Even wired tribal libraries are lagging behind on tech

by: Nancy Scola

As much as some places in the United States have struggled to get good, affordable, accessible Internet connectivity, one type of spot on the map has struggled even more than most: tribal lands. Broadband deployment in the whole of the U.S. stands at about 65 percent, the Federal Communications Commission found a few years ago, but on tribal lands the official rate is just 10 percent, with "anecdotal evidence suggest[ing] that actual usage rates may be as low as 5 to 8 percent."

One somewhat bright sign in all this, as is the case in so many challenged communities, is libraries. Where solid Internet connections are difficult to come by, public libraries often are a lifesaver. A new report from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums finds that some 89 percent of tribal libraries are providing some kind of public Internet access, which compares moderately well with the 100 percent of all public libraries in the United States that do so.

Still, dig a bit into the data, and problems re-emerge. Even if tribal libraries are providing Internet connectivity, they are lagging behind their non-tribal counterparts in providing the tools to make use of it and the services that ride on top of it, as the chart above shows. "Tribal libraries," the report finds, "are less well equipped than mainstream public libraries to help their communities meet essential digital literacy, digital inclusion, and digital citizenship goals."


Limit the comparison to just other rural libraries, and tribal libraries still lag. While some 98 percent of rural libraries, for example, offer access to electronic databases such as academic journal archives, just 46 percent of tribal libraries do.

The study is a reminder that 'being online' isn't a binary state, something that often gets overlooked in our broadband data.

from: Washington Post

Massive book fair coming to Toronto this fall

by: Derek Flack

Bibliophiles rejoice -- a literary extravaganza is on its way to Toronto this fall. The inaugural Inspire! Toronto International Book Fair will take place November 13-16 at the Metro Convention Centre with over 400 authors will on hand, including such heavyweights as Margaret Atwood (but of course), William Gibson, Ann Rice, and Kathy Reichs. Coming just after the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors, the idea with Inspire! is to make the fair as diverse as possible.

Along with the literary highlights, there will sections and stages devoted to culinary writing (with Elizabeth Baird and Rose Rose Reisman in attendance), children's books, romance novels, and memoirs. The more generic diversity and the fair features, the more people it will interest, so the thinking goes. And for industry types and would-be novelists, there's a host of workshops to attend on everything from securing an agent to writing a cookbook. There will also be a strong focus on Native Canadian writers at the event, with writers like Waubgeshig Rice on hand.

The fair will be capped off with Canada's Self-Publishing Awards, which will dole out $50,000 in prizes. The winner of the best self-published book in three categories (adult, young adult and children) will each receive $3,000. Tickets for the event are $15.

from: Blog TO

How Target is Infiltrating Public Schools to Build Customers for Life

"I want to be able to do my job without feeling subservient to corporate power," says this teacher-librarian.

by: Rachel Cloues

I am the teacher-librarian in one of two San Francisco school libraries remodeled by the big-box chain Target, in partnership with the Heart of America Foundation (HOA). HOA, which coordinates corporate volunteer programs focused on literacy, provides a few different options, including the one Target picked: the READesign® Library Makeover Program. On its website, HOA promises to handle all the details for the sponsoring partner, making the experience simple but meaningful: “As soon as we know your desired market, we do the rest.”

About 200 schools across the country have received a Target Library Makeover since 2007 and, judging by the photos available online, the libraries all look similar to the one at my school. Like those other libraries, The Story of Wal-Mart, The Story of Starbucks, and The Story of McDonald’s are shelved with the nonfiction as part of the donated corporate-themed Built for Success series for children. Our bright, cheery elementary school library does not have red and white bulls-eyes on the walls, however, unlike the Target-sponsored libraries I saw online. A visitor might not guess Target had anything to do with the remodeling, though the painted stripes on one wall look slightly big-box store-ish, if you ask me. The lack of Target logos in our library is no oversight; it is the result of tough battles fought at the district administrative level and a school district with an unusually firm anti-branding policy.

Not that the students weren’t branded.

On the second day of school that fall, as the Target School Library Makeover began, two famous NASCAR drivers arrived at my school with their Target-sponsored race car, fully covered in red and white bulls-eyes. A “reading assembly” was held for the entire school on the play yard (a customized kickoff event is one of the options HOA offers its corporate partners as part of the makeover program). The NASCAR celebrities read a picture book to the students and then posed for pictures with each class in front of the race car. Some school district administrators attended this assembly, along with a sea of red-shirted Target employee volunteers. The district official with the challenging job of upholding the anti-branding policy was also there, and he told us to flip over the 250 red Target stadium cushions for the children so that the bulls-eye logo faced down. It was a valiant effort but, in the midst of the red tents, the race car, the banners, the stage, and the many red Target shirts, having the cushions face down (for the few minutes they remained so) felt inconsequential.

This event was so exciting, fun, and out of the norm for the students that it clearly cemented a favorable impression of Target in their minds. Students talked and wrote about Target for the rest of the year. That first week of school, each child took home a bright red book bag with a giant bulls-eye on it—full of free books marked with Target stickers. There were free groceries for the families from the local food bank, distributed in red Target shopping bags. I overheard children begging their parents to take them to Target. One mother told me that her 1st grader had arrived home from school after the NASCAR event and announced, “The guy said they wanted you to buy stuff at Target!” Things that have power in the world leave an impression, especially on children. That red and white bulls-eye was a presence in our school for the entire year, even without being painted on the library walls.

Targetizing San Francisco

Our school had a library before Target moved into San Francisco, and it wasn’t the worst-looking library in the district. However, the school fit a certain profile and was selected from among several applications submitted by the school district to receive the $150,000 makeover. Our library was closed for the first three months of school as the space was cleared out and remodeled. This included fresh paint on the walls, colorful marmoleum flooring, pine bookshelves, new books, a big circulation desk, tables, chairs, beanbags, and 22 iPads in a mobile charging cart. The new library was ready at the end of October, and opened with much fanfare and hoopla. Why wasn’t the remodel scheduled for the summer months, when our school would be closed anyway? As the new librarian stepping in, I naïvely asked this question. That’s when I learned that the city of San Francisco was in the process of getting its first Target store—also scheduled to open in October. Not a coincidence.

Target has made its way into San Francisco, a famously difficult city for big-box stores and chain restaurants to open up shop. I have noticed Target sponsorship logos on announcements for many major city events: free concerts, family days at museums, children’s theater, and summer programming at the public libraries. Target appears to be “giving back to the community,” which may have been part of the deal. In the meantime, they opened up a second store in the city—and one more school was selected to receive a Target School Library Makeover, coinciding with that store’s grand opening. The problem is that the lines are blurry when it comes to giving back and advertising. And when it comes to anything that hints at advertising to children in public schools, and the related and bigger issues of corporate control in the public arena, I have strong opinions.

Years ago when I taught at a school in Beaverton, Oregon, my class was selected to be part of a new fitness “partnership” with Nike, and I had some resolute—and at points, unpopular—criticisms of that program (which I wrote about in a Rethinking Schools article, “My Year with Nike”). Nike blatantly promoted their products to my school’s 4th graders that year in a successful example of corporate branding. Similarly, Target’s implicit agenda of building a customer base in San Francisco is inappropriate inside a public school, among young children who are vulnerable and already overexposed to commercial media. The day of the opening ceremony, the library was decked out with Target banners. As children and their families were funneled through after school, one Target representative looked at me over the children’s heads and offhandedly remarked, “They’ll be Target shoppers forever now, you watch!”

Who Is Choosing Children’s Literature?

It’s not only the shameless advertising that I have a problem with. Two thousand new library books come as a package deal with the READesign® Library Makeover Program, a collection that is preselected by HOA. My predecessor, the credentialed and experienced teacher-librarian then at our school, was offered the opportunity to choose only about 200 of the titles. As a result, most of the books we received do not reflect the culture or home language of the majority of the school community. Teacher-librarians spend a lot of time reviewing and selecting the best possible books for their school libraries, generally high-quality and high-interest fiction and nonfiction that has been reviewed by professional journals, won literary awards, and matches the curriculum and mission of the school. The most effective libraries—like the most effective classrooms—do not use one-size-fits-all materials.

Eighty percent of the students at our bilingual school are Latina/o, yet only a handful of the books from the Target makeover came in Spanish. Most of the picture books are not high-quality literature, and very few of them depict people of color as major characters. A set of library books for parents also came with the makeover. A nice idea, perhaps, but almost every book portrays a smiling white man or white woman on the cover; titles include Mommy Millionaire, The Six-Day Financial Makeover, The Smart Cookies’ Guide to Making More Dough, and Simple Solutions for Families in the Fast Lane. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that many of the books Target gave our school community support a consumerist vision of the world. Most of these 200 parent books (with only a few in Spanish) are not only inappropriate, but also offensive in a school where more than 80 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and parents juggle multiple jobs to keep their families afloat in a city with the highest rents in the nation.

Although the teacher librarian’s input was considered to some degree during the initial planning process with Target and HOA, the omission of a librarian’s perspective and involvement during the makeover process was not only problematic, it was insulting. The nadir for me came the day of the opening ceremony, when someone arrived dressed up as the Target mascot—a white bull terrier named Bullseye—and sat for the duration of the Target-focused program in my (the teacher-librarian’s) new reading chair. A select group of 5th-grade students, those with their media release forms signed, sat on the carpet in front of the dog caricature. More than 150 Target volunteers and representatives, the 5th-grade teacher, the press, and those of us who are not classroom teachers watched a slideshow with sentimental music showing the Target Library Makeover process and the volunteers helping our school. Then the Target officials, the HOA co-founder, and the district superintendent all spoke. They cut the symbolic red ribbon and the principal said a few words. But the librarians who were there, including our supervising district librarian, sat at the edge of the room, unrecognized and unnoticed. Libraries need librarians, and it felt wrong—but not unexpected—to be completely excluded from the corporate-planned opening event for our newly remodeled Target library. As with the Nike experience in Beaverton, I was never asked by Target or HOA to evaluate the program or provide any feedback about the process. Nor was our district library office.

Makeover or Takeover?

Ultimately, when corporations appropriate aspects of our mission for their own purposes in the public schools, it diverts attention away from their advertising motive and leaves a misleading impression of magnanimity. In this era of underfunding for schools, it is easy to see how this happens. It is hard to refuse $150,000, no matter what strings are attached. My school, like most others, doesn’t have that kind of money lying around. Even if it did, chances are good that extra funds would not be put toward remodeling the library. But this is the catch: If solid, adequate, and long-term public funding for schools is not available, it sets up the opportunity for corporations to provide for schools instead, on their own terms, and in a disturbingly patronizing way. I cringe to think that I went along with giving Target the power to sit in my teacher’s chair, to choose the books for our library, to be such a large part of what children learned that year. Our school got a nice-looking library and a set of iPads, but at a cost with which I am not comfortable.

It is also hard for me to ignore the haunting irony of giant corporations that, in order to produce inexpensive products (purchased by low-income families like those in my school community), exploit workers overseas and in this country through non-living wages, anti-union policies, and sometimes dangerous working conditions. And then these same corporations “give back” to the low-income communities here in the United States, expecting—and often receiving—accolades.

According to figures from Target’s 2012 Annual Report (available online), what our school’s library makeover cost Target is roughly equal to the profit that rolls into that corporation every 30 minutes. For Target, this kind of “charity” project is a great deal—they get all the goodwill of helping the city, they enroll hundreds of new customers, and it costs them relatively nothing. Even if the financial power dynamics weren’t so outrageously unbalanced, struggling schools and big corporations have incompatible goals: Corporations strive to generate profits, schools strive to educate students. This makes a relationship between the two inherently problematic, and the financial inequality puts educators in a disadvantaged position. At one meeting I attended with Target representatives and school district officials, someone from Target exclaimed, “The San Francisco school district has finally been Targetized!”

I am proud to work in a school district with an anti-branding policy, and I appreciate the hard work that went into ensuring our library has no bulls-eyes on the walls or on books. But I see now that, although a policy gives people tools to work with, it does not in itself defend against corporate branding or corporate sway. The schools in San Francisco may be logo-free, but the influence Target had on our school community for the first year their new store was open is indisputable. In some ways, I think there may not have been any resistance to the Target School Library Makeover because of the policy. Other than some eye-rolling and a few side comments here and there, we all accepted the Trojan horse gift from Target because it felt relatively safe, and because it’s hard to challenge a gift when you don’t have everything you need.

Of course, this story is not just about Target. It is an example of what is happening to our public commons as a result of a broader, long-term assault. For me, the library makeover experience highlights the importance of ensuring stable funding for public schools so that educators and districts do not feel compelled to accept or rely on “gifts.” When corporate ideology infiltrates the curriculum, the culture, and the very architecture of public schools, it facilitates privatization and undermines democracy. I want to be able to do my job without feeling subservient to corporate power.

My son will start kindergarten soon, and for the first time I feel the weight of these issues as a teacher and as a parent. I want my son to come home from school telling me what he has learned about whales or poems or the water cycle, not about Target’s mascot Bullseye or where we should shop.

Rachel Cloues is a school librarian in San Francisco. Her articles are included in a number of Rethinking Schools books, including Rethinking Popular Culture and Media and Rethinking Elementary Education.

from: Alternet

Beyond Braille: 3-D Printed Books For The Blind

by: Vignesh Ramachandran

Now here's something Helen Keller couldn't have dreamed up: the picture book Goodnight Moon, but with all the pictures — the mittens and the kittens, the socks and clock, the mouse and little house — come to life in sculptural 3-D.

Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder already have imagined it. And they, along with others in the Tactile Picture Books Project, have made it — as well as 3-D printed versions of Harold and the Purple Crayon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.


Tactile books for little readers have long existed, of course, with swatches of felt and textured patches perfect for small fingertips to graze over. And other organizations, like the American Printing House for the Blind and the National Braille Press, are also exploring the tactile-books space.

But the Tactile Picture Books Project takes touch books to a new level, courtesy of 3-D printing. The emerging technology opens up the possibility of fast, customizable, sculptured versions of 2-D books. One eventual goal: to allow parents to snap a photo of a 2-D book page, send it to the printer and — voila! — get a 3-D version of the same. Another: to develop a library of graphics that can be printed on the fly.

There's a long way to go, in terms of feasibility, says Abigale Stangl, one of the researchers. But she says it's well worth it. The more a visually impaired child explores her world with touch, the more capable she becomes, Stangl says.

"Our focus is really looking at children who are in the stages of emergent literacy ... and how can parents help create an experience to help children understand that books contain knowledge and develop a comfort with feeling books and feeling the environment," says Stangl.

But how to tell if a child is really engaging with tactile books? Stangl, who also volunteers at a school for the visually impaired in Denver, says the team is exploring different ways of testing engagement. Sensors might detect how long a child is touching the page and whether that equates to attention, or capturing the interaction between the child and parent.

Sounds like true universal design: Little is more sacred across cultures than a good bedtime story.

Vignesh Ramachandran is a tech buff and journalist working in the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow him on Twitter: @VigneshR

from: NPR

Custom Library Book Bikes Roll Out Across US

Libraries from Cleveland to Seattle have adopted special bike programs to carry books and services around town with old-fashioned pedal power
by: Chris Francis

In Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where winter temperatures reached a record low of –11°F the first week of January 2014, many bicyclists would have likely opted to drive. But for one librarian and avid bike rider, the weather was no obstacle for his commitment to his library’s book bike program.

“We were lucky with the weather, really,” Eric Litschel, adult services associate at Cleveland Heights–University Heights Public Library (CHUHPL), tells American Libraries. “The worst day I rode was probably a little over 10 degrees.”

Sam Lapides, special projects coordinator at CHUHPL, says the library’s Book Bike program, initiated in spring 2013, was supposed to run for only spring, summer, and fall. But the zeal of participants like Litschel made it a successful yearlong program.

Beginning as a pilot in which volunteers and staff rode a custom-made Haley cargo tricycle, loaded with books to give away at local events and facilities, Book Bike is evolving into an extension of the checkout desk. Riders now carry circulating materials to nearby John Carroll University, where people can check out CHUHPL materials using software it shares with the university library. Book Bike riders also carry a tablet with which they can showcase library services and materials, but plans are in motion to turn the tablet into a full-fledged circulation device with OverDrive.  

CHUHPL’s Book Bike program is modeled after a similar one started by Pima County (Ariz.) Public Library (PCPL) in 2012. Also supplied with a custom Haley tricycle, PCPL’s Bookbike program is devoted to simply giving books away.

“We just kind of jumped into it,” says Karen Greene, adult services librarian and Bookbike coordinator at PCPL, who says the library did not have a trial run or pilot program before launching. Simplicity has meant great success. With donations arriving from individuals and a local bookstore, Bookbike gave away more than 12,000 books in 2013. “One of my dreams is world domination by Bookbike,” Greene jokes.

The genesis for reference librarian Zac Laugheed’s book bike program at Denver Public Library (DPL) came while he was in library school. “Zac made a quip to a professor who was researching mobile library services, and said, ‘When I come to your class, I’m a bookmobile on a bike,’” Chris Henning, marketing and public relations manager at DPL, tells AL, referring to the heavy reading load. “The class laughed and moved on, but he kept thinking about the idea.”

In 2013, that idea developed into DPL Connect, a bike-powered service that circulates books; provides a wireless hotspot; and assists with research, ebook downloads, and library card sign-ups. For now, the entire program is run by Laugheed.

At Seattle Public Library (SPL), staff riders of Books on Bikes—also started in 2013—travel to city events and facilities using a specially made trailer hitched to their personal bikes, with which riders can provide all services except accepting returns and overdue fines. The trailer carries 75 items at a time from the program’s collection of 400 titles; provides a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot to both patrons and the tablet-carrying rider; and is not mistaken for an ice cream freezer—an issue cited by both CHUHPL and PCPL.

“Seattle has a very strong and rich bike culture, and I wanted to find a way to tap into that while thinking about a way to make library services more nimble,” says Jared Mills, Montlake branch librarian and creator of the Books on Bikes program.

Funding

Funding sources for these projects vary. CHUHPL and PCPL sought outside sources for their custom tricycles, each costing just under $2,000, with CHUHPL receiving a donation from its Friends group and PCPL receiving a grant from the Arizona state library system. Both programs operate with help from librarians and volunteers.

SPL subsidized its program through an internal innovation fund, covering the $3,500 book collection, the $1,000 trailer, and its $200 promotional banner mounted on the trailer’s roof. The program is staffed by 11 librarians and bicycling paraprofessionals.

DPL took a similar route, funding its program with an internal Risky Businesschallenge—a way to encourage staff to develop innovative ideas. Pedal Positive, a small Colorado-based custom bicycle company, created a prototype tricycle that Laugheed helped design.

How to get started

Lapides of CHUHPL advises librarians interested in starting similar programs to first consider a community’s physical space. Are roads bike friendly—especially if your cyclists will be burdened with a heavy stash of books? He suggests contacting local cycling clubs or advocacy groups to find volunteers. CHUHPL’s Book Bike program owes its ability to venture out into the community—often four times a month—to a core group of volunteer riders from the local Heights Bicycle Coalition.

But even if a program has riders, figuring what the program can do may remain a challenge. Laugheed lauded the benefits of lending circulating materials wherever he goes. Achieving this required DPL’s tech team to set his laptop up with a remote connection to the library’s Polaris database.

Another consideration is training, especially in the case of custom-made tricycles. CHUHPL staffers went so far as to create an obstacle course in the library’s empty parking lot to give volunteers a feel for the unusual bike.

“The real gauntlet is just riding around the city,” Litschel says. “It’s almost like a wild animal; you need to get to know its tendencies.”

PCPL’s Greene provides this piece of advice: “Do it. It’s totally fun, people love it, you will interact with people who have not been in the library for years and get them interested in the library again. It’s great publicity, because everyone falls in love with it.”

CHRIS FRANCIS is the former editorial intern at American Libraries.

from: American Libraries

Purdue Opens Amazon-Branded E-Store

As the start of the fall semester nears, the college bookstore market is heating up with the launch of a second Amazon co-branded online school store, at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

The Purdue Student Store on Amazon, which will be the first to offer staffed on-campus pickup and drop off services, opened online on Tuesday, August 12. The pickup location for the online store will open in early 2015. University of California, Davis, tested the first Amazon co-branded university program last fall.

For Purdue president Mitch Daniels, the Amazon store is “another step” to make college education more affordable. Books, he noted, are the third largest expense for students. The university already has a three-year tuition freeze and dropped the cost of room-and-board by 5% for two years in a row. “With the pressure on college campuses to reduce costs, this new way of doing business has the potential to change the book-buying landscape for students and their families,” he said.

Students can buy or rent new and used print textbooks as well as Kindle eTextbooks through the Purdue Student Store on Amazon. Students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of Purdue can also enter the online store and shop for books and other merchandise available on Amazon. Amazon will return a percentage of eligible sales on the student store to Purdue.

Early next year, Purdue students will also be eligible for free one-day shipping on Purdue textbooks shipped to the West Lafayette campus area. Amazon Student members at Purdue will also be eligible for free one-day shipping hundred of thousands of other products shipped to the campus pickup location. The Amazon Student membership program was created to enable college students especially to get free two-day shipping for six months, and then 50% off Amazon Prime.

from: Publisher's Weekly

Harvard’s Copyright First Responders to the Rescue

by: Lisa Peet

While most academic librarians are familiar with the basics of copyright law, the questions they’re asked are getting more complex. Issues of fair use and open access, MOOCs and repositories, and the push to digitize mean that students and faculty need more guidance on copyright matters than ever. This spring Kyle K. Courtney, Harvard University’s copyright advisor, brought together a pilot group of librarians known as Copyright First Responders (CFRs) to address this situation. The CFRs, who work in libraries across campus, are spending the summer in Courtney’s Copyright Immersion program studying the intricacies of copyright law. In fall 2014 they’ll begin serving as the first line of defense for copyright concerns expressed by students, staff, and faculty.

Courtney, who has been at Harvard since 2010, has been working out of the Office for Scholarly Communication for the past year. With funding from a Harvard Library Lab grant in 2011 he founded the first Harvard Library Copyright Working Group and began developing the Copyright and Fair Use Tool, an interactive online resource for the university community. Discussions about the website, however, revealed points that it couldn’t adequately address. Fair use is a gray area, Courtney explained to LJ, requiring a level of fact-based analysis that can’t be programmed. “The tool teaches,” he said, “but what about judgment?”

A survey among librarians attending his popular lecture series, “Library Copyright 101,” revealed that over half of them dealt with some form of copyright issues on a regular basis, often every day. Courtney himself was receiving an average of 20 questions a day in the summer, when most classes weren’t even in session. “Wouldn’t it be great,” he thought, “if there was some formalized structure in place to deal with these questions?”

Courtney is a law librarian with a background in intellectual property law, but he doesn’t have expertise in many other subjects that require copyright guidance. Harvard, however, has a rich resource in the librarians who staff its 71 libraries, many of whom are already subject experts. While most colleges and universities have a copyright office, he felt that it might be more effective to develop a decentralized network operating out of each library, building on the wide range of subject-specific knowledge already in place.

So two years ago Courtney began reaching out to librarians he’d worked with, or who had expressed an interest in learning more about copyright law. The inaugural CFR cohort is made up of 15 librarians, with a mix of specialties ranging from music and visual resources to law, digital course content, and rare books. All have committed to participating in Courtney’s weekly Copyright Immersion program, an informal class combining readings, lectures, workshops, and guest speakers such as Peter Hirtle (on the public domain) and Peter Suber (on open access). Courtney brings national and international legal case studies and questions he’s fielded from the university community, sparking discussions about practical concerns such as parameters for recent digitization initiatives, publishing electronic dissertations, contracts and licensing, and when—and how—to say “no.” Throughout it all, he stresses how important libraries are to copyright enforcement.

Though CFRs do not receive extra compensation—they are granted release time to attend class, which is considered professional development—their enthusiasm hasn’t waned through an entire summer of Tuesday night meetings. Leslie Burmeister, information resource specialist at Baker Library, told LJhow much she appreciates the dedicated time and space to talk about copyright, and the opportunity to share information with her fellow librarians. And she commends Courtney’s presentation of law and theory together, his “legalese cut through with real-life examples.”

When the program launches this fall, each library hosting a CFR will hold a brown-bag meeting, featuring a 20-minute presentation in which the resident CFR and Courtney teach a case study of theGeorgia State e-reserve copyright decision, and a Q&A period. And they are already planning activities for Fair Use Week next year. Eventually Courtney will use OCLC’s QuestionPoint 24/7 reference service to aggregate and track the questions posed to CFRs in order to refine the program.

These events will also help Courtney find out who else is interested in becoming a responder. He envisions CFR as a “hub-and-spoke” program, with the first cohort becoming an advisory board to future generations. Already he is getting email from librarians expressing interest, as well as requests from other libraries to work with them. The program currently draws its funding from an Arcadia grantsupporting the Office of Scholarly Communication, but Courtney believes it is extensible not only to other higher learning institutions, but public and K-12 libraries as well.

Kenneth Crews, former director of Columbia University’s Copyright Advisory Office and author ofCopyright Law for Librarians and Educators, told LJ he thought CFR was an excellent idea. However, he cautioned, “I would want to make sure participants are not just well educated about copyright, but that they understand clearly what questions they should answer and what questions they should NOT answer.” In other words, there’s a fine line between delivering legal information and delivering legaladvice. Fortunately, the “First Responders” handle is well considered. “It’s triage,” says CFR Carol Kentner, digital course content manager at Gutman Library. “The paramedics keep the patient alive in the ambulance, and then hand him over to the doctor”—that is, one of Harvard’s copyright specialists, or Kyle Courtney himself.

Courtney believes strongly in developing a culture of shared understanding, and the program has received glowing feedback so far. His librarians are equally excited. It helps, also, that he is a well-liked instructor who can breathe life into his subject. Or as CFR Kentner puts it, “Kyle makes copyright law fun—if you can have ‘copyright law’ and ‘fun’ in the same sentence.”

This article was featured in Library Journal's Academic Newswire enewsletter.

from: Library Journal

Why the Public Library Beats Amazon—for Now

As E-Book Subscription Services Grow Their Catalogs, the Age-Old Institution Trumps All

by: Geoffrey A Fowler

A growing stack of companies would like you to pay a monthly fee to read e-books, just like you subscribe to Netflix to binge on movies and TV shows.

Don't bother. Go sign up for a public library card instead.

Really, the public library? Amazon.com recently launched Kindle Unlimited, a $10-per-month service offering loans of 600,000 e-books. Startups called Oyster and Scribd offer something similar. It isn't very often that a musty old institution can hold its own against tech disrupters.

But it turns out librarians haven't just been sitting around shushing people while the Internet drove them into irrelevance. Over 90% of American public libraries have amassed e-book collections you can read on your iPad, and often even on a Kindle. You don't have to walk into a branch or risk an overdue fine. And they're totally free.

Publishers have come to see libraries not only as a source of income, but also as a marketing vehicle. Emily Prapuolenis/The Wall Street Journal

Though you still have to deal with due dates, hold lists and occasionally clumsy software, libraries, at least for now, have one killer feature that the others don't: e-books you actually want to read.

To compare, I dug up best-seller lists, as well as best-of lists compiled by authors and critics. Then I searched for those e-books in Kindle Unlimited, Oyster and Scribd alongside my local San Francisco Public Library. To rule out big-city bias, I also checked the much smaller library where I grew up in Richland County, S.C.

Of the Journal's 20 most recent best-selling e-books in fiction and nonfiction, Amazon's Kindle Unlimited has none—no "Fifty Shades of Grey," no "The Fault in Our Stars." Scribd and Oyster each have a paltry three. But the San Francisco library has 15, and my South Carolina library has 11.

From Amazon's own top-20 Kindle best-seller lists from 2013, 2012 and 2011, Kindle Unlimited has no more than five titles a year, while the San Francisco library has at least 16.

Enlarge Image

Stephen King AFP/Getty Images

Of Stephen King's 2012 list of his all-time10 favorite books, Amazon and the other subscription services have four, including classics such as George Orwell's "1984" and Charles Dickens's "Bleak House." But the San Francisco library has all of those, as well as Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" and William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" for a total of eight. (My South Carolina library also only has four.)

You will certainly find things to read on all of these paid services. For $9 per month, Scribd offers a slightly superior browsing experience and collection, especially if you're the kind of reader who goes deep into a genre. Of one critic's list of the "10 best vampire novels no one has read," Scribd has four, while Oyster has three and Amazon has none. My South Carolina library has two, but the San Francisco library just has one.

But who needs to pay for a "Netflix for books" subscription? I am a little awed by binge book readers. Still, not everyone is so voracious that they could guarantee reading $120 worth of e-books in a year.

How They Stack Up

E-book subscription services don't always have the big-name e-books available at some public libraries. Below, a comparison in the availability of books on three services—Oyster, Kindle Unlimited and Scribd—with the public libraries in San Francisco and Richland County, S.C. We compared Amazon's top 20 best-sellers on Kindle from 2013, as well as a more esoteric list of author Stephen King's 10 favorites.

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Another argument against shelling out for Kindle Unlimited comes from Amazon itself: If you own a Kindle device and subscribe to Amazon Prime, you already get one e-book loan a month as part of the service.

The subscription companies say their services are designed to let you try more books without the barrier of committing to buy. But none of these services yet feel as complete as Spotify, the $10-per-month all-you-can-eat music streaming service I used to explore the latest Miley Cyrus album without the regret of buying it.

How did library e-book collections get such a leg up? Amazon is locked in ahate-hate relationship with many publishers, so none of the five largest will sell their whole collection to Amazon for its subscription service. (Amazon bought a few big titles like the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series, has 500 books already in the public domain and pads out the rest with back-catalog and self-published books to reach the 600,000 tally it touts.) And so far only two of the big publishers will sell even part of their collections to startups Oyster and Scribd.

Over at the library, the situation is different. All of the big five publishers sell their e-book collections for loans, usually on the same day they're available for consumers to purchase. They haven't always been so friendly with libraries, and still charge them a lot for e-books. Some library e-books are only allowed a set number of loans before "expiring."

Publishers have come to see libraries not only as a source of income, but also as a marketing vehicle. Since the Internet has killed off so many bookstores, libraries have become de facto showrooms for discovering books.

Children at the Richland Library in Columbia, S.C., use the library's eReady Bar, where librarians help them access and use digital collections. Joey LeRoy/Richland Library

I have a soft spot for public libraries. I grew up reading at the one where my mom, now retired, worked. Like many, I hadn't used my library card much since I started reading books on screens. But in the past few weeks, discovering my library's e-book collection helped me reconnect with the power of the library card I felt when I was young.

It's easier than you might think. At the typical public library, you need only log in with your card number and a PIN to its e-book collection, then search through the online catalog.

During online checkout, many will give you the choice to zap your borrowed book directly to a Kindle reader, a tablet or phone app, or a computer screen. When it's time to "return" the e-book, it just disappears.

A reading tablet at a library in San Francisco. Emily Prapuolenis/The Wall Street Journal

In exchange for this free access, you have to accept a bit more hassle. Your loans may expire after 21 days or less, but you can recheck them out. Some libraries have multiple e-book collections that you have to search and learn to use. Most aren't as pretty as Scribd or Oyster, which let you scroll through large images of book covers to find something that suits your fancy.

The most legitimate argument against libraries is the wait list: About half the e-books I surveyed were checked out. This required placing a "hold" that could last a few weeks, or sometimes even months. The smaller your library, the less likely it could afford extra digital copies. (San Francisco's library has some tech books and travel guides where publishers allow unlimited simultaneous checkouts.)

What's available will depend on your community tax dollars—many libraries took a hit in the last recession. Some communities have banded together to create larger e-libraries; for example, all Colorado residents can use the Denver Public Library.

Libraries' current collection advantage, borne of those publisher contracts, isn't likely to last forever. Publishers may resolve their squabbles with Amazon or come to see paid subscriptions as a lucrative new market. What would happen to libraries if they truly had to go head-to-head with Amazon? Ultimately, the winner will be the service that offers the most convenient access to the best array of e-books.

But libraries serve nobler purposes than just amassing vampire romances. They provide equal access to knowledge, from employment services to computer training. And in an age where getting things "free" usually means surrendering some privacy, libraries have long been careful about protecting patron records.

The rise of paid subscription services is proof that there's demand for what libraries can offer in our Internet era

from: Wall Street Journal

Halifax looks forward to the opening of its very own library of the future

by: Jane Taber

t is being billed as the “city’s living room.” Its rooftop patio offers stunning views of Halifax harbour. There is a 300-seat theatre, two cafes, gaming stations, two music studios, dedicated space for adult literacy, a First Nations reading circle and boardrooms for local entrepreneurs.

Oh, and it will lend books, too.

Halifax’s new $57.6-million gleaming glass library of the future is to open later this fall – a 129,000-square-foot building in the city’s downtown with a unique cantilevered rectangular glass box on the top, suggesting a stack of books. Fully accessible, culturally sensitive, environmentally sustainable and architecturally stunning, with elegant angles and lines, it is the first piece of modern architecture to be built in Halifax in decades, and the first major central library to be built in Canada in several years.

Libraries are competing with Google, the Internet and even Chapters and Starbucks, but they are holding their own.

In Canada, library use has increased slightly year after year, according to statistics from the Canadian Urban Libraries Council. From 2008 to 2013, the CULC tracked an 18-per-cent increase in library use, which includes the population served, attendance at programs and number of programs offered.

That is the story in Halifax, where so-called “in-person” visits have increased 2.9 per cent from 2012-13. Website visits were also up by 1.8 per cent. About 15,000 residents signed up for a library card this year and 8,340 library cardholders signed up for the library’s digital download service, according to Halifax Public Libraries’ performance report, released in June.

Libraries are also competing for taxpayers’ dollars – and making progress. New libraries are being built; some are being renovated. An architect was recently hired for Calgary’s Central Library, which is expected to open in 2018; the Toronto Public Library is completing a five-year, $34-million revitalization of its reference library.

All this change has forced libraries to become more than passive book lenders. “They are extremely creative and innovative,” says Valoree McKay, executive director of the Canadian Library Association, about the way libraries are adapting. “It is not what you envisage your library being – books and librarians with buns saying ‘shhh.’”

At the Toronto Public Library, for example, public-health nurses give vaccinations while other customers can self-publish books or print off a résumé. In Ottawa, librarians are teaching people how to Photoshop or make video clips; the Edmonton Public Library has an entire gaming section that allows visitors to play or make their own games.

In the United States, Sari Feldman, president-elect of the American Library Association, says in the future libraries “will be less about what we have for people and more about what we do for people.”

For Danish architect Morten Schmidt, whose firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen designed the Halifax library with its Nova Scotia partners, Fowler, Bauld & Mitchell, modern libraries are “much more places for social gathering.”

His firm, which has designed large libraries in Europe, including the extension of the Royal Library in Copenhagen, is now designing the New Central Library in Christchurch, N.Z. The 2011 earthquake destroyed the library. New Zealand officials toured the new Halifax library recently, and Mr. Schmidt says elements of it are being incorporated into the Christchurch design.

“A public library is probably as important as a church today or even more important than a city hall because it’s the people building and everyone can come there,” he said in a telephone interview from Denmark.

Haligonians have wanted a new library since the 1980s to replace the Spring Garden Road Memorial Public Library, which opened in 1951 as a tribute to the city’s war dead. It took a recession and federal infrastructure dollars to finally get it going in 2009 – and after extensive public consultations, construction began in November, 2011, on a site just across the street from the old library.

The federal government contributed $18.3-million, the province gave $13-million and the municipal government’s portion is $26.3-million, of which the library has had to contribute several million, raised through donations.

The new Halifax Central Library is full of light and wide-open spaces. An atrium opens up the five storeys, and from the cantilevered glass rectangle you can stare out at both the harbour and Citadel Hill. Mr. Schmidt says he wanted to “reach out to these two points” because they are important symbols of Halifax’s history. Environmentally sustainable, the library also features a green roof and rainwater is used to flush the toilets.

As for the exterior architecture, George Cotaras, the Nova Scotia lead architect, believes it will be a catalyst for the city: “Halifax has had a very conservative attitude [that] good architecture has to look like old architecture. Well, I think that is going to change.”

Bruce Gorman, director, Central Library and Regional Services, says being able to grab a latte, use the free wireless and on a nice evening sit out and watch sailboats in the harbour is “not what people expect to see when they are going into a public library. We are shifting people’s thoughts about what public libraries are.”

from: Globe and Mail

On Going “Prizeless”

by: Abby Johnson

My fellow librarians, we (finally) ditched the cheap plastic Summer Reading Club prizes this year and we are NEVER GOING BACK!!!

Behold, a Science Activity Pack! Photo by Abby Johnson

Everyone’s serving a different community and you have to decide for yourself what is right for your library and your patrons. But make sure you’re thinking about the program that you’re offering and you know why you’re running it the way you’re running it.

Summer Reading Club is HARD to plan and can get overwhelming. It’s easy to take what you’ve done in previous years, tweak, and repeat. But you need to take a step back and take stock every now and then.

Is your Summer Reading Club creating lifelong readers by encouraging intrinsic motivation for reading (i.e. reading for the love and satisfaction of reading)? Or are kids reading just enough to earn that toy/coupon/entry slip and then stopping?

Many libraries have come up with different ways to address this issue, ditch cheap prizes, and create a program that staff and patrons feel great about.

Check out the following posts for some ideas:

Library Bonanza: Summer LIBRARY Club
This librarian speaks about how her library got rid of reading requirements in favor of a Summer Library Club, encouraging families to visit the library frequently over the summer.

Tiny Tips for Library Fun: Summer Prizes – Goodbye!Marge Loch-Waters shares the ways her library rewarded readers with experiential activities, like helping to build a community robot, instead of plastic toys this year.

Hafuboti: Summer Reading Booklets
Rebecca ditched cheap prizes in favor of a booklet with creative activities and coupons kids can earn throughout the summer.

Abby the Librarian: Those Summer Reading Club Prizes
Yes, I said that we ditched the cheap prizes and here I share information about the Science Activity Packs we offered instead.

What, No Tchotskes? Creating an Experience-Based Summer ProgramIn this program at the ALA Annual Conference, librarians from several different libraries shared their experiences with choosing experiential programs over incentive-based programs.

Having taken the plunge this year and offered activity-based prizes and free books instead of our normal toys and grand prize drawings, I can tell you that it went over better than I thought it would. I had prepped my staff extensively on what to tell patrons who complained about the prizes, but I didn’t hear one complaint all summer. This was especially shocking and delightful because I have had at least one complaint every year when we were offering much more elaborate prizes.

Has anyone else gone “prizeless”? How did it work and what do you do for your Summer Reading Club?


– Abby Johnson, Children’s Services Manager
New Albany-Floyd County Public Library
New Albany, IN
http://www.abbythelibrarian.com

from: ALSC Blog