Barchowsky, who developed the Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting method to ease transition from print-script to joined cursive letters, says she's sold more than 1,500 copies of "Fix It … Write" in the past year.
"He thinks it's a game," says Angie Pike.
Similarly, kindergartners at Harford Day School in Bel Air, Md., are taught to write on paper but recently also began tracing letter shapes on the screen of an iPad using a handwriting app.
from: Wall Street Journal
by: Gwendolyn Bounds
Ask preschooler Zane Pike to write his name or the alphabet, then watch this 4-year-old's stubborn side kick in. He spurns practice at school and tosses aside workbooks at home. But Angie Pike, Zane's mom, persists, believing that handwriting is a building block to learning.
She's right. Using advanced tools such as magnetic resonance imaging, researchers are finding that writing by hand is more than just a way to communicate. The practice helps with learning letters and shapes, can improve idea composition and expression, and may aid fine motor-skill development.
It's not just children who benefit. Adults studying new symbols, such as Chinese characters, might enhance recognition by writing the characters by hand, researchers say. Some physicians say handwriting could be a good cognitive exercise for baby boomers working to keep their minds sharp as they age.
Studies suggest there's real value in learning and maintaining this ancient skill, even as we increasingly communicate electronically via keyboards big and small. Indeed, technology often gets blamed for handwriting's demise. But in an interesting twist, new software for touch-screen devices, such as the iPad, is starting to reinvigorate the practice.
Most schools still include conventional handwriting instruction in their primary-grade curriculum, but today that amounts to just over an hour a week, according to Zaner-Bloser Inc., one of the nation's largest handwriting-curriculum publishers. Even at institutions that make it a strong priority, such as the private Brearley School in New York City, "some parents say, 'I can't believe you are wasting a minute on this,'" says Linda Boldt, the school's head of learning skills.
Recent research illustrates how writing by hand engages the brain in learning. During one study at Indiana University published this year, researchers invited children to man a "spaceship," actually an MRI machine using a specialized scan called "functional" MRI that spots neural activity in the brain. The kids were shown letters before and after receiving different letter-learning instruction. In children who had practiced printing by hand, the neural activity was far more enhanced and "adult-like" than in those who had simply looked at letters.
"It seems there is something really important about manually manipulating and drawing out two-dimensional things we see all the time," says Karin Harman James, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Indiana University who led the study.
Adults may benefit similarly when learning a new graphically different language, such as Mandarin, or symbol systems for mathematics, music and chemistry, Dr. James says. For instance, in a 2008 study in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, adults were asked to distinguish between new characters and a mirror image of them after producing the characters using pen-and-paper writing and a computer keyboard. The result: For those writing by hand, there was stronger and longer-lasting recognition of the characters' proper orientation, suggesting that the specific movements memorized when learning how to write aided the visual identification of graphic shapes. Other research highlights the hand's unique relationship with the brain when it comes to composing thoughts and ideas. Virginia Berninger, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, says handwriting differs from typing because it requires executing sequential strokes to form a letter, whereas keyboarding involves selecting a whole letter by touching a key.
She says pictures of the brain have illustrated that sequential finger movements activated massive regions involved in thinking, language and working memory—the system for temporarily storing and managing information.
And one recent study of hers demonstrated that in grades two, four and six, children wrote more words, faster, and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand versus with a keyboard.
Even in the digital age, people remain enthralled by handwriting for myriad reasons—the intimacy implied by a loved one's script, or what the slant and shape of letters might reveal about personality. During actress Lindsay Lohan's probation violation court appearance this summer, a swarm of handwriting experts proffered analysis of her blocky courtroom scribbling. "Projecting a false image" and "crossing boundaries," concluded two on celebrity news and entertainment site hollywoodlife.com. Beyond identifying personality traits through handwriting, called graphology, some doctors treating neurological disorders say handwriting can be an early diagnostic tool.
"Some patients bring in journals from the years, and you can see dramatic change from when they were 55 and doing fine and now at 70," says P. Murali Doraiswamy, a neuroscientist at Duke University. "As more people lose writing skills and migrate to the computer, retraining people in handwriting skills could be a useful cognitive exercise."
In high schools, where laptops are increasingly used, handwriting still matters. In the essay section of SAT college-entrance exams, scorers unable to read a student's writing can assign that portion an "illegible" score of 0.
Even legible handwriting that's messy can have its own ramifications, says Steve Graham, professor of education at Vanderbilt University. He cites several studies indicating that good handwriting can take a generic classroom test score from the 50th percentile to the 84th percentile, while bad penmanship could tank it to the 16th. "There is a reader effect that is insidious," Dr. Graham says. "People judge the quality of your ideas based on your handwriting."
Handwriting-curriculum creators say they're seeing renewed interest among parents looking to hone older children's skills—or even their own penmanship. Nan Barchowsky, who developed the Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting method to ease transition from print-script to joined cursive letters, says she's sold more than 1,500 copies of "Fix It … Write" in the past year.
Some high-tech allies also are giving the practice an unexpected boost through hand-held gadgets like smartphones and tablets. Dan Feather, a graphic designer and computer consultant in Nashville, Tenn., says he's "never adapted well to the keypads on little devices." Instead, he uses a $3.99 application called "WritePad" on his iPhone. It accepts handwriting input with a finger or stylus, then converts it to text for email, documents or Twitter updates.
And apps are helping Zane Pike—the 4-year-old who refused to practice his letters. The Cabot, Ark., boy won't put down his mom's iPhone, where she's downloaded a $1.99 app called "abc PocketPhonics." The program instructs Zane to draw letters with his finger or a stylus; correct movements earn him cheering pencils.
"He thinks it's a game," says Angie Pike.
Similarly, kindergartners at Harford Day School in Bel Air, Md., are taught to write on paper but recently also began tracing letter shapes on the screen of an iPad using a handwriting app.
"Children will be using technology unlike I did, and it's important for teachers to be familiar with it," says Kay Crocker, the school's lead kindergarten teacher. Regardless of the input method, she says, "You still need to be able to write, and someone needs to be able to read it."
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Lawsuits that kill books
Litigious billionaires and foreign courts are as much a threat as book-banning fundamentalists.
by: Laura Miller
Last week was Banned Books Week, a worthy institution calling attention to efforts to remove books from public libraries and school curricula. This annual event has become so successful that, although the American Library Association reported "460 recorded attempts to remove materials from libraries in 2009," a close examination suggests that many of these amounted to mere "challenges" -- written objections submitted to librarians or teachers by isolated crackpots or control freak parents with minimal chances of seeing their censorious desires fulfilled.
But book banning isn't the only form censorship takes, and schools and libraries aren't the only places where it happens. As reported in Publishers Weekly, the Texas Appeals Court last week heard an important but little-known case filed against Carla Main, author of "Bulldozed: 'Kelo,' Eminent Domain and the American Lust for Land," and her publisher, the conservative press Encounter Books. The plaintiff, developer H. Walker Royall, claims that Main has defamed him and wants her book yanked off the market and any future printings curtailed. Royall has also attempted to sue a newspaper that reviewed the book and even a law professor who provided a back-cover endorsement. (The latter case has already been dismissed.)
Main's book describes a long-standing and rancorous dispute over eminent domain seizures in the town of Freeport, Texas, and her defense is spearheaded by the Texas-based Institute for Justice, which describes itself as the "nation's only libertarian public interest law firm." While Main's plight may not tug as forcefully on the heartstrings as the idea of young people deprived of the right to read by fundamentalist fanatics, she and her publisher are nevertheless fighting an important battle.
At issue is whether, in Texas, books are entitled to the same First Amendment protections as "news" organizations. If the appeals court agrees that they are, the case will be prevented from proceeding to litigation, saving Main and her publisher from further legal expenses. According to P.W., Main's brief states that Royall doesn't contest the facts as she reports them, but objects to how she "characterizes the project and Royall's involvement." And while it may seem unlikely that he could ever prevail against her, chances are the costs of defending "Bulldozed" have by now far exceeded any income the book may have earned.
For a glimpse of how even baseless libel actions can end up suppressing speech, we have only to look at an article former publisher Dan Hind wrote for the Guardian last month. Hind edited the British editions of Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation," Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and Misha Glenny's "McMafia," among other important works of book-length investigative journalism.
British libel law is notoriously harsh -- so much so that when asked to contemplate the possibility of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg suing the makers of the film "The Social Network" for misrepresenting him, First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told the New York Times, "He ought to sue in London, where the law is so very pro plaintiff and so very indifferent to what we consider to be free speech rights."
Abrams was being sardonic, but not fanciful. The practice he describes is called libel tourism, and it's been employed by the wealthy and powerful to stifle critics even when the critics' books weren't published in England. Saudi billionaire Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz used a British court to sue American author Rachel Ehrenfeld for libeling him in her book "Funding Evil," on the grounds that 23 copies of her book were sold in the U.K. via the Internet. Ehrenfeld, who refused to participate in the trial, was ordered to pay a 10,000-pound default judgment by the court.
Ehrenfeld's experience prompted the passage of anti-libel-tourism legislation on the state level, as well as the SPEECH Act (H.R. 2765), signed into law by President Obama in August. The new law prevents federal enforcement of foreign libel judgments in the U.S. if those judgments do not meet the tougher standards for libel here. However, it can't do much to help American authors and publishers with assets in the U.K., let alone British writers and publishers.
As Hind describes it, British libel law often makes the publication of books on current affairs prohibitively expensive. Even before the book is published, it must be exhaustively vetted by lawyers. (Vetting happens in the U.S. as well, of course, but it doesn't have to be anywhere near as rigorous.) While in the U.S. the burden of proof for libel is on the plaintiff (who must demonstrate that the defendant willfully made false statements with malicious intent), in the U.K., it's up to the defendant to demonstrate, using the sworn testimony of primary sources, that his or her claims are true. If you'd talked to Eric Schlosser about the misdeeds of your fast-food-company employer or given Misha Glenny important information about international organized crime, how would you feel about that? "The game," Hind writes, "is rigged to make it all but impossible to say anything substantial about any powerful individual or institution without running eye-watering risks."
Even when a libel case is almost certain to fail, defending a book and its author in court is costly. As a result, according to Hind, British publishers hesitate to take on books that seem likely to attract such suits, and in turn, writers hesitate, or are simply unable, to write them.
Banned Books Week has been such a success at calling attention to targeted books that in quite a few instances it has won them a wider circle of readers. As crucial as it is to continue to protect those books from would-be censors, we should be paying equal attention to any encroachment of libel and defamation litigation on authors' freedom to criticize people rich and powerful enough to dispatch a pack of lawyers at will. There's no more effective way to ban a book than to prevent it from being written in the first place.
Referenced in this article:
Andrew Albanese for Publishers Weekly on the case against "Bulldozed."
P.W. on the signing of the SPEECH Act
Dan Hind for the Guardian on the speech-stifling effects of U.K. libel law.
Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site, magiciansbook.com. More Laura Miller
from: Salon
by: Laura Miller
Last week was Banned Books Week, a worthy institution calling attention to efforts to remove books from public libraries and school curricula. This annual event has become so successful that, although the American Library Association reported "460 recorded attempts to remove materials from libraries in 2009," a close examination suggests that many of these amounted to mere "challenges" -- written objections submitted to librarians or teachers by isolated crackpots or control freak parents with minimal chances of seeing their censorious desires fulfilled.
But book banning isn't the only form censorship takes, and schools and libraries aren't the only places where it happens. As reported in Publishers Weekly, the Texas Appeals Court last week heard an important but little-known case filed against Carla Main, author of "Bulldozed: 'Kelo,' Eminent Domain and the American Lust for Land," and her publisher, the conservative press Encounter Books. The plaintiff, developer H. Walker Royall, claims that Main has defamed him and wants her book yanked off the market and any future printings curtailed. Royall has also attempted to sue a newspaper that reviewed the book and even a law professor who provided a back-cover endorsement. (The latter case has already been dismissed.)
Main's book describes a long-standing and rancorous dispute over eminent domain seizures in the town of Freeport, Texas, and her defense is spearheaded by the Texas-based Institute for Justice, which describes itself as the "nation's only libertarian public interest law firm." While Main's plight may not tug as forcefully on the heartstrings as the idea of young people deprived of the right to read by fundamentalist fanatics, she and her publisher are nevertheless fighting an important battle.
At issue is whether, in Texas, books are entitled to the same First Amendment protections as "news" organizations. If the appeals court agrees that they are, the case will be prevented from proceeding to litigation, saving Main and her publisher from further legal expenses. According to P.W., Main's brief states that Royall doesn't contest the facts as she reports them, but objects to how she "characterizes the project and Royall's involvement." And while it may seem unlikely that he could ever prevail against her, chances are the costs of defending "Bulldozed" have by now far exceeded any income the book may have earned.
For a glimpse of how even baseless libel actions can end up suppressing speech, we have only to look at an article former publisher Dan Hind wrote for the Guardian last month. Hind edited the British editions of Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation," Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and Misha Glenny's "McMafia," among other important works of book-length investigative journalism.
British libel law is notoriously harsh -- so much so that when asked to contemplate the possibility of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg suing the makers of the film "The Social Network" for misrepresenting him, First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told the New York Times, "He ought to sue in London, where the law is so very pro plaintiff and so very indifferent to what we consider to be free speech rights."
Abrams was being sardonic, but not fanciful. The practice he describes is called libel tourism, and it's been employed by the wealthy and powerful to stifle critics even when the critics' books weren't published in England. Saudi billionaire Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz used a British court to sue American author Rachel Ehrenfeld for libeling him in her book "Funding Evil," on the grounds that 23 copies of her book were sold in the U.K. via the Internet. Ehrenfeld, who refused to participate in the trial, was ordered to pay a 10,000-pound default judgment by the court.
Ehrenfeld's experience prompted the passage of anti-libel-tourism legislation on the state level, as well as the SPEECH Act (H.R. 2765), signed into law by President Obama in August. The new law prevents federal enforcement of foreign libel judgments in the U.S. if those judgments do not meet the tougher standards for libel here. However, it can't do much to help American authors and publishers with assets in the U.K., let alone British writers and publishers.
As Hind describes it, British libel law often makes the publication of books on current affairs prohibitively expensive. Even before the book is published, it must be exhaustively vetted by lawyers. (Vetting happens in the U.S. as well, of course, but it doesn't have to be anywhere near as rigorous.) While in the U.S. the burden of proof for libel is on the plaintiff (who must demonstrate that the defendant willfully made false statements with malicious intent), in the U.K., it's up to the defendant to demonstrate, using the sworn testimony of primary sources, that his or her claims are true. If you'd talked to Eric Schlosser about the misdeeds of your fast-food-company employer or given Misha Glenny important information about international organized crime, how would you feel about that? "The game," Hind writes, "is rigged to make it all but impossible to say anything substantial about any powerful individual or institution without running eye-watering risks."
Even when a libel case is almost certain to fail, defending a book and its author in court is costly. As a result, according to Hind, British publishers hesitate to take on books that seem likely to attract such suits, and in turn, writers hesitate, or are simply unable, to write them.
Banned Books Week has been such a success at calling attention to targeted books that in quite a few instances it has won them a wider circle of readers. As crucial as it is to continue to protect those books from would-be censors, we should be paying equal attention to any encroachment of libel and defamation litigation on authors' freedom to criticize people rich and powerful enough to dispatch a pack of lawyers at will. There's no more effective way to ban a book than to prevent it from being written in the first place.
Referenced in this article:
Andrew Albanese for Publishers Weekly on the case against "Bulldozed."
P.W. on the signing of the SPEECH Act
Dan Hind for the Guardian on the speech-stifling effects of U.K. libel law.
Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site, magiciansbook.com. More Laura Miller
from: Salon
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Stigma of Paperback Originals
by: Joanne Kaufman
Through canny marketing, careful timing and plain old dumb luck, Vintage Books caught lightning in a bottle this summer when it published David Nicholls's novel "One Day" as a paperback original—a format viewed by some as publishing's poor cousin—and turned it into a best seller. There are currently almost 300,000 copies in print.
Released in England last year to glowing reviews and strong sales, the book centers on Emma and Dexter, who have a postgraduation fling and go their separate ways but never lose track of each other. "One Day" charts the couple's sometimes parallel, sometimes intersecting lives every subsequent July 15 for the next two decades.
Because Mr. Nicholls's previous two novels hadn't sold well in the U.S., the decision makers at Vintage, an imprint of Random House, Inc., determined that paperback original was the way to go. The lower cover price would make it more appealing to the 20-something target audience and buyers in general. Publication was held off until June not only to give the favorable press about "One Day" ample time to reach American shores, but to echo the summer setting of the novel. Then came word—here's the dumb luck part—that Anne Hathaway had signed on for the movie.
"We're all talking about 'One Day,'" acknowledged Martha Levin, the publisher of Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, who like many others in the business views the paperback-original format as an increasingly attractive option—perhaps the only option—for young authors with no track record, midcareer authors with a challenging track record and international authors being published for the first time in the U.S.
The paperback-original gambit is "all about creating a brand identity in the marketplace or establishing yourself as an author, and then people will buy you no matter what the price," said literary agent Deborah Schneider, whose clients include Mr. Nicholls.
Granted, the paperback original is hardly a new concept. In Europe, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, it's the industry standard. In the U.S., it's long been the default choice for romances and other genre fiction. In the '80s, Gary Fisketjon, now an editor at large for Knopf, created Vintage Contemporaries—publisher of the iconic "Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerney—as a launching pad for young writers who would subsequently move up in class to hardcover.
But a stigma lingers. The belief that a paperback original, however worthy, will be given short shrift by reviewers tells part of the story. "Critics pay more attention to hardcovers even if they say they don't," said one agent who requested anonymity. Those eager to make the case for paperback originals point to the The New Yorker's "briefly noted" reviews of "The Thieves of Manhattan" and "The News Where You Are." They point to the New York Times' recent review of "Vida," a debut short-story collection published by Black Cat, a Grove/Atlantic imprint devoted to paperback originals.
And while Erich Eichman, a Wall Street Journal books editor, insists that format is of no consequence—"I'm just looking for something original," he said—Kim Hubbard, the books editor at People magazine, is a bit more equivocal: "I see so many books for review consideration that I always need ways to narrow the list," she wrote in an email message. "Seeing 'paperback original' in a catalog used to mean I could safely skip a book—that the publisher probably didn't have big ambitions for it. That's slowly beginning to change," added Ms. Hubbard, who, in fact, did commission a review for "One Day." It was a rave.
There are other sticking points, chief among them lucre. Everybody involved—author, agent, publisher, retailer—makes more money on a hardcover than a paperback. Indeed, although arrangements vary, paperback royalties are generally 25% those of hardcovers. Then there's the matter of author pride.
"No one will really say it, because it sounds foolish, but vanity is a big issue," said one publisher who requested anonymity to avoid antagonizing authors on his list. "In almost every deal I do, the agent tries to get a contractual hardcover commitment even if the book isn't written yet and down the road it might become clear that paperback original is the way to go."
But the desire for such a commitment can't be simply dismissed as ego. The long- established pattern of hardcover publication followed by paperback release does give a book two opportunities to find an audience at two different price points. Unfortunately, as many in the industry note, if a book performs poorly in hardcover, retailers are unlikely to place a large order for the paperback edition.
Frances Coady, the vice president and publisher of Picador, the paperback imprint of Macmillan, said: "You have to ask yourself questions like, 'Is it better to sell 5,000 or 8,000 copies in hardcover and try to reinvent the book in paperback?'—which, unless there's some extraordinary piece of luck, is really hard to do—or 'Is it better to sell 50,000 in a paperback original?'"
The parlous economy—combined with the high price of hardcovers, the low price of e-books and the urging of retailers like Barnes & Noble—is pushing publishers like Ms. Coady toward ever greater flexibility about format. Thus, next May, Picador will release "The Summer Without Men" by novelist Siri Hustvedt as a paperback original. Never mind that Ms. Hustvedt's books are routinely published in hardcover. "It's fabulous," Ms. Coady said of "Summer." "And I think it will be huge. But it felt to me like a reading-group or summer-reading book. I was able to give Siri and her agent a lot of other examples of successful paperback originals we've done," she continued, mentioning "Small Island," by Andrea Levy, whose new novel, "The Long Song," was just shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize. "And I'm sure Siri's next book will be a hardcover."
A few years ago, to help build writer Jim Shepard's fan base, Knopf's Mr. Fisketjon decided to publish a paperback-original collection of Mr. Shepard's short stories to coincide with the hardcover publication of his new novel. "We brought out his subsequent short-story collection in hardcover and it did well because Jim had found new readers with the paperback," said Mr. Fisketjon, adding that he's now trying the same strategy with another author.
"There's no question that you're going to see more original trade paperbacks," said Ellen Archer, the publisher of Hyperion Books. "But it's not a magic bullet. It might not succeed, just like a hardcover book might not succeed."
Since the U.S. publication of "One Day," Peter Gethers, Mr. Nicholls's editor at Random House Inc., has heard from "a lot of agents who want to know how we made this work," he said. "The good thing about the book business being in such chaos is it gives you an opportunity to try a lot of different options."
And the follow-up to "One Day"? "It will be a hardcover," said Mr. Nicholls's agent, Ms. Schneider. "Everybody knows who David is now."
Ms. Kaufman writes about culture and the arts for the Journal.
from: Wall Street Journal
Through canny marketing, careful timing and plain old dumb luck, Vintage Books caught lightning in a bottle this summer when it published David Nicholls's novel "One Day" as a paperback original—a format viewed by some as publishing's poor cousin—and turned it into a best seller. There are currently almost 300,000 copies in print.
Released in England last year to glowing reviews and strong sales, the book centers on Emma and Dexter, who have a postgraduation fling and go their separate ways but never lose track of each other. "One Day" charts the couple's sometimes parallel, sometimes intersecting lives every subsequent July 15 for the next two decades.
Because Mr. Nicholls's previous two novels hadn't sold well in the U.S., the decision makers at Vintage, an imprint of Random House, Inc., determined that paperback original was the way to go. The lower cover price would make it more appealing to the 20-something target audience and buyers in general. Publication was held off until June not only to give the favorable press about "One Day" ample time to reach American shores, but to echo the summer setting of the novel. Then came word—here's the dumb luck part—that Anne Hathaway had signed on for the movie.
"We're all talking about 'One Day,'" acknowledged Martha Levin, the publisher of Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, who like many others in the business views the paperback-original format as an increasingly attractive option—perhaps the only option—for young authors with no track record, midcareer authors with a challenging track record and international authors being published for the first time in the U.S.
The paperback-original gambit is "all about creating a brand identity in the marketplace or establishing yourself as an author, and then people will buy you no matter what the price," said literary agent Deborah Schneider, whose clients include Mr. Nicholls.
Granted, the paperback original is hardly a new concept. In Europe, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, it's the industry standard. In the U.S., it's long been the default choice for romances and other genre fiction. In the '80s, Gary Fisketjon, now an editor at large for Knopf, created Vintage Contemporaries—publisher of the iconic "Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerney—as a launching pad for young writers who would subsequently move up in class to hardcover.
But a stigma lingers. The belief that a paperback original, however worthy, will be given short shrift by reviewers tells part of the story. "Critics pay more attention to hardcovers even if they say they don't," said one agent who requested anonymity. Those eager to make the case for paperback originals point to the The New Yorker's "briefly noted" reviews of "The Thieves of Manhattan" and "The News Where You Are." They point to the New York Times' recent review of "Vida," a debut short-story collection published by Black Cat, a Grove/Atlantic imprint devoted to paperback originals.
And while Erich Eichman, a Wall Street Journal books editor, insists that format is of no consequence—"I'm just looking for something original," he said—Kim Hubbard, the books editor at People magazine, is a bit more equivocal: "I see so many books for review consideration that I always need ways to narrow the list," she wrote in an email message. "Seeing 'paperback original' in a catalog used to mean I could safely skip a book—that the publisher probably didn't have big ambitions for it. That's slowly beginning to change," added Ms. Hubbard, who, in fact, did commission a review for "One Day." It was a rave.
There are other sticking points, chief among them lucre. Everybody involved—author, agent, publisher, retailer—makes more money on a hardcover than a paperback. Indeed, although arrangements vary, paperback royalties are generally 25% those of hardcovers. Then there's the matter of author pride.
"No one will really say it, because it sounds foolish, but vanity is a big issue," said one publisher who requested anonymity to avoid antagonizing authors on his list. "In almost every deal I do, the agent tries to get a contractual hardcover commitment even if the book isn't written yet and down the road it might become clear that paperback original is the way to go."
But the desire for such a commitment can't be simply dismissed as ego. The long- established pattern of hardcover publication followed by paperback release does give a book two opportunities to find an audience at two different price points. Unfortunately, as many in the industry note, if a book performs poorly in hardcover, retailers are unlikely to place a large order for the paperback edition.
Frances Coady, the vice president and publisher of Picador, the paperback imprint of Macmillan, said: "You have to ask yourself questions like, 'Is it better to sell 5,000 or 8,000 copies in hardcover and try to reinvent the book in paperback?'—which, unless there's some extraordinary piece of luck, is really hard to do—or 'Is it better to sell 50,000 in a paperback original?'"
The parlous economy—combined with the high price of hardcovers, the low price of e-books and the urging of retailers like Barnes & Noble—is pushing publishers like Ms. Coady toward ever greater flexibility about format. Thus, next May, Picador will release "The Summer Without Men" by novelist Siri Hustvedt as a paperback original. Never mind that Ms. Hustvedt's books are routinely published in hardcover. "It's fabulous," Ms. Coady said of "Summer." "And I think it will be huge. But it felt to me like a reading-group or summer-reading book. I was able to give Siri and her agent a lot of other examples of successful paperback originals we've done," she continued, mentioning "Small Island," by Andrea Levy, whose new novel, "The Long Song," was just shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize. "And I'm sure Siri's next book will be a hardcover."
A few years ago, to help build writer Jim Shepard's fan base, Knopf's Mr. Fisketjon decided to publish a paperback-original collection of Mr. Shepard's short stories to coincide with the hardcover publication of his new novel. "We brought out his subsequent short-story collection in hardcover and it did well because Jim had found new readers with the paperback," said Mr. Fisketjon, adding that he's now trying the same strategy with another author.
"There's no question that you're going to see more original trade paperbacks," said Ellen Archer, the publisher of Hyperion Books. "But it's not a magic bullet. It might not succeed, just like a hardcover book might not succeed."
Since the U.S. publication of "One Day," Peter Gethers, Mr. Nicholls's editor at Random House Inc., has heard from "a lot of agents who want to know how we made this work," he said. "The good thing about the book business being in such chaos is it gives you an opportunity to try a lot of different options."
And the follow-up to "One Day"? "It will be a hardcover," said Mr. Nicholls's agent, Ms. Schneider. "Everybody knows who David is now."
Ms. Kaufman writes about culture and the arts for the Journal.
from: Wall Street Journal
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Make Life Easier: Ask a Librarian
The school library (or, if you're at a big school, libraries) are part of almost every college tour. Of course, in the age of digital information, the actual books contained in the library are no longer students' most important resource at the library -- instead, the librarians are.
Though often overlooked and under appreciated, librarians can make a student's life much easier if they're asked. Though your school may not have a program as intensive as Drexel's personal librarian program, where freshmen get their own librarian to show them the research ropes, even the most unassuming librarian has training to help you find out what you need to know. If you're looking for places to start, try these suggestions:
Instant Message a Librarian -- Many universities have their librarians set up on Meebo, a site-nested instant messaging client that became unexpectedly very popular with the librarian community. If your university has a Meebo setup, you can anonymously ask librarians a silly or embarrassing question (where is the science building?), renew a book without going to the library, or ask them to help you when a professor has screwed up putting a book you need on reserve. A smaller number of schools even have a "text a librarian" feature for when you're away from a browser. If your school doesn't have either of these services set up, the Alexandrian Public Library, Texas State University Library, and Emory University Library all offer chat widgets that you can use for non-school-specific questions.
Career Suggestions -- If your school has a less-than-stellar career services department full of old materials and staff who don't understand a post-Web 2.0 job market, get thee to a library. On a personal level, younger librarians may be useful to talk to just because they're young and typically approachable, and so they can help just by talking about themselves. But, even if they're a little older, librarians can help you find blogs about or internship opportunities in your desired field beyond what a career services person might be able to search for -- librarians, after all, essentially have a master's degree in information and so are very good at finding it out.
Source Help -- This is perhaps the most traditional of academic librarian functions: teaching undergraduates how to research. If you make an appointment one-on-one with a librarian, they can often teach you the ins and outs of JSTOR, help you craft good Boolean search queries for old-school databases, and suggest paths you might pursue given your research topic. There's no point in struggling along in a research paper unaided when you have access to free, competent research resources.
Club Sponsorship -- If your school requires a faculty or staff sponsor for your club and you're having trouble finding a faculty member who isn't busy or about to flee on sabbatical, make friends with the night librarians. First off, they're typically on campus when club meetings happen (especially if your library is open late). But, more importantly, they're often willing to help out a student organization in need with sponsorship, a space (after all, they have a whole library), research help, and advice. Plus, they often far less scary than faculty members.
College librarians are more than the shush-ers of old -- they're great, often tech-savvy and helpful resources.
from: Huffington Post
Though often overlooked and under appreciated, librarians can make a student's life much easier if they're asked. Though your school may not have a program as intensive as Drexel's personal librarian program, where freshmen get their own librarian to show them the research ropes, even the most unassuming librarian has training to help you find out what you need to know. If you're looking for places to start, try these suggestions:
Instant Message a Librarian -- Many universities have their librarians set up on Meebo, a site-nested instant messaging client that became unexpectedly very popular with the librarian community. If your university has a Meebo setup, you can anonymously ask librarians a silly or embarrassing question (where is the science building?), renew a book without going to the library, or ask them to help you when a professor has screwed up putting a book you need on reserve. A smaller number of schools even have a "text a librarian" feature for when you're away from a browser. If your school doesn't have either of these services set up, the Alexandrian Public Library, Texas State University Library, and Emory University Library all offer chat widgets that you can use for non-school-specific questions.
Career Suggestions -- If your school has a less-than-stellar career services department full of old materials and staff who don't understand a post-Web 2.0 job market, get thee to a library. On a personal level, younger librarians may be useful to talk to just because they're young and typically approachable, and so they can help just by talking about themselves. But, even if they're a little older, librarians can help you find blogs about or internship opportunities in your desired field beyond what a career services person might be able to search for -- librarians, after all, essentially have a master's degree in information and so are very good at finding it out.
Source Help -- This is perhaps the most traditional of academic librarian functions: teaching undergraduates how to research. If you make an appointment one-on-one with a librarian, they can often teach you the ins and outs of JSTOR, help you craft good Boolean search queries for old-school databases, and suggest paths you might pursue given your research topic. There's no point in struggling along in a research paper unaided when you have access to free, competent research resources.
Club Sponsorship -- If your school requires a faculty or staff sponsor for your club and you're having trouble finding a faculty member who isn't busy or about to flee on sabbatical, make friends with the night librarians. First off, they're typically on campus when club meetings happen (especially if your library is open late). But, more importantly, they're often willing to help out a student organization in need with sponsorship, a space (after all, they have a whole library), research help, and advice. Plus, they often far less scary than faculty members.
College librarians are more than the shush-ers of old -- they're great, often tech-savvy and helpful resources.
from: Huffington Post
Howard Jacobson wins Booker prize 2010 for The Finkler Question
Howard Jacobson's laugh-out-loud exploration of Jewishness, The Finkler Question, last night became the first unashamedly comic novel to win the Man Booker prize in its 42-year history.
There will be cries of "about time too" for a funny and warm writer, now 68, who has long been highly regarded but unrewarded with major literary prizes.
The Booker prize chairman, Sir Andrew Motion, said it was "quite amazing" that this was the first time Jacobson had been shortlisted. But he was not, in any way, being rewarded because it was his turn.
"It never came into our minds," he said. "Having said that, there is a particular pleasure in seeing somebody who is that good finally getting his just deserts."
Jacobson admitted he had waited a long time and, yes, there had been bitterness. "I have been wanting to win the Booker prize from the start. I don't think I'm alone in that, it's such a fantastic prize. It was beginning to look like I was the novelist that never ever won the Booker prize.
Read more
There will be cries of "about time too" for a funny and warm writer, now 68, who has long been highly regarded but unrewarded with major literary prizes.
The Booker prize chairman, Sir Andrew Motion, said it was "quite amazing" that this was the first time Jacobson had been shortlisted. But he was not, in any way, being rewarded because it was his turn.
"It never came into our minds," he said. "Having said that, there is a particular pleasure in seeing somebody who is that good finally getting his just deserts."
Jacobson admitted he had waited a long time and, yes, there had been bitterness. "I have been wanting to win the Booker prize from the start. I don't think I'm alone in that, it's such a fantastic prize. It was beginning to look like I was the novelist that never ever won the Booker prize.
Read more
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Vast bookstore opens as famed library runs out of space
A warehouse big enough to store eight million books and maps for Oxford University's overflowing Bodleian Library has been unveiled.
The £26m site near Swindon, Wiltshire, has 153 miles (246km) of shelving.
The library, which is entitled to a copy of every book published in the UK, had been running out of space to store works for decades.
With 1,000 new books arriving each day, the head librarian said the situation had become "desperate".
The new warehouse has enough space to support the Bodleian for the next 20 years.
There are 600 map cabinets which will hold 1.2 million maps and other larger items.
Librarian Dr Sarah Thomas said it was important to preserve all the books so that future generations could have access to the recorded knowledge of the past.
 |
| The book storage facility has been built on the outskirts of Swindon |
The £26m site near Swindon, Wiltshire, has 153 miles (246km) of shelving.
The library, which is entitled to a copy of every book published in the UK, had been running out of space to store works for decades.
With 1,000 new books arriving each day, the head librarian said the situation had become "desperate".
The new warehouse has enough space to support the Bodleian for the next 20 years.
Over the next year, nearly six million books and more than 1.2 million maps will be transferred from Oxford to the storage facility.
It will be predominantly low-usage books and maps which will be stored at the 13-acre site, 28 miles from Oxford.
More popular items and special collections - including four original manuscripts of the 13th century Magna Carta - will remain in Oxford.
The warehouse, which can be expanded in future if needed, has 3,224 bays with 95,000 shelf levels.
 |
| High-density shelving means there is space to store 8.4 million books and maps |
The floor space of the unit is the same as 1.6 football pitches - although the total shelf surface area is 10 times that, thanks to high-density shelving.
Students have been told that if they order a book from the new unit by 1000, it should be delivered to the Oxford reading room of their choice by 1500 that day.
Library staff will use forklift trucks to retrieve books which will then be transported to Oxford by road in a twice-daily service.
Some items will be scanned and sent to students' computers electronically.
It is estimated there will be 200,000 requests for items each year.
"The BSF will prove a long-awaited solution to the space problem that has long challenged the Bodleian," said Dr Thomas.
"We have been running out of space since the 1970s and the situation has become increasingly desperate in the last few years."
Oxford University's Vice Chancellor Professor Andrew Hamilton said: "The importance of the Bodleian Libraries and their extraordinary collections cannot be overestimated."
from: BBC
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
What are the best learn-to-read books?
With a baby on the way, I'm already casting around for the most appealing ways to pass on my addiction.
by: Imogen Russell Williams
When I was three, my long-suffering mother read to me every night from Terry Jones's Fairy Tales, gloriously illustrated by Michael Foreman. The tale on which I was particularly fixated – that of "Brave Molly", who vanquished a huge yellow-eyed monster by revealing it as a cowardly rabbit in a monster-suit ("Oh, please! Don't put me in a pie!") – had to be repeated ad nauseam, until one bedtime I startled her by reciting it back verbatim.
By then I wanted very much to be able to read by myself. The stained-glass, strained-light quality of Foreman's water-colours and the poetic silliness and melancholy of the stories made the whole unknown world of books seem intensely alluring. It was threatening in some ways – Beasts with a Thousand Teeth roamed the streets after curfew, and Monster Trees bearing proscribed blue apples grew in the middle of black forests like thickets of eyes – but there were tastes and sights there that couldn't be had anywhere else: fruit that made you forget your loved ones, witches' treasures, rainbow cats. Like stout-hearted Molly, I wanted to know how that world worked, and to be able to untie the ribbon which shrank the beast into the rabbit.
The books on which I actually learned to read were Sheila K McCullagh's Puddle Lane stories, published by Ladybird, which I remember with intense fondness (in fact, gently distending with an infant of my own, I'm now trying to track down a second set between muttered reproaches to my poor mother for daring to give away the first). The Puddle Lane books still seem unique to me in providing straightforward, easy-to-digest sentences for learner readers (together with longer paragraphs on the facing page for an adult to read alongside) while refusing to skimp on plot and imagination, even in such tiny doses. McCullagh's names alone – Tim Catchamouse (surely the best name ever given to a small black cat), the Wideawake Mice, bossy Mrs Pitter-patter, old Mr Gotobed – were excitingly non-utilitarian, much more satisfying than those other Ladybird stalwarts, Peter and Jane.
In addition, stuff really happened on Puddle Lane. I remember little books imbued with mystery and excitement, complemented by perfect watercolour illustrations, all the more thrilling because I could read them myself. They featured magic boxes, invisible green monsters who manifested from the ears down, a satisfyingly-robed magician and mouse families in need of rescue, even from the beginning of the blue first series. By the time you got onto the purples, the iron boy and the sandalwood girl were pursuing a vivid and dramatic Pinocchio quest to become flesh and blood by bathing in the Silver River (I still remember how terrified I was when the iron boy carried the sandalwood girl above his head through fields of dry grass ignited by vicious red salamanders.) It seems amazing to me now that such memorable books came about as a mere spin-off from the eponymous 80s children's TV show.
I'd like my infant to enjoy the fantastic world of Puddle Lane as much as I did, but fear that I may be maddened by nostalgia into force-feeding the poor mite stuff it detests and wearing leg-warmers in a vain attempt to turn back the clock to 1986 (not to mention the fraught possibility that it won't enjoy reading at all). What's the best learn-to-read stuff available for the privileged small folk of the 21st century? And do you still remember the books with which you learned to read – and were they of the Dick and Jane persuasion, or more wide-ranging and exotic? What was the first book that really made you want to learn?
from: Guardian
by: Imogen Russell Williams
When I was three, my long-suffering mother read to me every night from Terry Jones's Fairy Tales, gloriously illustrated by Michael Foreman. The tale on which I was particularly fixated – that of "Brave Molly", who vanquished a huge yellow-eyed monster by revealing it as a cowardly rabbit in a monster-suit ("Oh, please! Don't put me in a pie!") – had to be repeated ad nauseam, until one bedtime I startled her by reciting it back verbatim.
By then I wanted very much to be able to read by myself. The stained-glass, strained-light quality of Foreman's water-colours and the poetic silliness and melancholy of the stories made the whole unknown world of books seem intensely alluring. It was threatening in some ways – Beasts with a Thousand Teeth roamed the streets after curfew, and Monster Trees bearing proscribed blue apples grew in the middle of black forests like thickets of eyes – but there were tastes and sights there that couldn't be had anywhere else: fruit that made you forget your loved ones, witches' treasures, rainbow cats. Like stout-hearted Molly, I wanted to know how that world worked, and to be able to untie the ribbon which shrank the beast into the rabbit.
The books on which I actually learned to read were Sheila K McCullagh's Puddle Lane stories, published by Ladybird, which I remember with intense fondness (in fact, gently distending with an infant of my own, I'm now trying to track down a second set between muttered reproaches to my poor mother for daring to give away the first). The Puddle Lane books still seem unique to me in providing straightforward, easy-to-digest sentences for learner readers (together with longer paragraphs on the facing page for an adult to read alongside) while refusing to skimp on plot and imagination, even in such tiny doses. McCullagh's names alone – Tim Catchamouse (surely the best name ever given to a small black cat), the Wideawake Mice, bossy Mrs Pitter-patter, old Mr Gotobed – were excitingly non-utilitarian, much more satisfying than those other Ladybird stalwarts, Peter and Jane.
In addition, stuff really happened on Puddle Lane. I remember little books imbued with mystery and excitement, complemented by perfect watercolour illustrations, all the more thrilling because I could read them myself. They featured magic boxes, invisible green monsters who manifested from the ears down, a satisfyingly-robed magician and mouse families in need of rescue, even from the beginning of the blue first series. By the time you got onto the purples, the iron boy and the sandalwood girl were pursuing a vivid and dramatic Pinocchio quest to become flesh and blood by bathing in the Silver River (I still remember how terrified I was when the iron boy carried the sandalwood girl above his head through fields of dry grass ignited by vicious red salamanders.) It seems amazing to me now that such memorable books came about as a mere spin-off from the eponymous 80s children's TV show.
I'd like my infant to enjoy the fantastic world of Puddle Lane as much as I did, but fear that I may be maddened by nostalgia into force-feeding the poor mite stuff it detests and wearing leg-warmers in a vain attempt to turn back the clock to 1986 (not to mention the fraught possibility that it won't enjoy reading at all). What's the best learn-to-read stuff available for the privileged small folk of the 21st century? And do you still remember the books with which you learned to read – and were they of the Dick and Jane persuasion, or more wide-ranging and exotic? What was the first book that really made you want to learn?
from: Guardian
Monday, October 11, 2010
Borders to Open 25 Temporary Stores for Holiday Sales
by: Julie Bosman
This year, it is out with the superstore and in with the pop-up.
Borders, making a push to sell e-readers and books during the holiday season, plans to open 25 so-called pop-up stores in cities like Minnetonka, Minn.; Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; and Scottsdale, Ariz., beginning in early October.
Most of the pop-ups will be in malls where Borders once had stores. The company has closed more than 200 stores in the last year, most of which were its smaller Waldenbooks outlets in malls.
“Where it didn’t make business sense for us to operate stores on a permanent basis in these areas, we can open a seasonal store and serve the holiday shopping needs of our customers,” Mike Edwards, the chief executive of Borders, said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to once again be part of these communities.”
The concept of the pop-up store has been embraced by landlords who are looking for short-term tenants and by retailers like Target who need a flexible, attention-grabbing way to showcase their wares.
For Borders, it is a way to capture a larger piece of coveted holiday sales in the biggest season for the publishing industry. Borders has lagged Amazon and Barnes & Noble in the e-reader race — in July, it began selling its device, the Kobo, in its stores, long after its competitors introduced their own e-readers.
Last year, Borders opened pop-up stores in five locations, including Short Hills, N.J., and Schaumburg, Ill., and considered the experiment successful enough to merit an expansion this year.
The company is calling the stores “Borders Express,” and described them as severely scaled-down versions of its regular retail outlets. They will occupy spaces of about 2,500 square feet, and carry a limited selection of new releases, best sellers, children’s books and holiday-themed items.
The 25 stores will also carry both the original Kobo, for $129.99, and a new wireless version to be introduced in October for $139.99.
The reader, available in black, white and silver and white and purple, allows customers to browse more than 1.5 million books in the Borders e-bookstore.
from: NY Times
This year, it is out with the superstore and in with the pop-up.
Borders, making a push to sell e-readers and books during the holiday season, plans to open 25 so-called pop-up stores in cities like Minnetonka, Minn.; Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; and Scottsdale, Ariz., beginning in early October.
Most of the pop-ups will be in malls where Borders once had stores. The company has closed more than 200 stores in the last year, most of which were its smaller Waldenbooks outlets in malls.
“Where it didn’t make business sense for us to operate stores on a permanent basis in these areas, we can open a seasonal store and serve the holiday shopping needs of our customers,” Mike Edwards, the chief executive of Borders, said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to once again be part of these communities.”
The concept of the pop-up store has been embraced by landlords who are looking for short-term tenants and by retailers like Target who need a flexible, attention-grabbing way to showcase their wares.
For Borders, it is a way to capture a larger piece of coveted holiday sales in the biggest season for the publishing industry. Borders has lagged Amazon and Barnes & Noble in the e-reader race — in July, it began selling its device, the Kobo, in its stores, long after its competitors introduced their own e-readers.
Last year, Borders opened pop-up stores in five locations, including Short Hills, N.J., and Schaumburg, Ill., and considered the experiment successful enough to merit an expansion this year.
The company is calling the stores “Borders Express,” and described them as severely scaled-down versions of its regular retail outlets. They will occupy spaces of about 2,500 square feet, and carry a limited selection of new releases, best sellers, children’s books and holiday-themed items.
The 25 stores will also carry both the original Kobo, for $129.99, and a new wireless version to be introduced in October for $139.99.
The reader, available in black, white and silver and white and purple, allows customers to browse more than 1.5 million books in the Borders e-bookstore.
from: NY Times
Sunday, October 10, 2010
E-readers Boost Reading Habits
by: Leslie Meredith
It's no surprise that e-reader users read more and buy more books than those without the literary device, but a new survey reveals that more than half of e-reader users read more than they did before owning one.
This is promising news for book publishers, educators and concerned parents of reluctant readers.
The survey looked specifically at e-readers and the iPad, asking participants: "Do you use an electronic reader device, such as a Kindle, an iPad or a Nook, to read books?"
Over half of people with e-readers, 53 percent, said they read more now than they did six months ago compared to 18 percent of non-e-reader users, according to The Harris Poll of 2,775 adults surveyed last month.
E-reader users are also more likely to buy books. Twenty percent of respondents without e-readers said they have not purchased any books in the past year compared with only eight percent of e-reader users who said the same.
At the opposite end of the purchase spectrum, only 12 percent of those without e-readers purchased 21 or more books in the past year compared with 20 percent of e-reader users who bought and downloaded at least 21 books.
Amazon, the biggest seller of e-books, reports its customers buy 3.3 times as many books after buying a Kindle, a figure that has accelerated in the past year as prices for the device fell from $359 at launch to $139 for the third generation Kindle released in August.
The poll also revealed that East Coast residents are twice as likely to use an e-reader than people in other parts of the country. While Harris pollster declined to speculate why that's so, she hinted it may have something to do with more commuters using public transportation.
But the East Coast's lead may narrow as 16 percent of those in the West said they plan to buy an e-reader within six months compared to 14 percent of Easterners.
from: TechNewsDaily
It's no surprise that e-reader users read more and buy more books than those without the literary device, but a new survey reveals that more than half of e-reader users read more than they did before owning one.
This is promising news for book publishers, educators and concerned parents of reluctant readers.
The survey looked specifically at e-readers and the iPad, asking participants: "Do you use an electronic reader device, such as a Kindle, an iPad or a Nook, to read books?"
Over half of people with e-readers, 53 percent, said they read more now than they did six months ago compared to 18 percent of non-e-reader users, according to The Harris Poll of 2,775 adults surveyed last month.
E-reader users are also more likely to buy books. Twenty percent of respondents without e-readers said they have not purchased any books in the past year compared with only eight percent of e-reader users who said the same.
At the opposite end of the purchase spectrum, only 12 percent of those without e-readers purchased 21 or more books in the past year compared with 20 percent of e-reader users who bought and downloaded at least 21 books.
Amazon, the biggest seller of e-books, reports its customers buy 3.3 times as many books after buying a Kindle, a figure that has accelerated in the past year as prices for the device fell from $359 at launch to $139 for the third generation Kindle released in August.
The poll also revealed that East Coast residents are twice as likely to use an e-reader than people in other parts of the country. While Harris pollster declined to speculate why that's so, she hinted it may have something to do with more commuters using public transportation.
But the East Coast's lead may narrow as 16 percent of those in the West said they plan to buy an e-reader within six months compared to 14 percent of Easterners.
from: TechNewsDaily
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Libraries launch apps to sync with iPod generation
by: Jeannie Nuss
GRANDVIEW HEIGHTS, Ohio (AP) -- Libraries are tweeting, texting and launching smart-phone apps as they try to keep up with the biblio-techs - a computer-savvy class of people who consider card catalogs as vintage as typewriters. And they seem to be pulling it off.
Since libraries started rebranding themselves for the iPod generation, thousands of music geeks have downloaded free songs from library websites. And with many more bookworms waiting months to check out wireless reading devices, libraries are shrugging off the notion that the Internet shelved them alongside dusty books.
"People tend to have this antiquated version of libraries, like there's not much more inside than books and microfiche," says Hiller Goodspeed, a 22-year-old graphic designer in Orlando, Fla., who uses the Orange County Library System's iPhone app to discover foreign films.
The latest national data from the Institute of Museum and Library Services show that library visits and circulation climbed nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2008.
Since then, experts say, technology has continued to drive in-person visits, circulation and usage.
"It also brings people back to the library that might have left thinking that the library wasn't relevant for them," says Chris Tonjes, the information technology director at the public library in Washington, D.C.
Public library systems have provided free Internet access and lent movies and music for years. They have a good track record of syncing up with past technological advances, from vinyl to VHS.
"They've always had competition," says Roger Levien, a strategy consultant in Stamford, Conn., who also serves as an American Library Association fellow. "Bookstores have existed in the past. I'm sure they will find ways to adapt."
Now, the digital sphere is expanding: 82 percent of the nation's more than 16,000 public libraries have Wi-Fi - up from 37 percent four years ago, according to the American Library Association.
Since the recession hit, more people are turning to libraries to surf the Web and try out digital gadgets.
In Princeton, N.J., 44 people are waiting to borrow Kindles, a wireless reading device. Roya Karimian, 32, flipped through the preloaded e-pages of "Little Women" after two months on the waiting list.
"I had already read it, but I wanted to experience reading it on the Kindle," Karimian says.
A growing number of libraries are launching mobile websites and smart-phone applications, says Jason Griffey, author of "Mobile Technology and Libraries." No one keeps tabs of exactly how many, but a recent iPhone app search showed more than a dozen public libraries.
The Grandview Heights Public Library in suburban Columbus, Ohio, spent $4,500 - a third of what the library spent on CDs - to give patrons access to songs by artists from Beyonce to Merle Haggard using a music-downloading service called Freegal.
Online services point to technology as a cheaper means to boost circulation.
The Cuyahoga County Public Library near Cleveland laid off 41 employees and cut back on hours after its budget shrank by $10 million. But it still maintains a Twitter account and texts patrons when items are about to become overdue.
As more libraries log on to social media, their lexicon is changing, replacing "Shh!" with "LOL." In Florida, the Orange County library's Twitter feed sounds more like a frat boy than a librarian: "There's more to OCLS than just being really, really ridiculously good looking. We created an App!"
Crops of social networking sites are popping up specifically for bookworms - electronic or otherwise - and library junkies.
Jennifer Reeder, a 35-year-old mother of two in suburban Phoenix, tracks her reading stats on Goodreads.com: 12,431 pages so far this year - most of them in library books.
"When I was growing up, I always felt like a library was where I was supposed to go and like do homework," Reeder says.
Now, it's where she checks out audio books for her kids' iPods and sates her addiction to iTunes with free downloads of songs by Pink and the cast of "Glee."
Even the brick-and-mortar buildings are evolving, as libraries cater to a generation with smart phones stapled to their hands and music plugged into their ears.
Sleek study areas give off a coffee-shop vibe, while silence seekers are relegated to nooks. Self-checkout stations feel more like supermarkets, with patrons ringing up books and DVDs instead of boxes of cereal.
Libraries are designing new branches as hybrid technology centers - dedicating more space to computer labs and meeting rooms.
The Central Library in Seattle houses some 400 public computers - some of them clustered in rows with cafeteria-chic chairs, compared with 75 computers in the old building. The building opened in 2004 and looks more like Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, than the imposing stone or brick building that's come to symbolize a library.
"The traditional function of a library, of being a place where people can come to get information, to learn, to relax, to kind of lose themselves in books, is going to continue," says Tonjes, of the D.C. Public Library. "It's just not going to be constrained by physical boundaries."
---
Online:
http://twitter.com/oclslibrary
http://www.goodreads.com/
http://www.ala.org/
(This version corrects that library visitation data is from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.)
from: Associated Press
GRANDVIEW HEIGHTS, Ohio (AP) -- Libraries are tweeting, texting and launching smart-phone apps as they try to keep up with the biblio-techs - a computer-savvy class of people who consider card catalogs as vintage as typewriters. And they seem to be pulling it off.
Since libraries started rebranding themselves for the iPod generation, thousands of music geeks have downloaded free songs from library websites. And with many more bookworms waiting months to check out wireless reading devices, libraries are shrugging off the notion that the Internet shelved them alongside dusty books.
"People tend to have this antiquated version of libraries, like there's not much more inside than books and microfiche," says Hiller Goodspeed, a 22-year-old graphic designer in Orlando, Fla., who uses the Orange County Library System's iPhone app to discover foreign films.
The latest national data from the Institute of Museum and Library Services show that library visits and circulation climbed nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2008.
Since then, experts say, technology has continued to drive in-person visits, circulation and usage.
"It also brings people back to the library that might have left thinking that the library wasn't relevant for them," says Chris Tonjes, the information technology director at the public library in Washington, D.C.
Public library systems have provided free Internet access and lent movies and music for years. They have a good track record of syncing up with past technological advances, from vinyl to VHS.
"They've always had competition," says Roger Levien, a strategy consultant in Stamford, Conn., who also serves as an American Library Association fellow. "Bookstores have existed in the past. I'm sure they will find ways to adapt."
Now, the digital sphere is expanding: 82 percent of the nation's more than 16,000 public libraries have Wi-Fi - up from 37 percent four years ago, according to the American Library Association.
Since the recession hit, more people are turning to libraries to surf the Web and try out digital gadgets.
In Princeton, N.J., 44 people are waiting to borrow Kindles, a wireless reading device. Roya Karimian, 32, flipped through the preloaded e-pages of "Little Women" after two months on the waiting list.
"I had already read it, but I wanted to experience reading it on the Kindle," Karimian says.
A growing number of libraries are launching mobile websites and smart-phone applications, says Jason Griffey, author of "Mobile Technology and Libraries." No one keeps tabs of exactly how many, but a recent iPhone app search showed more than a dozen public libraries.
The Grandview Heights Public Library in suburban Columbus, Ohio, spent $4,500 - a third of what the library spent on CDs - to give patrons access to songs by artists from Beyonce to Merle Haggard using a music-downloading service called Freegal.
Online services point to technology as a cheaper means to boost circulation.
The Cuyahoga County Public Library near Cleveland laid off 41 employees and cut back on hours after its budget shrank by $10 million. But it still maintains a Twitter account and texts patrons when items are about to become overdue.
As more libraries log on to social media, their lexicon is changing, replacing "Shh!" with "LOL." In Florida, the Orange County library's Twitter feed sounds more like a frat boy than a librarian: "There's more to OCLS than just being really, really ridiculously good looking. We created an App!"
Crops of social networking sites are popping up specifically for bookworms - electronic or otherwise - and library junkies.
Jennifer Reeder, a 35-year-old mother of two in suburban Phoenix, tracks her reading stats on Goodreads.com: 12,431 pages so far this year - most of them in library books.
"When I was growing up, I always felt like a library was where I was supposed to go and like do homework," Reeder says.
Now, it's where she checks out audio books for her kids' iPods and sates her addiction to iTunes with free downloads of songs by Pink and the cast of "Glee."
Even the brick-and-mortar buildings are evolving, as libraries cater to a generation with smart phones stapled to their hands and music plugged into their ears.
Sleek study areas give off a coffee-shop vibe, while silence seekers are relegated to nooks. Self-checkout stations feel more like supermarkets, with patrons ringing up books and DVDs instead of boxes of cereal.
Libraries are designing new branches as hybrid technology centers - dedicating more space to computer labs and meeting rooms.
The Central Library in Seattle houses some 400 public computers - some of them clustered in rows with cafeteria-chic chairs, compared with 75 computers in the old building. The building opened in 2004 and looks more like Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, than the imposing stone or brick building that's come to symbolize a library.
"The traditional function of a library, of being a place where people can come to get information, to learn, to relax, to kind of lose themselves in books, is going to continue," says Tonjes, of the D.C. Public Library. "It's just not going to be constrained by physical boundaries."
---
Online:
http://twitter.com/oclslibrary
http://www.goodreads.com/
http://www.ala.org/
(This version corrects that library visitation data is from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.)
from: Associated Press
Friday, October 8, 2010
Multimedia creates the buzz at world's biggest book fair
The world's biggest book fair was inaugurated Tuesday, with an increased number of exhibitors expected to focus on the digital and multimedia sectors that are rapidly transforming the industry.
The fair expects 7,533 exhibitors from 111 countries, a three-percent increase on the previous year, the exhibition's director Juergen Boos told reporters.
"Well-told stories are the engine of the book fair and new technologies ensure one thing above all: the demand for content is increasing," he said.
Gottfried Honnefelder, president of the German publishers and booksellers association which organises the fair, said only about one percent of the 9.6-billion-euro German book market was currently made up by digital offerings.
However, he said he could see the market rising to 10 percent in the near future.
To highlight the growing importance of the digital and multimedia sectors, the fair will host a separate section - "Frankfurt Hot Spots" - devoted to the new technologies taking the book world by storm.
And British author Ken Follett is expected to present a multimedia version of his bestseller "The Pillars Of The Earth" at the fair.
As ever, this year's fair will be sprinkled with a galaxy of star names plugging their offerings. US star author Jonathan Franzen will read from his new novel "Freedom" that has wowed reviewers around the world.
Works by stars from the non-literary world are also expected in Frankfurt, including singer David Bowie, whose book "Object" features 100 items from the musician's personal life.
This year's guest of honour is Argentina, likely to be less controversial than China, which caused a flap over freedom of speech at last year's book fair.
Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle will officially open the fair at 5:00 pm (1500 GMT).
The fair is aimed at professional visitors from Wednesday to Friday before the doors are thrown open to the public at the weekend. It closes on Sunday.
from: Independent
The fair expects 7,533 exhibitors from 111 countries, a three-percent increase on the previous year, the exhibition's director Juergen Boos told reporters.
"Well-told stories are the engine of the book fair and new technologies ensure one thing above all: the demand for content is increasing," he said.
Gottfried Honnefelder, president of the German publishers and booksellers association which organises the fair, said only about one percent of the 9.6-billion-euro German book market was currently made up by digital offerings.
However, he said he could see the market rising to 10 percent in the near future.
To highlight the growing importance of the digital and multimedia sectors, the fair will host a separate section - "Frankfurt Hot Spots" - devoted to the new technologies taking the book world by storm.
And British author Ken Follett is expected to present a multimedia version of his bestseller "The Pillars Of The Earth" at the fair.
As ever, this year's fair will be sprinkled with a galaxy of star names plugging their offerings. US star author Jonathan Franzen will read from his new novel "Freedom" that has wowed reviewers around the world.
Works by stars from the non-literary world are also expected in Frankfurt, including singer David Bowie, whose book "Object" features 100 items from the musician's personal life.
This year's guest of honour is Argentina, likely to be less controversial than China, which caused a flap over freedom of speech at last year's book fair.
Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle will officially open the fair at 5:00 pm (1500 GMT).
The fair is aimed at professional visitors from Wednesday to Friday before the doors are thrown open to the public at the weekend. It closes on Sunday.
from: Independent
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel Prize for literature
by: Simon Johnson and Adam Cox
STOCKHOLM — Peruvian-born writer and one-time presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa, a chronicler of people’s struggles against authority in Latin America, won the 2010 Nobel prize for literature on Thursday.
The awarding committee said in a statement Mr. Vargas Llosa received the award “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat”.
Mr. Vargas Llosa, who made his international breakthrough with the novel The Time of the Hero in 1966, is the first Latin American winner for literature since Octavio Paz won in 1990.
His works build on his experiences of life in Peru in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Mr. Vargas Llosa ran for president of Peru in 1990 but lost to Alberto Fujimori, who ultimately had to flee the country and was subsequently convicted of various crimes.
Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Nobel committee, said he had telephoned Mr. Vargas Llosa, who was in the United States, with the news.
“He’s actually having a two-month stint there in Princeton teaching, so I was sort of embarrassed for phoning him so early. But he had been up since 5 o’clock preparing a lecture for Princeton. He was elated. He was very, very moved.”
Mr. Englund bubbled over in his praise of the writer.
“He has a number of masterpieces in narration because essentially he’s a narrator, he’s a storyteller. My goodness, what a storyteller!”
Mr. Englund characterised Mr. Vargas Llosa as one of the great authors in the Spanish-speaking world. “He is one of the persons behind the Latin-American literary boom of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and he has continued to work and expand.”
Mr. Vargas Llosa’s works are strewn with figures of power and authority. In The Feast of the Goat, a 49-year-old woman returns to the Dominican Republic, haunted by memories of her childhood when the nation was led by brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo.
The story tells of her efforts to overcome a traumatic past:
“Were you right to come back? You’ll be sorry, Urania… returning to the island you swore you’d never set foot on again…,” he writes.
“To prove to yourself you can walk along the streets of this city that is no longer yours, travel through this foreign country and not have it provoke sadness, nostalgia, hatred, bitterness, rage in you.”
Mr. Vargas Llosa, who has lectured and taught at universities in Latin America, the United States and Europe, is also a noted journalist and essayist, the committee said.
The prize of US$1.5-million was the fourth of this year’s Nobel prizes, following awards for medicine on Monday, physics on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday.
© Thomson Reuters 2010
from: National Post
 |
| Mario Vargas Llosa - credit: Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP/Getty Images |
STOCKHOLM — Peruvian-born writer and one-time presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa, a chronicler of people’s struggles against authority in Latin America, won the 2010 Nobel prize for literature on Thursday.
The awarding committee said in a statement Mr. Vargas Llosa received the award “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat”.
Mr. Vargas Llosa, who made his international breakthrough with the novel The Time of the Hero in 1966, is the first Latin American winner for literature since Octavio Paz won in 1990.
His works build on his experiences of life in Peru in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Mr. Vargas Llosa ran for president of Peru in 1990 but lost to Alberto Fujimori, who ultimately had to flee the country and was subsequently convicted of various crimes.
Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Nobel committee, said he had telephoned Mr. Vargas Llosa, who was in the United States, with the news.
“He’s actually having a two-month stint there in Princeton teaching, so I was sort of embarrassed for phoning him so early. But he had been up since 5 o’clock preparing a lecture for Princeton. He was elated. He was very, very moved.”
Mr. Englund bubbled over in his praise of the writer.
“He has a number of masterpieces in narration because essentially he’s a narrator, he’s a storyteller. My goodness, what a storyteller!”
Mr. Englund characterised Mr. Vargas Llosa as one of the great authors in the Spanish-speaking world. “He is one of the persons behind the Latin-American literary boom of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and he has continued to work and expand.”
Mr. Vargas Llosa’s works are strewn with figures of power and authority. In The Feast of the Goat, a 49-year-old woman returns to the Dominican Republic, haunted by memories of her childhood when the nation was led by brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo.
The story tells of her efforts to overcome a traumatic past:
“Were you right to come back? You’ll be sorry, Urania… returning to the island you swore you’d never set foot on again…,” he writes.
“To prove to yourself you can walk along the streets of this city that is no longer yours, travel through this foreign country and not have it provoke sadness, nostalgia, hatred, bitterness, rage in you.”
Mr. Vargas Llosa, who has lectured and taught at universities in Latin America, the United States and Europe, is also a noted journalist and essayist, the committee said.
The prize of US$1.5-million was the fourth of this year’s Nobel prizes, following awards for medicine on Monday, physics on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday.
© Thomson Reuters 2010
from: National Post
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Serialized novel delivered by an app
by: Elizabeth Weise
Best-selling authors Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear are looking back to the future. This month, they launched a story —The Mongoliad— using a 175-year-old publishing model. Their novel-as-app (or app-as-novel) is coming out in weekly, serial segments, complete with cliffhanger endings and a cheap subscription rate.
Literary luminaries such as Charles Dickens (The Pickwick Papers), Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo) and Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina) published some of their most popular works in the serial format in the 19th century.
Today, instead of reading serialized stories in magazines, readers will pay $5.99 at mongoliad.com for a six-month app that gets them a chapter a week zapped to their smart phone, iPad or computer. The creators hope to have the book available at the iTunes store in the near future.
Stephenson and Bear, along with a group of other writers, illustrators and martial artists, have embarked on a historical tale, set in 1241, about a roving band of misfits that ends up helping to beat back the Mongol hordes intent on taking Europe. The story, up to four chapters in its first month, promises to be swashbuckling enough to keep a reader's interest but intricate enough to satisfy the duo's usual readers of their historic and science fiction. It's planned to last for one year, at which point a second "volume" will begin and — gasp — the first one may even be published as a print book.
The business model is akin to the "just in time" idea behind inventory. "We're aiming for a more agile, real-time product, in which we cheaply produce small amounts of material and make it available at a very reasonable price and avoid having to take the big risks," Stephenson says.
Extras add value: A mini-encyclopedia provides links throughout the story to research and background on the period, the characters and medieval sword fighting techniques. There are even videos of fight scenes choreographed by martial artists.
About 15 people are involved in the project, including an animator, seven writers, some researchers, a videographer and a fight choreographer for the sword fights. "They'll all be paid if it starts making money," Bear says.
This isn't the only such endeavor out there. The trickle of serialized novels hitting screens large and small in the past few years, from vampire stories to mysteries, promises to become a flood. It is a big trend in Japan. The model is just beginning in the USA but looks to loom large as readers get comfortable with a format their great-grandparents knew well.
Short segments of text make sense for today's readers, says Laura Shackelford, a professor of English at the Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology, who studies digital media.
"Researchers have found that the younger generation has a much shorter attention span and tends to read in a more scanning way," she says.
Though the idea of reading a weekly update on a phone instead of a book might seem odd to people in their 30s or older, it's not at all for those in their 20s or younger. In fact, for them, sitting down to read a 200-page novel may be difficult, says Shackelford.
"It's very old, and it's very new," she says.
This latest variation is part of an ongoing reshuffling of how we read and what form we read in. Writers are trying to figure out how to get readers and make money.
In 1996, Stephen King's The Green Mile was published in six monthly paperback installments. The full novel was published in a single edition in 1997.
Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, published in 2000, first developed a cult following online as it was released in pieces, then became a bestseller when it arrived in print.
Sourcebooks in Naperville, Ill., is publishing a book titled iDrakula that's got its own app. The story by Bekka Black is told via text messages, e-mails and voice messages.
The serial fiction of the Victorian and Edwardian eras never actually went away, it just morphed into radio, films and television, says Graham Law, a professor of media studies at Waseda University in Tokyo.
The TV show Lost is a great example, Stephenson says. "They're telling a long story in a short, episodic format."
He admits that younger generations may need to be retrained to get used to cliffhangers, a story style their grandparents, who grew up on weekly serials at the movies, felt at home with. In the case of Lost, he says, "the audience didn't quite know what to do with it, they didn't want to be left hanging."
Bear says the notion of multiple writers telling a story is one Americans are very familiar with, but in a slightly different setting: Television has always used multiple writers.
Mark Teppo works as The Mongoliad's story editor. "On TV, he'd be called a 'show runner,' " Bear says.
None of this is going to make publishing go away, says Stephenson, who's got 10 well-regarded print novels to his name.
"It's become clear to us that the skills and the aptitudes of people in the publishing industry ought to translate pretty well into this model. Nobody's going to have the same job title, nobody's going to get their paycheck from the same source, so it's going to feel like a huge disruption. But what those people do for a living is they recognize work that has a potential to reach an audience, they cultivate a relationship with a network of people who care about stories and literature, they manage projects, they help writers get the work out.
"Very little of what editors and agents do is really about physically putting ink on paper and shipping it around the world, it's about intangible skills that are as valuable as ever," he says.
Another thing the Mongoliad creators like is that they can change things and make them better as they go. "You may find that a new version of Chapter 3 has been downloaded to your device while you were sleeping," Stephenson says.
"That can preserve us from the trap that serial novels always used to fall into, where they'd say, 'If only I could go back to Chapter 1 and change this one thing!' Think of it: Little Nell would still be alive," Bear says of Dickens' main character in The Old Curiosity Shop, a book published in serial form from 1840 to 1841.
This makes for a new form of writing, Stephenson says. "In the old days, you had this concept of 'You start off with rough drafts, and you do more drafts, and it gets better and better and approaches this end state.' That's an artifact of how printing presses worked. We wouldn't have settled on that production process if Gutenberg had invented the iPad instead of movable type."
from: USA Today
Best-selling authors Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear are looking back to the future. This month, they launched a story —The Mongoliad— using a 175-year-old publishing model. Their novel-as-app (or app-as-novel) is coming out in weekly, serial segments, complete with cliffhanger endings and a cheap subscription rate.
Literary luminaries such as Charles Dickens (The Pickwick Papers), Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo) and Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina) published some of their most popular works in the serial format in the 19th century.
Today, instead of reading serialized stories in magazines, readers will pay $5.99 at mongoliad.com for a six-month app that gets them a chapter a week zapped to their smart phone, iPad or computer. The creators hope to have the book available at the iTunes store in the near future.
Stephenson and Bear, along with a group of other writers, illustrators and martial artists, have embarked on a historical tale, set in 1241, about a roving band of misfits that ends up helping to beat back the Mongol hordes intent on taking Europe. The story, up to four chapters in its first month, promises to be swashbuckling enough to keep a reader's interest but intricate enough to satisfy the duo's usual readers of their historic and science fiction. It's planned to last for one year, at which point a second "volume" will begin and — gasp — the first one may even be published as a print book.
The business model is akin to the "just in time" idea behind inventory. "We're aiming for a more agile, real-time product, in which we cheaply produce small amounts of material and make it available at a very reasonable price and avoid having to take the big risks," Stephenson says.
Extras add value: A mini-encyclopedia provides links throughout the story to research and background on the period, the characters and medieval sword fighting techniques. There are even videos of fight scenes choreographed by martial artists.
About 15 people are involved in the project, including an animator, seven writers, some researchers, a videographer and a fight choreographer for the sword fights. "They'll all be paid if it starts making money," Bear says.
This isn't the only such endeavor out there. The trickle of serialized novels hitting screens large and small in the past few years, from vampire stories to mysteries, promises to become a flood. It is a big trend in Japan. The model is just beginning in the USA but looks to loom large as readers get comfortable with a format their great-grandparents knew well.
Short segments of text make sense for today's readers, says Laura Shackelford, a professor of English at the Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology, who studies digital media.
"Researchers have found that the younger generation has a much shorter attention span and tends to read in a more scanning way," she says.
Though the idea of reading a weekly update on a phone instead of a book might seem odd to people in their 30s or older, it's not at all for those in their 20s or younger. In fact, for them, sitting down to read a 200-page novel may be difficult, says Shackelford.
"It's very old, and it's very new," she says.
This latest variation is part of an ongoing reshuffling of how we read and what form we read in. Writers are trying to figure out how to get readers and make money.
In 1996, Stephen King's The Green Mile was published in six monthly paperback installments. The full novel was published in a single edition in 1997.
Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, published in 2000, first developed a cult following online as it was released in pieces, then became a bestseller when it arrived in print.
Sourcebooks in Naperville, Ill., is publishing a book titled iDrakula that's got its own app. The story by Bekka Black is told via text messages, e-mails and voice messages.
The serial fiction of the Victorian and Edwardian eras never actually went away, it just morphed into radio, films and television, says Graham Law, a professor of media studies at Waseda University in Tokyo.
The TV show Lost is a great example, Stephenson says. "They're telling a long story in a short, episodic format."
He admits that younger generations may need to be retrained to get used to cliffhangers, a story style their grandparents, who grew up on weekly serials at the movies, felt at home with. In the case of Lost, he says, "the audience didn't quite know what to do with it, they didn't want to be left hanging."
Bear says the notion of multiple writers telling a story is one Americans are very familiar with, but in a slightly different setting: Television has always used multiple writers.
Mark Teppo works as The Mongoliad's story editor. "On TV, he'd be called a 'show runner,' " Bear says.
None of this is going to make publishing go away, says Stephenson, who's got 10 well-regarded print novels to his name.
"It's become clear to us that the skills and the aptitudes of people in the publishing industry ought to translate pretty well into this model. Nobody's going to have the same job title, nobody's going to get their paycheck from the same source, so it's going to feel like a huge disruption. But what those people do for a living is they recognize work that has a potential to reach an audience, they cultivate a relationship with a network of people who care about stories and literature, they manage projects, they help writers get the work out.
"Very little of what editors and agents do is really about physically putting ink on paper and shipping it around the world, it's about intangible skills that are as valuable as ever," he says.
Another thing the Mongoliad creators like is that they can change things and make them better as they go. "You may find that a new version of Chapter 3 has been downloaded to your device while you were sleeping," Stephenson says.
"That can preserve us from the trap that serial novels always used to fall into, where they'd say, 'If only I could go back to Chapter 1 and change this one thing!' Think of it: Little Nell would still be alive," Bear says of Dickens' main character in The Old Curiosity Shop, a book published in serial form from 1840 to 1841.
This makes for a new form of writing, Stephenson says. "In the old days, you had this concept of 'You start off with rough drafts, and you do more drafts, and it gets better and better and approaches this end state.' That's an artifact of how printing presses worked. We wouldn't have settled on that production process if Gutenberg had invented the iPad instead of movable type."
from: USA Today
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Jonathan Franzen's book Freedom suffers UK recall
More than 8,000 copies of the American author's latest opus have been recalled due to hundreds of typesetting errors.
by: Rowenna Davis and Alison Flood
The American author Jonathan Franzen might justly be called a perfectionist: his latest opus, Freedom, took nine years of painstaking effort to complete inside a spartan writing studio – and is now being widely acclaimed as a modern masterpiece.
So it is particularly unfortunate that, thanks to an apparent mistake by his typesetters, the version published in Britain has been found to be littered with errors.
In a highly embarrassing move, publishers HarperCollins were today forced to offer to exchange thousands of copies after Franzen revealed that the UK edition of a novel dubbed "the book of the century" is based on an early draft manuscript, and contains hundreds of mistakes in spelling, grammar and characterisation.
More than 8,000 copies of the faulty first edition have been sold since it was published last week, with 80,000 hardbacks of the book in print. The mistakes were discovered yesterday.
Franzen told the Guardian that the book, the follow-up to 2001's Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Corrections, contained "a couple of hundred differences at the level of word and sentence and fact" as well as "small but significant changes to the characterisations of Jessica and Lalitha" – the daughter and the assistant of one of the novel's central characters.
HarperCollins, who say the errors are mainly typographical, have launched a hurried operation to let purchasers exchange their faulty copy via bookshops or pre-paid post. The new version is being rushed through the printers over the weekend and will be available early next week.
"My main interest is in getting the word out that 4th Estate is starting a free exchange programme," said Franzen, stressing the error was not the publisher's.
HarperCollins, which runs the 4th Estate imprint, said the crucial mistake happened when a small Scottish typesetter, Palimpsest, sent "the last but one version" of the book file to the printers. Palimpsest was not available for comment.
"It was just a mistake that happened," said Siobhan Kenny, director of communications for HarperCollins UK. "It's too early to say whether action will be taken against the typesetters, but we will still use them. We just want to make sure that all the fans can read the correct version of the books as soon as possible," she said.
"The US version of the book is fine, so is the audiobook and the ebook. These aren't errors that affect the plot, they are typographic errors. But obviously Franzen spent 10 years writing this book and he wants everything to be read exactly as he wrote it. He is most concerned about his real fans and he wants to give them the book as he wants it."
HarperCollins UK has set up a "Freedom recall hotline" for customers who have purchased a copy of the mistake-ridden book. A staff member at the hotline described the situation as "quite frantic".
HarperCollins is not planning a full scale recall of the 80,000 hardback copies in bookshops for logistical reasons. Such a print run would have cost the publisher around £70,000, estimated fellow publisher John Blake, with distribution and other costs ramping the amount up to around £100,000. "My heart bleeds for them on every level," he said.
A spokesman for the Waterstone's chain of bookshops, Jon Howells agreed. "My heart goes out to whoever pressed the wrong button," he said, adding that the bookseller had not, as yet, received any complaints about faulty copies from its customers. "We've not been asked to pull it from the shelves by the publisher, so we won't," he said, predicting that interest in the first edition could rocket following the news about its errors.
"I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people start popping in to pick one up because they want to get the sequel to The Corrections without the corrections," he said. "Maybe it'll make it an interesting collector's item."
But rare book dealer Rick Gekoski said would-be investors would be disappointed. "If it wasn't such a big print run the rare book trade would love this; it's a shame because recalled books are a big thing in rare books but with 80,000 copies out there, there will be zero premium," he said. "I wouldn't give you 50p extra."
Poet and author Blake Morrison, who in his review of Freedom for the Guardian called Franzen the best chronicler of the American middle classes following John Updike's death, said he had not spotted any errors.
"That's embarrassing to admit – except that I know from my own experience how when you're correcting a final draft or page proofs you often make changes that are immensely important to you, even if no one else is likely to spot them," he said.
"So I sympathise with Franzen, despite the fact that the differences between the text I read and the one he approved are probably minuscule."
Howells agreed. "I didn't think there was anything wrong with it – it's bloody fantastic," he said.
from: Guardian
by: Rowenna Davis and Alison Flood
The American author Jonathan Franzen might justly be called a perfectionist: his latest opus, Freedom, took nine years of painstaking effort to complete inside a spartan writing studio – and is now being widely acclaimed as a modern masterpiece.
So it is particularly unfortunate that, thanks to an apparent mistake by his typesetters, the version published in Britain has been found to be littered with errors.
In a highly embarrassing move, publishers HarperCollins were today forced to offer to exchange thousands of copies after Franzen revealed that the UK edition of a novel dubbed "the book of the century" is based on an early draft manuscript, and contains hundreds of mistakes in spelling, grammar and characterisation.
More than 8,000 copies of the faulty first edition have been sold since it was published last week, with 80,000 hardbacks of the book in print. The mistakes were discovered yesterday.
Franzen told the Guardian that the book, the follow-up to 2001's Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Corrections, contained "a couple of hundred differences at the level of word and sentence and fact" as well as "small but significant changes to the characterisations of Jessica and Lalitha" – the daughter and the assistant of one of the novel's central characters.
HarperCollins, who say the errors are mainly typographical, have launched a hurried operation to let purchasers exchange their faulty copy via bookshops or pre-paid post. The new version is being rushed through the printers over the weekend and will be available early next week.
"My main interest is in getting the word out that 4th Estate is starting a free exchange programme," said Franzen, stressing the error was not the publisher's.
HarperCollins, which runs the 4th Estate imprint, said the crucial mistake happened when a small Scottish typesetter, Palimpsest, sent "the last but one version" of the book file to the printers. Palimpsest was not available for comment.
"It was just a mistake that happened," said Siobhan Kenny, director of communications for HarperCollins UK. "It's too early to say whether action will be taken against the typesetters, but we will still use them. We just want to make sure that all the fans can read the correct version of the books as soon as possible," she said.
"The US version of the book is fine, so is the audiobook and the ebook. These aren't errors that affect the plot, they are typographic errors. But obviously Franzen spent 10 years writing this book and he wants everything to be read exactly as he wrote it. He is most concerned about his real fans and he wants to give them the book as he wants it."
HarperCollins UK has set up a "Freedom recall hotline" for customers who have purchased a copy of the mistake-ridden book. A staff member at the hotline described the situation as "quite frantic".
HarperCollins is not planning a full scale recall of the 80,000 hardback copies in bookshops for logistical reasons. Such a print run would have cost the publisher around £70,000, estimated fellow publisher John Blake, with distribution and other costs ramping the amount up to around £100,000. "My heart bleeds for them on every level," he said.
A spokesman for the Waterstone's chain of bookshops, Jon Howells agreed. "My heart goes out to whoever pressed the wrong button," he said, adding that the bookseller had not, as yet, received any complaints about faulty copies from its customers. "We've not been asked to pull it from the shelves by the publisher, so we won't," he said, predicting that interest in the first edition could rocket following the news about its errors.
"I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people start popping in to pick one up because they want to get the sequel to The Corrections without the corrections," he said. "Maybe it'll make it an interesting collector's item."
But rare book dealer Rick Gekoski said would-be investors would be disappointed. "If it wasn't such a big print run the rare book trade would love this; it's a shame because recalled books are a big thing in rare books but with 80,000 copies out there, there will be zero premium," he said. "I wouldn't give you 50p extra."
Poet and author Blake Morrison, who in his review of Freedom for the Guardian called Franzen the best chronicler of the American middle classes following John Updike's death, said he had not spotted any errors.
"That's embarrassing to admit – except that I know from my own experience how when you're correcting a final draft or page proofs you often make changes that are immensely important to you, even if no one else is likely to spot them," he said.
"So I sympathise with Franzen, despite the fact that the differences between the text I read and the one he approved are probably minuscule."
Howells agreed. "I didn't think there was anything wrong with it – it's bloody fantastic," he said.
from: Guardian
Monday, October 4, 2010
New books jump off the page with digital enhancements
by: Bob MinzesheimerWhen The Search for WondLa, the start of a fantasy trilogy for kids starring a 12-year-old girl raised by a robot on an alien planet, is published today, it will include three symbols that link to digital maps of the girl's quest for other humans.
Readers with a webcam can see 3-D interactive maps of the girl's search. Readers without a webcam but access to the Internet can link to a regular map and a video.
WondLa (Simon & Schuster, $17.99) is one of the new "enhanced" hybrids in the divide between e-books (about 8% of the book market, but its fastest-growing segment) and books still made out of paper and ink.
Author/illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi initially balked when his publisher suggested that digital elements be added to WondLa, fearing it would be "gimmicky."
But DiTerlizzi, co-author of the popular Spiderwick Chronicles series that became a 2008 movie, says he changed his mind when he saw that digital "augmented reality" could "enhance the story and not take anything away."
His is far from the only print book employing digital tricks.
Jessica Watson's True Spirit: The True Story of a 16-Year-Old Australian Who Sailed Solo, Nonstop, and Unassisted Around the World (Atria, $16, paperback original) includes 18 tags or bar codes that let readers with smartphones watch parts of Watson's video diary of her voyage. (Readers without smartphones can find the videos on the Internet.)
"It's the perfect marriage of form and function," says publisher Judith Curr. "You read Jessica's description of what she was doing on a particular day in her journey, then watch her video from that day."
Watson's videos are already on YouTube, but Curr says the book's codes make them easier to find.
Atria plans to use the same technology in books by singing sensation Susan Boyle (The Woman I Was Born to Be, Oct. 12) and Olympic skater Apolo Ohno (Zero Regrets, Oct. 26).
She says her students were "mesmerized" when DiTerlizzi previewed his book and its digital maps last spring. But she worries about future technical support: "The book exists for years, but the online element disappears."
Michael Norris, a publishing analyst for Simba, a market research firm, applauds such experiments but adds, "The books still need to stand as strong, complete products without the add-ons, because the add-ons may not last forever."
from: USA Today
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