LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Dateline JOHANNESBURG: Here's an update from News 24 about the burning of the Balfour Library.

Protesters have torched a library in an impoverished area of South Africa in what began as a march to call for more jobs. The South African Press Association says Tuesday's attack came on the third day of violent protests in Siyathemba, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Johannesburg. Story from Washington Post.

This article from Spero News lends some detail to the situation in South Africa, where refugees and immigrants, particularly Ethiopians, are the object of attack by the local population.

Sarah Palin is taking cues form Cliff Stoll. See the first minute of this video. Pay special attention from the 40 second to the 50 second mark in the video.

What do inner-city teens want and need in a public library? Boston.com's Lawrence Harmon talks about how teens are using the new Mattapan Branch Library and how he thinks they will remember it when they look back at their childhood.

Not a single teen at the Mattapan library so much as touched a book on the shelves during a recent hour-long visit. Granted it’s the digital age, and several kids were using the computers constructively for homework projects. But there is still something off here: a city builds a $16 million library, designs it in such a brilliant way that kids come streaming through the door, yet can’t staff it adequately to introduce the young people to the full range of library materials.

Less is known in the world of library science about how best to serve teenagers than adults or young children. The teens in Mattapan appeared happy just to spend unstructured time with friends in the comfortable, well-lit space. But how does that experience differ from a clubhouse or community center? Teen librarians make the difference, provided they have adequate time to do their jobs.

The library, a $16.7 million modern building with an airy mixture of wood, glass, and attention-grabbing color, opened last year, despite a budget crisis that has imperiled many city projects, programs, and services.

There has been discussion about adding video, color pictures, links, and other extras to ebooks to raise the price.

Here is the flip side of that idea:

FT Press is selling stripped-down, 1,000- to 2,000-word versions of books, for $1.99, and a new series of essays of about 5,000 words, for $2.99.

Full story in the NYT

Major brands and manufacturers — and now, book publishers — are deploying new tactics and tools to control how their products are presented and priced online.

Story in the Internet/Technology section of the NYT

This Wednesday, Feb. 10th from 2PM – 3PM EST, Copyright Clearance
Center’s Chris Kenneally will be hosting a special Beyond the Book live
podcast (http://beyondthebookcast.com/live-webcast/) examining the eBook Wars, which are taking shape with MacMillan challenging Amazon and the rise of eReaders and the iPad. During the podcast, Chris and his panelists will look at all sides of the e-book story and what future battles may bring to the print and digital marketplace. The podcast will air live on BlogTalkRadio: http://bit.ly/drJipN

Joining Chris are:
• Andrew Albanese, features editor at Publishers Weekly;
• Sara Nelson, Books Editor, “O” Magazine;
• Brian O’Leary, Founder & Principal, Magellan Media Partners; and
• Mike Shatzkin, Founder & CEO, The Idea Logical Company, Inc.,

During the podcast, Chris will also be taking phone calls at 646-378-1949.

In Tough Times, a Library Branch Reopens
The reopening of the St. Agnes branch of the New York Public Library has given the library system something to celebrate in the face of budget woes.

Hi guys...it's Will Manley here. I've had a blog at www.willmanley.com going for about 3 weeks. I would appreciate it if you could mention it. I'm a retired librarian and I write a column for American Libraries (Will's World) and Booklist (The Manley Arts). You can find an announcement of my blog at American Libraries .

Thanks for your consideration.

Will

Bigger kids striving to get their younger peers to read
The K is for Kids Foundation was started by Karen Clawson as a county-wide spin-off to Laurel Oak Elementary School’s Bring a Book, Bring a Friend Fun’raisers. Parents and supporters of the school would bring books to an event to help stock the school’s media center.

“We started by telling our friends and telling our families and it grew from there,” said Clawson. “What we did for one school, we were able to do for eight school libraries last year.”

Is the Great American Novel Destroying Novelists?
Is the idea of the Great American Novel the worst thing that ever happened to great American novelists? Some days it does seem that way. American authors who struggle to define the American experience by cramming it all into one novel almost inevitably come to some version of grief, and no one epitomizes this dilemma better than Ralph Ellison, who published only stories and essays in the 40 years after he dazzled the literary world with Invisible Man. It was no secret that he was working on a second novel all that time—he published excerpts while alive, and a novel-length fragment appeared a decade ago.

Google book scanning: Cultural theft or freedom of information?
A proposed partnership between the French government and Google is stoking fears in France that the country's literary treasures will fall under commercial control of a U.S. technology company.

New Jersey.com's Dylan Foley interviews Marilyn Johnson about her latest book, "This Book is Overdue, How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All". Here are a couple of questions to arouse your interest:

Q. You’ve written this quirky book about modern librarians. Why?

A. Librarians have had my back for so long. They helped me so much when I was a magazine writer and when I was writing my book on obituaries. With the new book, I realized I was writing about a profession that was undergoing seismic changes.

Q. In your book, you tapped into wide social circles of librarians. What was your experience?

A. One of the great things about these librarians is that they are out there on the web. Once you stumble on one, you find a whole group of them. Librarians make up one of the most connected professions.

Entire interview here.

Since librarians are good at finding things (and people), you might want to consider adding Google Person Finder to your database.

Here's info on the API, which is now available via open source.

Google has a crisis response group that quickly went into action after the quake in Haiti in January, coordinating with groups internally and externally, including governmental and non-governmental authorities. A crisis response page was soon posted at here.

It was realized there would be a need for a way to find out the status of family and friends who may have been impacted by the quake. As groups began to coalesce around this need, it was discovered that a Person Finder application had been created in the aftermath of the WTC attacks in 2001. Another was created in response to hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, a quick survey showed these applications could not be revived in a short time.

However, they have since worked out the kinks and created a viable program. Google now cordially invites you to work with them in a coordinated effort to help the crisis relief efforts for the people of Haiti.

Aardvark, a social search company, is developing a new paradigm for Web searches that taps into social networks, not automated formulas, to provide answers to queries.

Article at NYT.com

Listen to full story on "All Things Considered" on NPR

Henrietta Lacks, a poor African-American woman and mother of five, never knew that she revolutionized medicine. Shortly before she died of cancer in 1951, doctors took a tissue sample from her — without her permission. Those cells became the first human cells to gain "immortality" — replicating themselves in laboratories long after Henrietta Lacks died. Host Guy Raz talks to science journalist Rebecca Skloot about her new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

On February 20 and 21, 2010 the first convention for bookmark collectors will take place online. For 24 hours, bookmark collectors from all over the world will meet to give and attend seminars, view galleries, shop, swap, and socialize with other collectors and enthusiasts. For many collectors, this will be the first time they will have the opportunity to meet and discuss their passion with other enthusiasts, live.

If you collect bookmarks, make bookmarks, or are curious about bookmarks; if you are interested in ephemera, biblio-paraphernalia, craft samplers, book history, small art, or collectibles; or if you are interested in seeing the first virtual convention for collectors of any sort, then stop by the website and register for the Bookmark Collectors Virtual convention.

Convention Websites are BMCVC and Bookmark Convention. Organizers are Alan Irwin, info@bmcvc.com and Lauren Roberts, lauren@bmcvc.com, who also runs the website Bibliobuffet. In My Book® will participate in the convention as a vendor.

From Teleread:

We had a great show today on The Biblio File, marred only by a minor technical malfunction in the middle. I was joined by Paula Berinstein of The Writing Show (as well as a number of listeners in the text chat) and we talked for over an hour about Ficbot’s and my posts, the Amazon/Macmillan situation in general, and related matters.

You've gotta see this...a beautifully done promo for "Life List" by Olivia Gentile. Site design by Pentagram.

From the MN Star Tribune, a thoughtful review of Marilyn Johnson's new title, "This Book is Overdue" about the value of librarians in our information-saturated world.

"Librarians have a champion in Johnson, yet her clear bias takes nothing away from the book, partly because she builds a solid case for their existence. While almost anyone can Google almost anything, we're vulnerable to a sort of "information sickness" that Johnson describes as not knowing where one piece of information leaves off and the next begins. "I was, in other words, overstimulated yet gluttonous for more."

This is where librarians are our best allies, and Johnson thankfully adopts a "show, don't tell" approach."

Here's the website for the book and here is the the authors website. It's a must-read for today's librarian.

Political espionage author and journalist Henry Porter solemnly points out: "To begin to write a book these days seems more than the average folly. Publishing appears to have been hit by a storm similar to the one that tore through the music industry a few years ago and is now causing unprecedented pain in newspapers We are told that fewer people are reading, that book sales are down, that the supermarkets which sell one in five copies of all books care more about their cucumber sales, that the book is shortly to be replaced by the ebook and electronic readers sold by, among others, Amazon, which seems bent on reducing publishers to an archipelago of editorial sweatshops and the writer to the little guy stitching trainers in an airless room.

Publishing seems to be one of the great mysteries of commerce. Despite the large numbers involved – a total of £1.752bn was spent on 235.7m books in 2009 in the UK, that's nearly four books for every man woman and child – the business today is a testament to self-deprecation, with only a few people willing to assert the unique value of books and their content."

More from the Guardian Observer.