City manager's suggestion gets cool reception
By Chad Lawhorn
As City Hall contemplates a new fee for sidewalk maintenance and higher fees for parks and recreation services and downtown parking, here’s a new one to consider: A public library user fee.
City Manager David Corliss is suggesting that the city’s library board study the idea of a “modest membership fee” to reduce the library’s reliance on city property taxes, which have become a less stable funding source as the real estate market has suffered.
Thus far, the idea is being greeted a lot like a Dan Brown reading at a Shakespeare conference.
“I haven’t had time to really examine it, but at first glance, it seems like a very bad idea,” said City Commissioner Aron Cromwell.
Library board members said the library is serving larger numbers of low-income or unemployed people who likely would be hard-pressed to pay a new fee.
“I think there would be quite a backlash if we started charging user fees,” said Michael Machell, vice-chair of the library board.
But Corliss said he would like library leaders to keep an open mind to the idea. He said the library board could create its own rules on who would be required to pay the fee.
“We clearly want any child, regardless of income, to be able to check out a book at the library,” Corliss said. “I clearly agree with that value. But maybe there are ways to create a system for those who can afford to pay a fee.”
Ultimately, it will be up to the library board, not the City Commission, to determine whether a fee is appropriate. Unlike other city boards, the Public Library Board is not an advisory board. Its members — who are appointed by the City Commission — are charged with making the final decisions on how the library operates.
It’s not clear how much a new fee could generate because no specific fee amount has been proposed. But the library loaned out about 1.2 million items in 2008, and averaged about 9,100 visitors per week. The library receives about $3 million per year in city property tax dollars, which accounts for about 90 percent of the library’s overall budget.
Library board members said they are appreciative of Corliss’ concerns about the future of property tax revenues for the library, especially in 2011 when home values are expected to fall even farther.
“But a user fee would be a huge shift in philosophy for us to consider,” said Deborah Thompson, a library board member. “I think we would look at all kinds of funding options before we would look at charging fees.”
Cromwell said he thinks as the economy improves in the next couple of years, the community at large will be ready to consider new funding sources for an improved library.
“I’m very optimistic that we’re going to have a proposal to improve the library and improve its funding in the next two years,” Cromwell said. “If there isn’t one by then, I’ll bring one forward.”
From: LJWorld.com
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Smell of Books
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Working the Social: Twitter and FriendFeed
Let these social networking services do the filtering for you.
By: Laura Carscaddon & Colleen S. Harris
Information overload is so five years ago, but the problem it describes is all too real. Fortunately, there's hope yet for the savvy librarian: Twitter and FriendFeed turn information dissemination on its head, using friends and subscribers as a filter for the best, most credible, and most engaging information out there. As Clay Shirky said at the Web 2.0 Expo keynote in January, the problem isn't “information overload. It's filter failure.”
Like other social media sites, Twitter and FriendFeed are excellent personal and professional social outlets, connecting users to friends and colleagues regardless of boring problems like geography. But they also connect users to the content those friends and colleagues share, clueing them into their network's likes and dislikes and jacking them in to the editorial decisions those in their network make about the stories and content that matter to them most.
The best part? Everything about these services is eminently customizable, depending on which and how many followers you choose to include in your stream. You can use Twitter and FriendFeed to get the play-by-play of conference updates remotely, or keep tabs on any of a number of ongoing topics of interest. If you're publishing inclined, you can use these social content filters to track your favorite authors and publishers, or simply to get the latest updates from your favorite blogs and publications.
Twitter: tweeters do it in smaller spaces
By now, most of us are familiar with blog posts, which can ramble between a paragraph and a missive. Similar to traditional blogs in that their purpose is still to convey information, microbloggers simply do it in a smaller format. Launched in July 2006, the frontrunner of microblogging applications (which also include Plurk and Jaiku) is Twitter, an application that allows users to send brief text updates of up to 140 characters. These updates are viewable by “followers,” or people who have signed up to receive your messages. Users can send and receive these short messages (referred to as “tweets”) through Twitter's web interface, SMS, or any number of external applications. Librarians, information professionals, educators, and others have found Twitter a concise way to start conversations, to keep folks updated about their whereabouts when at industry conferences, and to post links to recent happenings in the field.
Hey there, tweetheart: getting started
Anyone can go to twitter.com and set up a free Twitter account. You may choose to make your Twitter account public (anyone may add you and read your posted messages), or if you choose “protect my updates,” your account is private, in which case people must request authorization to follow your Twitter updates. After you choose your username and password, you can start following folks. If you're an old hand at 2.0 technologies, you might start by searching Twitter for the usernames of folks you know reside on the web whom you're interested in following. (This is one more particularly good reason to maintain the same username across different services!) You can use Twitter's search field to search by username or keyword.
Using the @ sign, you can directly address your message to another user by starting the message with @username. Note that using the @ sign, your message to that person is still viewable by your followers and is simply distinguished as a reply directly to that person. The “direct message” function allows you to send private messages to other users. You can also tag your tweets using hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a #. This allows users to search for tweets on a specific subject or related to a specific event (such as #internetlibrarian09, #ALA, #mothersday). Note that during conference time, Twitter use (particularly for librarians) goes through the roof. In fact, in the last two years, library conference hashtags have made it into the top ten “trending topics” across all of Twitter a number of times. You can restrict Tweets sent to your mobile device (or turn that function off completely) if you get overwhelmed during peak use of Twitter by your friends.
Twits on the go
If you prefer not to be tied to your computer screen to use Twitter, you can register your phone under Settings and Devices in the Twitter interface. From your mobile device, send an SMS message to 40404, and Twitter will post your tweet. It's worth getting used to the nonbrowser interface, since many useful messages are posted while on the move and away from your computer. This is perfect for meetings, because you'll want to stay abreast of which sessions are full, make last-minute lunch, dinner, or karaoke plans, and generally keep informed about plan changes during fast-paced gatherings.
Remember to check your SMS/text messaging plan with your provider before you choose to receive Twitter updates to your mobile device, as usage increases dramatically during conferences, new device and application releases, and any other event that gets your friends and followers chatting. You also can follow other people based on their phone number: SMS “add [phonenumber] to 40404” to follow the user with that phone number. If that person isn't yet a Twitter user, he/she will receive an invitation to join. A number of other services, including Facebook, FriendFeed, and several blogging services now offer to incorporate your Twitter updates, as long as those updates are public.
FriendFeed: all your social “are belong to us”
So, Twitter is nice when you're looking at short updates, Flickr is great for your photos. There's LibraryThing for the books you're reading, Delicious for your bookmarks, and so many other online social networks that surround specific aspects of our lives. It can all get a bit daunting at times, especially when many of your friends also cross from site to site. So where do you go to consolidate all these services? One answer to that is FriendFeed.
FriendFeed is a lifestreaming service or a “social aggregator” that allows you to pull content from multiple social networking sites to one place. Want to follow a specific person on Twitter, but you don't have (and maybe you don't want) a Twitter account? If those tweets are fed into FriendFeed, you can follow along there. Right now, there are 57 services that FriendFeed can pull in directly, along with the ability to pull in an RSS feed from any site that has one. You can also post original messages to FriendFeed, push a post automatically from FriendFeed to Twitter, or have other services use FriendFeed as a pass-through, so FriendFeed pulls your updates from other services and then pushes them out as tweets.
Let's talk and connect
A major benefit of FriendFeed is the ability to converse easily on a specific topic with threaded discussions. While with Twitter you can reply to a specific user, in FriendFeed you reply to the post, and your answer is threaded below it, letting you see the entire conversation, not just 140-character bits and pieces. You'll see responses made by people other than the original poster and yourself, again letting you see the full exchange and helping you find new people with interesting things to say.
FriendFeed also has a Groups (formerly known as Rooms) option, which are areas of the site set up for discussions around a specific topic, theme, or group. Anyone can set up a group and decide whether it will be Public, Standard Feed, or Private. Public groups allow posting and commenting by anyone, Standard Feeds allow only the owner to post but anyone can comment, and Private groups require an invitation to members before they can join and post.
Using groups can help you segregate your discussions and decide what will appear in your Home Feed (the page you see when you first log in). There are groups that discuss technology, like the iPhone group, or groups that want to discuss specific topics, like the Librariology group. Groups can also be set up surrounding specific events, like the ones for the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting and annual conferences. For those groups, the official tags/hashtags can feed into the group so that tweets, Flickr photos, blog posts, or other content tagged with the event's official tag can be automatically aggregated into the group, establishing one place to go to see all kinds of things about the conference. Tracking conference activity this way can help keep you from being inundated on other social networks, such as Twitter, during conferences. Instead of feeling like you need to read everything now, join the group and come back to it at any time. Groups can also be set up to avoid specific topics; around the time of the 2008 Presidential election, there was a “No Politics” room set up, for people who didn't want to see any conversation about politics.
Search and subscribe
As with Twitter and other online social networking sites, a good way to start is to search for a topic or a group you're interested in and see who's talking about it. Perhaps a big portion of your job involves training. Searching for training might lead you to the T Is for Training Group, where there is a community of people who use it as a space to discuss trends and issues in training from a library perspective. Once you find some people who say things that interest you, see who comments on their posts and who else they follow for additional folks to talk to in FriendFeed. Also, look for specific usernames from other sites, as often people try to use the same name across multiple sites, making it simpler to find them. Don't worry about getting stuck following a prolific poster: you can always unsubscribe to someone you've subscribed to or use your settings to hide some or all of their entries if you don't want to see them. The person won't be notified that you've hidden their posts or that you're no longer a subscriber.
Unlike Twitter, FriendFeed doesn't have a large number of iPhone apps available. A recent site upgrade allows mobile users to see a fully featured version of the site, rather than the previous scaled-down iPhone version, though the reduced version is still available at friendfeed.com/iphone. The newest site update includes IM and email posts to your discussions, if you prefer keeping up that way. Access through fftogo.com is another excellent option for BlackBerry and iPhone users. The fftogo interface is very simple but allows quick access to all your groups, friends, and the search function of FriendFeed.
Ready? Let's go!
To get started on FriendFeed, go to friendfeed.com and set up an account; decide whether you want a public feed or a private one. A private feed will give you some control over who is able to see your posts, and you will have to approve any followers. A public feed means that anyone can follow you, and you can provide a direct link to your posts on FriendFeed at friendfeed.com/username for those who don't have FriendFeed accounts. One thing to remember is that anything you feed into FriendFeed from a private account becomes public if your FriendFeed stream is public. What this means in reality is that if your Twitter account is private and you feed it into a public FriendFeed account, you've just made that private Twitter stream publicly available.
Next, choose what services you'll have feed in and what you'll push out, if any. FriendFeed will ask you for the specific information it needs to get the feed, whether that's the email address associated with the account, a username and password, or the RSS feed address. FriendFeed does take some effort; you can just set up an account and run with it, but it's worth it to feed more services in as a way to generate more conversation among the people in your network. Another way to share as you run across interesting web pages is to use the FriendFeed bookmarklet. Using the bookmarklet lets you post a link along with an optional image from the page and a comment to your FriendFeed account and any of the groups you belong to or, with the newest redesign, as a direct message to one or more of your FriendFeed friends.
Finally, take the time and explore! FriendFeed is an excellent service for conversation and networking. As we gear up for ALA annual in Chicago, find out who will be there. Especially for first-time attendees, FriendFeed can be an excellent way to locate other attendees and connect with them in person. Post to the ALA Group and see if you can get a group together for lunch or dinner and turn your online social network into an in-person one as well.
By: Laura Carscaddon & Colleen S. Harris
Information overload is so five years ago, but the problem it describes is all too real. Fortunately, there's hope yet for the savvy librarian: Twitter and FriendFeed turn information dissemination on its head, using friends and subscribers as a filter for the best, most credible, and most engaging information out there. As Clay Shirky said at the Web 2.0 Expo keynote in January, the problem isn't “information overload. It's filter failure.”
Like other social media sites, Twitter and FriendFeed are excellent personal and professional social outlets, connecting users to friends and colleagues regardless of boring problems like geography. But they also connect users to the content those friends and colleagues share, clueing them into their network's likes and dislikes and jacking them in to the editorial decisions those in their network make about the stories and content that matter to them most.
The best part? Everything about these services is eminently customizable, depending on which and how many followers you choose to include in your stream. You can use Twitter and FriendFeed to get the play-by-play of conference updates remotely, or keep tabs on any of a number of ongoing topics of interest. If you're publishing inclined, you can use these social content filters to track your favorite authors and publishers, or simply to get the latest updates from your favorite blogs and publications.
Twitter: tweeters do it in smaller spaces
By now, most of us are familiar with blog posts, which can ramble between a paragraph and a missive. Similar to traditional blogs in that their purpose is still to convey information, microbloggers simply do it in a smaller format. Launched in July 2006, the frontrunner of microblogging applications (which also include Plurk and Jaiku) is Twitter, an application that allows users to send brief text updates of up to 140 characters. These updates are viewable by “followers,” or people who have signed up to receive your messages. Users can send and receive these short messages (referred to as “tweets”) through Twitter's web interface, SMS, or any number of external applications. Librarians, information professionals, educators, and others have found Twitter a concise way to start conversations, to keep folks updated about their whereabouts when at industry conferences, and to post links to recent happenings in the field.
Hey there, tweetheart: getting started
Anyone can go to twitter.com and set up a free Twitter account. You may choose to make your Twitter account public (anyone may add you and read your posted messages), or if you choose “protect my updates,” your account is private, in which case people must request authorization to follow your Twitter updates. After you choose your username and password, you can start following folks. If you're an old hand at 2.0 technologies, you might start by searching Twitter for the usernames of folks you know reside on the web whom you're interested in following. (This is one more particularly good reason to maintain the same username across different services!) You can use Twitter's search field to search by username or keyword.
Using the @ sign, you can directly address your message to another user by starting the message with @username. Note that using the @ sign, your message to that person is still viewable by your followers and is simply distinguished as a reply directly to that person. The “direct message” function allows you to send private messages to other users. You can also tag your tweets using hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a #. This allows users to search for tweets on a specific subject or related to a specific event (such as #internetlibrarian09, #ALA, #mothersday). Note that during conference time, Twitter use (particularly for librarians) goes through the roof. In fact, in the last two years, library conference hashtags have made it into the top ten “trending topics” across all of Twitter a number of times. You can restrict Tweets sent to your mobile device (or turn that function off completely) if you get overwhelmed during peak use of Twitter by your friends.
Twits on the go
If you prefer not to be tied to your computer screen to use Twitter, you can register your phone under Settings and Devices in the Twitter interface. From your mobile device, send an SMS message to 40404, and Twitter will post your tweet. It's worth getting used to the nonbrowser interface, since many useful messages are posted while on the move and away from your computer. This is perfect for meetings, because you'll want to stay abreast of which sessions are full, make last-minute lunch, dinner, or karaoke plans, and generally keep informed about plan changes during fast-paced gatherings.
Remember to check your SMS/text messaging plan with your provider before you choose to receive Twitter updates to your mobile device, as usage increases dramatically during conferences, new device and application releases, and any other event that gets your friends and followers chatting. You also can follow other people based on their phone number: SMS “add [phonenumber] to 40404” to follow the user with that phone number. If that person isn't yet a Twitter user, he/she will receive an invitation to join. A number of other services, including Facebook, FriendFeed, and several blogging services now offer to incorporate your Twitter updates, as long as those updates are public.
FriendFeed: all your social “are belong to us”
So, Twitter is nice when you're looking at short updates, Flickr is great for your photos. There's LibraryThing for the books you're reading, Delicious for your bookmarks, and so many other online social networks that surround specific aspects of our lives. It can all get a bit daunting at times, especially when many of your friends also cross from site to site. So where do you go to consolidate all these services? One answer to that is FriendFeed.
FriendFeed is a lifestreaming service or a “social aggregator” that allows you to pull content from multiple social networking sites to one place. Want to follow a specific person on Twitter, but you don't have (and maybe you don't want) a Twitter account? If those tweets are fed into FriendFeed, you can follow along there. Right now, there are 57 services that FriendFeed can pull in directly, along with the ability to pull in an RSS feed from any site that has one. You can also post original messages to FriendFeed, push a post automatically from FriendFeed to Twitter, or have other services use FriendFeed as a pass-through, so FriendFeed pulls your updates from other services and then pushes them out as tweets.
Let's talk and connect
A major benefit of FriendFeed is the ability to converse easily on a specific topic with threaded discussions. While with Twitter you can reply to a specific user, in FriendFeed you reply to the post, and your answer is threaded below it, letting you see the entire conversation, not just 140-character bits and pieces. You'll see responses made by people other than the original poster and yourself, again letting you see the full exchange and helping you find new people with interesting things to say.
FriendFeed also has a Groups (formerly known as Rooms) option, which are areas of the site set up for discussions around a specific topic, theme, or group. Anyone can set up a group and decide whether it will be Public, Standard Feed, or Private. Public groups allow posting and commenting by anyone, Standard Feeds allow only the owner to post but anyone can comment, and Private groups require an invitation to members before they can join and post.
Using groups can help you segregate your discussions and decide what will appear in your Home Feed (the page you see when you first log in). There are groups that discuss technology, like the iPhone group, or groups that want to discuss specific topics, like the Librariology group. Groups can also be set up surrounding specific events, like the ones for the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting and annual conferences. For those groups, the official tags/hashtags can feed into the group so that tweets, Flickr photos, blog posts, or other content tagged with the event's official tag can be automatically aggregated into the group, establishing one place to go to see all kinds of things about the conference. Tracking conference activity this way can help keep you from being inundated on other social networks, such as Twitter, during conferences. Instead of feeling like you need to read everything now, join the group and come back to it at any time. Groups can also be set up to avoid specific topics; around the time of the 2008 Presidential election, there was a “No Politics” room set up, for people who didn't want to see any conversation about politics.
Search and subscribe
As with Twitter and other online social networking sites, a good way to start is to search for a topic or a group you're interested in and see who's talking about it. Perhaps a big portion of your job involves training. Searching for training might lead you to the T Is for Training Group, where there is a community of people who use it as a space to discuss trends and issues in training from a library perspective. Once you find some people who say things that interest you, see who comments on their posts and who else they follow for additional folks to talk to in FriendFeed. Also, look for specific usernames from other sites, as often people try to use the same name across multiple sites, making it simpler to find them. Don't worry about getting stuck following a prolific poster: you can always unsubscribe to someone you've subscribed to or use your settings to hide some or all of their entries if you don't want to see them. The person won't be notified that you've hidden their posts or that you're no longer a subscriber.
Unlike Twitter, FriendFeed doesn't have a large number of iPhone apps available. A recent site upgrade allows mobile users to see a fully featured version of the site, rather than the previous scaled-down iPhone version, though the reduced version is still available at friendfeed.com/iphone. The newest site update includes IM and email posts to your discussions, if you prefer keeping up that way. Access through fftogo.com is another excellent option for BlackBerry and iPhone users. The fftogo interface is very simple but allows quick access to all your groups, friends, and the search function of FriendFeed.
Ready? Let's go!
To get started on FriendFeed, go to friendfeed.com and set up an account; decide whether you want a public feed or a private one. A private feed will give you some control over who is able to see your posts, and you will have to approve any followers. A public feed means that anyone can follow you, and you can provide a direct link to your posts on FriendFeed at friendfeed.com/username for those who don't have FriendFeed accounts. One thing to remember is that anything you feed into FriendFeed from a private account becomes public if your FriendFeed stream is public. What this means in reality is that if your Twitter account is private and you feed it into a public FriendFeed account, you've just made that private Twitter stream publicly available.
Next, choose what services you'll have feed in and what you'll push out, if any. FriendFeed will ask you for the specific information it needs to get the feed, whether that's the email address associated with the account, a username and password, or the RSS feed address. FriendFeed does take some effort; you can just set up an account and run with it, but it's worth it to feed more services in as a way to generate more conversation among the people in your network. Another way to share as you run across interesting web pages is to use the FriendFeed bookmarklet. Using the bookmarklet lets you post a link along with an optional image from the page and a comment to your FriendFeed account and any of the groups you belong to or, with the newest redesign, as a direct message to one or more of your FriendFeed friends.
Finally, take the time and explore! FriendFeed is an excellent service for conversation and networking. As we gear up for ALA annual in Chicago, find out who will be there. Especially for first-time attendees, FriendFeed can be an excellent way to locate other attendees and connect with them in person. Post to the ALA Group and see if you can get a group together for lunch or dinner and turn your online social network into an in-person one as well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Laura Carscaddon (ellbeecee@gmail.com) is an Assistant Librarian at the University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, and goes by ellbeecee on most social networks. Colleen S. Harris (warmaiden@gmail.com) is the Associate Head of Access and Delivery Services at North Carolina State University, Raleigh
From: Library Journal
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Library and Archives Freezes Purchases
'It's like cutting the oxygen off,' former curator says
by: Patrick Dare
OTTAWA - A moratorium on buying new materials at Library and Archives Canada has some people wondering whether important cultural and historical documents could be lost to the country.
On May 19, an e-mail went out from Library and Archives informing its suppliers of an immediate halt to paid acquisitions as part of a review of policies by the new senior managers. It was a move that has shocked some librarians and archivists.
“It’s just not done. It’s just silly. It’s like cutting the oxygen off,” said Michel Brisebois, former curator of rare books at Library and Archives. “That’s not acceptable for a national library.”
Brisebois, who worked at the national library in Ottawa for 10 years until 2004, said Library and Archives has “a great collection.” But it needs to be in the marketplace for books and documents to ensure the country’s cultural memory is complete.
He said sending out a communication to suppliers that you are no longer buying will take Library and Archives off the radar of people such as rare booksellers. He said this is risky because there will be occasions when treasured cultural materials of national significance come on the market.
Sometimes the federal government decides to step in and set a onetime acquisition budget to get a special collection. But to get these national treasures, you have to be in tune with the market, says Brisebois.
“I think it’s very dangerous in the long run,” said Brisebois. “It’s a shock.”
Library and Archives Canada receives copies of books published in Canada and has material donated. But it relies on acquisitions for things such as books written about Canada abroad.
David Ewens, of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of Canada, said dealers such as himself have sold all kinds of Canadiana to Library and Archives over the years, including early Canadian election posters and advertising posters, photographs and maps.
Ewens noted the expenditures over the years have generally been small, though the government occasionally goes big with an acquisition such as the Peter Winkworth collection; 5,200 artworks, artifacts and historical documents acquired in 2008 to much acclaim at a cost of $6 million.
Ewens is concerned about the implications of Library and Archives no longer buying, including the possibility of rare booksellers going out of business.
“You just can’t stop preserving history,” said Ewens.
Liam McGahern, of Patrick McGahern Books in Ottawa, said important pieces of Canadian social history — even as simple as parish histories — find their way into booksellers’ stores. But he said there are other collectors in the world who will snap up interesting Canadian artifacts and books if Canada does not.
“Cultural items will be lost to the Canadiana collection,” said McGahern. “The cultural world doesn’t wait for Library and Archives Canada.”
Library and Archives declined to comment Friday.
Library and Archives Canada used to be two organizations; the National Library and the National Archives. The two — headed by national librarian and author Roch Carrier and national archivist Ian Wilson — were merged under Wilson’s leadership in May 2004.
Wilson retired last April and was succeeded by Daniel Caron, a 27-year public servant who most recently was a senior assistant deputy minister at Library and Archives.
Marianne Scott, Canada’s former national librarian — who is now president of the Friends of Library and Archives Canada — said the organization has limited funds and a lot of issues to sort out such as what to do about the burgeoning quantity of self-published materials.
But she said communication on the acquisition issue was “poor” and the lack of consultation took people by surprise.
“There has been a lack of communication about what and why,” said Scott, who met with Caron about a week ago. “There’s a great concern. There may be items that are going to be missed.”
She said that in the past, the National Library sometimes delayed purchases due to budget squeezes but never had a blanket policy against purchases. Scott said that in areas such as the rare-book market, collectors often have to move quickly or the buying opportunity is lost.
From: The Ottawa Citizen
by: Patrick Dare
OTTAWA - A moratorium on buying new materials at Library and Archives Canada has some people wondering whether important cultural and historical documents could be lost to the country.
On May 19, an e-mail went out from Library and Archives informing its suppliers of an immediate halt to paid acquisitions as part of a review of policies by the new senior managers. It was a move that has shocked some librarians and archivists.
“It’s just not done. It’s just silly. It’s like cutting the oxygen off,” said Michel Brisebois, former curator of rare books at Library and Archives. “That’s not acceptable for a national library.”
Brisebois, who worked at the national library in Ottawa for 10 years until 2004, said Library and Archives has “a great collection.” But it needs to be in the marketplace for books and documents to ensure the country’s cultural memory is complete.
He said sending out a communication to suppliers that you are no longer buying will take Library and Archives off the radar of people such as rare booksellers. He said this is risky because there will be occasions when treasured cultural materials of national significance come on the market.
Sometimes the federal government decides to step in and set a onetime acquisition budget to get a special collection. But to get these national treasures, you have to be in tune with the market, says Brisebois.
“I think it’s very dangerous in the long run,” said Brisebois. “It’s a shock.”
Library and Archives Canada receives copies of books published in Canada and has material donated. But it relies on acquisitions for things such as books written about Canada abroad.
David Ewens, of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of Canada, said dealers such as himself have sold all kinds of Canadiana to Library and Archives over the years, including early Canadian election posters and advertising posters, photographs and maps.
Ewens noted the expenditures over the years have generally been small, though the government occasionally goes big with an acquisition such as the Peter Winkworth collection; 5,200 artworks, artifacts and historical documents acquired in 2008 to much acclaim at a cost of $6 million.
Ewens is concerned about the implications of Library and Archives no longer buying, including the possibility of rare booksellers going out of business.
“You just can’t stop preserving history,” said Ewens.
Liam McGahern, of Patrick McGahern Books in Ottawa, said important pieces of Canadian social history — even as simple as parish histories — find their way into booksellers’ stores. But he said there are other collectors in the world who will snap up interesting Canadian artifacts and books if Canada does not.
“Cultural items will be lost to the Canadiana collection,” said McGahern. “The cultural world doesn’t wait for Library and Archives Canada.”
Library and Archives declined to comment Friday.
Library and Archives Canada used to be two organizations; the National Library and the National Archives. The two — headed by national librarian and author Roch Carrier and national archivist Ian Wilson — were merged under Wilson’s leadership in May 2004.
Wilson retired last April and was succeeded by Daniel Caron, a 27-year public servant who most recently was a senior assistant deputy minister at Library and Archives.
Marianne Scott, Canada’s former national librarian — who is now president of the Friends of Library and Archives Canada — said the organization has limited funds and a lot of issues to sort out such as what to do about the burgeoning quantity of self-published materials.
But she said communication on the acquisition issue was “poor” and the lack of consultation took people by surprise.
“There has been a lack of communication about what and why,” said Scott, who met with Caron about a week ago. “There’s a great concern. There may be items that are going to be missed.”
She said that in the past, the National Library sometimes delayed purchases due to budget squeezes but never had a blanket policy against purchases. Scott said that in areas such as the rare-book market, collectors often have to move quickly or the buying opportunity is lost.
From: The Ottawa Citizen
LibriVox
Book nerds, rejoice! You no longer have to lug around heavy books or drop $400 bucks on a Kindle to absorb your favorite titles. Now you can listen to them for free on LibriVox.
LibriVox offers up thousands of audio books for you to download and listen to online for free, but with a twist. It's a group effort, which means book lovers just like you take the time to read chapters from their favorite books out loud and record their voices to help complete a whole audio book.
This is great for two reasons: One, you can volunteer to record your own voice for LibriVox and satisfy your longtime dream to be a voice actor. And two, sometimes you'll get an amazing variety of voices and personalities reading to you before you finish a title. It's incredibly entertaining!
Found via: Geeksugar
LibriVox offers up thousands of audio books for you to download and listen to online for free, but with a twist. It's a group effort, which means book lovers just like you take the time to read chapters from their favorite books out loud and record their voices to help complete a whole audio book.
This is great for two reasons: One, you can volunteer to record your own voice for LibriVox and satisfy your longtime dream to be a voice actor. And two, sometimes you'll get an amazing variety of voices and personalities reading to you before you finish a title. It's incredibly entertaining!
Found via: Geeksugar
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Authors lobby government for statutory school libraries
Writers including Philip Pullman, Michael Rosen and Francesca Simon petition for universal provision.
by: Alison Flood
A high-profile group of children's authors, publishers, teachers and librarians is calling on the government to make school libraries statutory. Signatories to a petition to Number 10 include Philip Pullman, Horrid Henry creator Francesca Simon and former children's laureate Michael Rosen, as well as the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers Christine Blower, Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, top children's publishers and the directors of a raft of youth library associations.
The campaign's supporters, who also include the Carnegie medal winners Mal Peet and Beverley Naidoo, are concerned that while prisoners have the statutory right to a library, schoolchildren do not, and they believe it is essential that children get the habit of reading for pleasure. "[We] wholeheartedly support the right of prisoners to a library. It can be part of the process of rehabilitation through education. We are concerned however that school students do not have the same right. Research indicates that many young people who offend have low literacy levels," they say in a letter that will be sent to secretary of state for children, schools and families Ed Balls this evening by the campaign's head, the twice Carnegie-shortlisted author Alan Gibbons.
Only half of all secondary schools have a full-time librarian, they say, and only 28% have a qualified librarian. "Sadly, some of our schools still lack adequate library provision," they write. "It would not be expensive to rectify this situation, even in these difficult times. The social costs of poor literacy are significant."
Gibbons said this morning that the petition was only the start of a concerted campaign to make school libraries statutory. "When it's just the book world, particularly if it's just libraries, the government feels less pressure than if it is a broad cultural movement supporting literacy," he said. "That's why I've been working on publishers, teaching professionals and public service unions."
Last November Pullman told a comprehensive school in Chesterfield that it would become "a byword for philistinism and ignorance" if it went ahead with plans to close its school library. Since then, Gibbons said, there have been "worrying indications" that more school libraries are likely to close. "It's nibbling at the edges at the moment but the signs are there that they are being cut down," he said. "We want to at least get the discussion going about how to deal with it."
The petition itself – which calls on the government "to accept in principle that it will make school libraries, run by properly qualified staff, statutory" – will run until December, but by the end of the summer school term Gibbons hopes to have consolidated the support of the book world and to have started soliciting support from community figures, faith groups and celebrities within the wider community.
Harry Potter creator JK Rowling, he added, was top of his list. "We don't want to stand on the sidelines – we want to engage with government," he said.
From: The Guardian
by: Alison Flood
A high-profile group of children's authors, publishers, teachers and librarians is calling on the government to make school libraries statutory. Signatories to a petition to Number 10 include Philip Pullman, Horrid Henry creator Francesca Simon and former children's laureate Michael Rosen, as well as the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers Christine Blower, Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, top children's publishers and the directors of a raft of youth library associations.
The campaign's supporters, who also include the Carnegie medal winners Mal Peet and Beverley Naidoo, are concerned that while prisoners have the statutory right to a library, schoolchildren do not, and they believe it is essential that children get the habit of reading for pleasure. "[We] wholeheartedly support the right of prisoners to a library. It can be part of the process of rehabilitation through education. We are concerned however that school students do not have the same right. Research indicates that many young people who offend have low literacy levels," they say in a letter that will be sent to secretary of state for children, schools and families Ed Balls this evening by the campaign's head, the twice Carnegie-shortlisted author Alan Gibbons.
Only half of all secondary schools have a full-time librarian, they say, and only 28% have a qualified librarian. "Sadly, some of our schools still lack adequate library provision," they write. "It would not be expensive to rectify this situation, even in these difficult times. The social costs of poor literacy are significant."
Gibbons said this morning that the petition was only the start of a concerted campaign to make school libraries statutory. "When it's just the book world, particularly if it's just libraries, the government feels less pressure than if it is a broad cultural movement supporting literacy," he said. "That's why I've been working on publishers, teaching professionals and public service unions."
Last November Pullman told a comprehensive school in Chesterfield that it would become "a byword for philistinism and ignorance" if it went ahead with plans to close its school library. Since then, Gibbons said, there have been "worrying indications" that more school libraries are likely to close. "It's nibbling at the edges at the moment but the signs are there that they are being cut down," he said. "We want to at least get the discussion going about how to deal with it."
The petition itself – which calls on the government "to accept in principle that it will make school libraries, run by properly qualified staff, statutory" – will run until December, but by the end of the summer school term Gibbons hopes to have consolidated the support of the book world and to have started soliciting support from community figures, faith groups and celebrities within the wider community.
Harry Potter creator JK Rowling, he added, was top of his list. "We don't want to stand on the sidelines – we want to engage with government," he said.
From: The Guardian
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
On the Library Trucks, "Captain Ahab's Fine Seafood" and "Kafka's Pest Control"
On the library truck, "Captain Ahab's Fine Seafood" and "Kafka's Pest Control."
by: Norman Oder
Said County Librarian Donna Lauffer, "Often we promote all the services and resources the library has... We tend to overlook why most people come to the library: to find something good to read. We appreciate Barkley donating their time and talents for the campaign."
by: Norman Oder
It's time to soup up the library courier truck. The Johnson County Library, Shawnee Mission, KS, now has four specially decorated, literary-themed trucks: Captain Ahab’s Fine Seafood, Benjamin Button’s Diaper Service, Kafka’s Pest Kontrol, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s Pharmacy. Credit the Barkley Advertising Agency in Kansas City, MO, for the message and the photos.
Said County Librarian Donna Lauffer, "Often we promote all the services and resources the library has... We tend to overlook why most people come to the library: to find something good to read. We appreciate Barkley donating their time and talents for the campaign."
From: Library Journal
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