Library Stuff

Wowza!! Cite Bite is the coolest tool I’ve seen since Tags Everywhere.

Check this out. Grab a quote from any page, provide the URL, and, like magic, a direct link to the highlighted quote is provided. I’ve grabbed the firefox extension and will be using this alot.

Uh! Muh! Guhd!

Yet another social network site built around books

It’s been around for a while, but, according to the blog, stagnant in development.

An abosulte gem from Rochelle Hartman this evening. Read the whole thing.

“I really do value being part of such a caring, communicative community, but some days, it feels like more of a beige suburb where everything looks good, even though you know there’s more going on than meets the eye.”

After just watching Desparate Housewives, I totally get that. I hold back a lot of what I really want to write, because I will probably regret it the next day (like college all over again, eh?). Also, because of my recent history of “posts that suck”, I’ve been very deliberate in what I publish.

Still keeping with the theme of “peace”, I won’t join in the boxing match with Rochelle, but I will fix her cuts and bruises after every round. Have fun.

Jon Swift sent in his write-up on the Fairfax library situation. It’s a very long post and an interesting read. Jon is a self-proclaimed “reasonable conservative”, which is enough to make most librarians cringe. That said, I’ve always thought that in order to have a firm grasp on your own views, it’s important to read what those that disagree have to say.

What I missed and what Jon’s post brought out was Leslie Burger’s quote from the Wahsington Post article:

“”I think the days of libraries saying, ‘We must have that, because it’s good for people,’ are beyond us,” said Leslie Burger, president of the American Library Association and director of Princeton Public Library. “There is a sense in many public libraries that popular materials are what most of our communities desire. Everybody’s got a favorite book they’re trying to promote.”

This is brilliant. She puts the onus on the community to decide what is right. The question is, though, how do we know what books our “communities desire”. Conversation is one idea, book discussion groups are another, but I’m sure that libraries will never get it 100% right.

MIT Libraries now have RSS feeds for new additions to their catalog.

La-La-Librarian has more:

“Some cool things about this are, you can use a feed reader if you prefer but you don’t have to. For those users who don’t care to subscribe, they can view a list of hyper linked titles that bring them to the record directly when clicked on. We’ve also provided an email option as well. It’s pretty sweet.”

Yes, It IS pretty suweeeeeeeeeeet!

New from Pew:

“A social networking site is an online place where a user can create a profile and build a personal network that connects him or her to other users. In the past five years, such sites have rocketed from a niche activity into a phenomenon that engages tens of millions of internet users. More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites, according to a new national survey of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.”

“The survey also finds that older teens, particularly girls, are more likely to use these sites. For girls, social networking sites are primarily places to reinforce pre-existing friendships; for boys, the networks also provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends.”

Davin sent me this statement from the Fairfax Library director:

“Recent media reports have misled readers to believe that we’ve eliminated all copies of classic titles from our branches. This could not be further from the truth. Although we occasionally have to trim the number of copies we offer in a particular branch, we definitely keep multiple copies of these works in the Fairfax County Public Library. In some cases, we’re even able to offer the text in multiple formats: in large print, on CD, as an e-book, or in languages other than English.”

“Because there’s a growing demand for more and more books in more and more formats, we have to balance the need to offer classic literature, and satisfy public demand, with the physical limitations of our finite shelf space. We are physically unable to warehouse every book that every resident may want to read. Therefore we have to make difficult decisions about what items to keep in our collection.”

Engaging the public. Beautiful. I think we all knew that the library wasn’t discarding ALL of their classics, but some. Many libraries get rid of old copies of classics. Those books can get really beat up.

Still, a note from the director of the library is a perfect way to engage and build community. Way to go!

For those who want backgorund information on the closing of the EPA libraries, take a look at the Congressional Research Service Report entitled, “Restructuring EPA’s Libraries: Background and Issues for Congress.” (via Secrecy News)

I read this morning about a new site called OnTheMap US, which will allow you to “claim” a town for $100. Only one person can claim a town and a page for that town will be assisgned with the claimer having full authority to put anything on that page. For example, here is a page for Centerport, NY, which is about 10 minutes from where I live.

How very odd and possibly brilliant. The Landrush starts in 5 days.

More from the press release:

“In an effort to keep the ratio of Claims to population at about 1 per every 20,000 people, U.S. zip codes are used to define towns. The cost to Claim a town is $100. 25% of the zip codes in the 32 largest U.S. cities are available immediately, while the rest will be reserved for auction on eBay, beginning in mid-January.”

“We envision a visitor experience that provides endlessly fascinating, firsthand, continually-updated insight into what people’s lives are like in towns across the U.S.,” said Joe Holihan, President of Manifest Destiny Media, LLC, publishers of OnTheMapUS. “Our Claim Owners will be people who want to share something with the world about themselves, their life… even their products or services, and have found an inexpensive, easy, and potentially lucrative way to do so.”

Malcolm Pollack, a fellow ex-Pubsuber, sent me this piece from the WSJ. It argues that libraries should try to avoid being like Amazon and other big retail stores.

“If public libraries attempt to compete in this environment, they will increasingly be seen for what Fairfax County apparently envisions them to be: welfare programs for middle-class readers who would rather borrow Nelson DeMille’s newest potboiler than spend a few dollars for it at their local Wal-Mart.”

So, what should librarians do?

“New words come in and old ones go out, but a reliable lexicon becomes a foundation of linguistic stability and coherence. Likewise, libraries should seek to shore up the culture against the eroding force of trends.

The particulars of this task will fall upon the shoulders of individual librarians, who should welcome the opportunity to discriminate between the good and the bad, the timeless and the ephemeral, as librarians traditionally have done. They ought to regard themselves as not just experts in the arcane ways of the Dewey Decimal System, but as teachers, advisers and guardians of an intellectual inheritance.”

I’ve always thought in similar, less harsh, terms. Why bother competing with the big boys when there is no chance of winning? Libraries are different than the Amazons because we serve a niche market of readers. It seems that many libraries are trying to be the cool kid in school rather than the unpopular geek, who, BTW, winds up making a fortune 20 years down the road.

This is not a knock on the Fairfax County Library or any particular library that discards books based on circulation. Apparently, Fairfax is running out of room and had a huge cut to its budget this year, so they have to discard something. One would hope that they would use more methods than pure circulation stats as, we all know, circulation is not the only indicator of library usage. I’m sure patrons browse the stacks, grab a cup of joe, and read at a table. And, it’s quite possible that the books that are read in the library are not the Grishams, Kings, etc.

More on this very interesting story from the American Spectator and the Washington Post