LISNews:

Belarus: Browsing Foreign Websites a Misdemeanor

Blake — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 01:21:45 +0000

Belarus: Browsing Foreign Websites a Misdemeanor

As stated in an explanatory note published together with the Law, this act was issued to implement the Decree of the Belarusian President of February 1, 2010, on Improvements to the Usage of the National Segment of the Internet. The newly published Law imposes restrictions on visiting and/or using foreign websites by Belarusian citizens and residents. Under this new Law, the violation of these rules is recognized as a misdemeanor and is punished by fines of varied amounts, up to the equivalent of US$125. (Id.)

LISTen: An LISNews.org Program -- Episode #180 (Part 2)

StephenK — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:38:02 +0000

This is the second part of LISTen's 2011 New Year's Eve Special that originally aired on shortwave powerhouse WBCQ.

LISTen: An LISNews.org Program -- Episode #180 (Part 2) by The Air Staff of Erie Looking Productions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at sixgun.org.

LISTen: An LISNews.org Program -- Episode #180 (Part 1)

StephenK — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:34:13 +0000

This is the first part of LISTen's 2011 New Year's Eve Special that originally aired on shortwave powerhouse WBCQ.

LISTen: An LISNews.org Program -- Episode #180 (Part 1) by The Air Staff of Erie Looking Productions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at sixgun.org.

Public Domain Day 2012: Five things we can do in the US

Blake — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:23:01 +0000

Public Domain Day 2012: Five things we can do in the US
t’s New Year’s Day again, and in much of the world, this means another year’s worth of works enter the public domain. That’s a cause for celebration, as Europe and many other countries that have “life+70 years” copyright terms welcome works by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Jelly Roll Morton, and Elizabeth von Arnim into the public domain. The Communia Project’s Public Domain Day website focuses on works by these and many other authors that are entering (in many cases, re-entering) the public domain in “life+70 years” countries. Meanwhie, folks in Canada, New Zealand, and other countries that have held the line at the “life+50 years” terms of the Berne Convention can now freely enjoy the works of people like James Thurber, Ernest Hemingway, and H.D.

There’s not so much excitement about Public Domain Day in the US, where no published works are scheduled to enter the public domain for another 7 years, due to a 20-year copyright extension enacted in 1998. But Americans don’t have to simply sigh and contemplate what might have been if our copyright terms hadn’t been extended. The new year still provides a number of important opportunities for Americans to improve access to the public domain.

Pelham NH to Hold Library Director's Job While He's Incarcerated

birdie — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:24:41 +0000

Strange but true...librarian convicted for major theft in one state, Massachusetts, will return to his more recent position in another, New Hampshire after his sentence has been served.

Robert Rice Jr., 46, was sentenced yesterday to six months behind bars for stealing more than $200,000 when he was the director of Revere Public Library.

Rice was sentenced in Superior Court in Boston on 18 felony charges for taking money from 2005 to 2009, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office.

Rice pleaded guilty to fraud and embezzlement charges as part of a plea bargain. He bought numerous items under the pretense they were for the Revere library, but then kept or sold them.

Shortly after resigning in 2009 while under fire in Revere, Rice took the position in Pelham.

Francis Garboski, chairman of the Pelham Library trustees, said yesterday Rice's job is still safe.

"His position will be held until he gets back," Garboski said. "The decision is up to him when he wants to come back."

Why a shift to ebooks imperils libraries

Blake — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:14:16 +0000

Why a shift to ebooks imperils libraries

It isn’t because libraries can’t figure out, technically, how to loan out ebooks. It’s because publishers don’t want them to, and may be able to prevent it.

In praise of public libraries - and librarians

Blake — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:44:06 +0000

In praise of public libraries – and librarians

I’d say the answer to this is that public libraries are important because of a word that’s been largely ignored or forgotten and that word is Public. Public libraries are about more than mere facts, information or ‘content’. Public libraries are places where local people and ideas come together. They are spaces, local gathering places, where people exchange knowledge, wisdom, insight and, most importantly of all, human dignity.

Beyond the Bullet Points: Expect More

Blake — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:15:27 +0000

Beyond the Bullet Points: Expect More
For far too long we have treated the innovators and leaders in our field as exceptional. While they are brilliant and brave, we can no longer treat them as the exceptions. We must see their work as the standard. Librarians who have raised their budgets in these economic times should not be treated as fortunate, or beyond the norm; we must see their example as the new normal. We must stop seeing those who create new technologies, or who raise the usage of our services as superhuman, and see them as the benchmark. No longer can we allow the mediocre of our field train the expectations of our communities. No longer can we simply talk about the future of our field among ourselves, sheltered from the withering criticism of the uninformed.

After 1,500 Years, an Index to the Talmud’s Labyrinths

Blake — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:09:03 +0000

After 1,500 Years, an Index to the Talmud’s Labyrinths
The Talmud is a formidable body of work: 63 volumes of rabbinical discourse and disputation that form Judaism’s central scripture after the Torah. It has been around for 1,500 years and is studied every day by tens of thousands of Jews. But trying to navigate through its coiling labyrinth can be enormously difficult because the one thing this monumental work lacks is a widely accepted and accessible index.

But now that breach has been filled, or so claims the publisher of HaMafteach, or the Key, a guide to the Talmud, available in English and Hebrew.

Gift Cards for Library Employees a No-No

birdie — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 23:51:14 +0000

Good intentions. Bad idea. Those words summarize the recent attempt by Live Oak (GA) Public Libraries Director Christian Kruse to spend nearly $23,000 in library funds on gift cards for 166 employees.

The cards were valued at $50, $100 and $200 and were meant to recognize part-time and full-time employees after about three years of stagnant salaries and increased health care costs, Kruse said.

He said the cards were meant to be a small token for the work the staff does and were paid for with surplus revenue from a special fund from book sales, fines and fee revenue. Finance Director Neal Vickers later said revenue from copying and printing fees was used.

One problem is the gift cards may have violated restrictions on the use of public funds, according to state officials.

The gratuities clause of the Georgia Constitution prohibits the use of public funds for gifts or bonuses, said Ronald Watson, director of the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts’ education division. A state audit of the library probably would cite the purchase as improper, he said.

Any money that comes from library operations, which are state supported, should be invested in operations, and gift cards don’t qualify, Watson said. More from Savannah Now.

Publishers vs. Libraries: An E-Book Tug of War

Bibliofuture — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 02:55:02 +0000

LAST year, Christmas was the biggest single day for e-book sales by HarperCollins. And indications are that this year’s Christmas Day total will be even higher, given the extremely strong sales of e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook. Amazon announced on Dec. 15 that it had sold one million of its Kindles in each of the three previous weeks.

But we can also guess that the number of visitors to the e-book sections of public libraries’ Web sites is about to set a record, too.

And that is a source of great worry for publishers. In their eyes, borrowing an e-book from a library has been too easy. Worried that people will click to borrow an e-book from a library rather than click to buy it, almost all major publishers in the United States now block libraries’ access to the e-book form of either all of their titles or their most recently published ones.

Full article

Promo for LISTen's Shortwave Debut

StephenK — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 23:26:21 +0000

"In protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act proposal, LISTen will be making its debut on shortwave radio. On New Year's Eve, we'll be on WBCQ The Planet on 5.110 MHz at 6 PM Eastern/11 PM Coordinated Universal Time. The podcast release of the program will occur that night after the radio broadcast ends. Listen over the air while we're in the air."

Promo for LISTen's Shortwave Debut by The Air Staff of Erie Looking Productions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

How Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Got His Name

birdie — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:41:38 +0000

Curious to know more about how Rudolph really went down in history? It's all in the pages of a long-overlooked scrapbook compiled by the story's author, Robert L. May, and housed at his alma mater, Dartmouth College.

May donated his handwritten first draft and illustrated mock-up to Dartmouth before his death at age 71 in 1976, and his family later added to what has become a large collection of Rudolph-related documents and merchandise, including a life-sized papier-mache reindeer that now stands among the stacks at the Rauner Special Collections Library. But May's scrapbook about the book's launch and success went unnoticed until last year, when Dartmouth archivist Peter Carini came across it while looking for something else.

"No one on staff currently knew we had it. I pulled it out and all the pieces started falling out. It was just a mess," Carini said.

The scrapbook, which has since been restored and catalogued, includes May's list of possible names for his story's title character – from Rodney and Rollo to Reginald and Romeo. There's a map showing how many books went to each state and letters of praise from adults and children alike.

The scrapbook also chronicles the massive marketing campaign Montgomery Ward launched to drum up newspaper coverage of the book giveaway and its efforts to promote it within the company.

Have a Local History Special Collection? Invite Patrons in for a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon

shelfcheck — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:41:05 +0000

Here's a neat-and-easy programming idea to get local history buffs into the library and promote your special collections: invite folks in for a day of intensive Wikipedia-editing on local history entries. (Spotted on Hennepin County Library's Tumblr; Minneapolis Central Library will be holding an edit-a-thon in early 2012)

Trees to Books and Books to Trees

birdie — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:57:24 +0000

A slide show from GalleyCat. Enjoy!

David Weinberger on the future of libraries

Blake — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:00:45 +0000

David Weinberger on the future of libraries
Weinberger acknowledged that this new way of looking at knowledge has its drawbacks. "We've organized ourselves as cultures, to a large degree, around what we agree we know. And when you have multiple ways of knowing, multiple ways of organizing, the society loses one of its deepest organizational principles," he pointed out. It also gets more difficult to dismiss some points of view, even if they're wrong - "it gets harder to rule them out when every bad idea can be made globally public through the web. "

[Thanks LIbraryStuff!]

How Much More Do Books Cost Today?

Blake — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:22:08 +0000

How Much More Do Books Cost Today?
In recognition of the steadfastness of the New York Times Best Seller lists, let’s see what books were topping it, going backwards in time, and use the opportunity to compare what these bestsellers cost relative to each other (as we are wont to do). It’s going to be a straightforward exercise: go back in increments of ten years and see which hardcover book is on the top of each of the Fiction and Nonfiction lists. We'll use the first week of December for each—close enough to today’s actual date to get a sense of continuity but hopefully far enough away from Christmas so as to avoid any Yuletide influence at the top of the lists. And as usual, all retail prices will be converted into 2011 dollars thanks be to this ingenious little tool from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

No deal with OCLC

Blake — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:57:34 +0000

No deal with OCLC
The National Library (of Sweden) has ended negotiations with OCLC, as the parties could not successfully come to terms on a contract. The decision was made by the National Librarian after discussion in the National Reference Group and the Expert Group for the Libris national system
[Via DJF of the LSW]

Oshkosh Public Library gets $1.1 million gift

Blake — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:00:26 +0000

Oshkosh Public Library gets $1.1 million gift
life-long Oshkosh woman described as an avid reader and movie watcher made a $1.1 million bequest to the Oshkosh Public Library.

The library board decided Thursday to use the money from the estate of Marjorie M. Drexler to establish a memorial trust fund.
Drexler died Aug. 16, 2010, at the age of 87.

[Thanks Mark!]

Yorkshire library volunteers prepare New Year takeover

Blake — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:58:50 +0000

Yorkshire library volunteers prepare New Year takeover
Hundreds of volunteers are preparing to take over libraries across Yorkshire in the New Year as councils continue to make tens of millions of pounds of cuts. Some libraries have already closed, while dozens of others will only survive if local residents come forwad to run them. Unpaid volunteers and charity groups in places like Denby Dale and Rawdon in West Yorkshire and Bawtry in South Yorkshire are now being trained to take charge.
[Thanks Kendra!]

Writers and Their Books: Inside Famous Authors' Personal Libraries

Blake — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:49:47 +0000

Writers and Their Books: Inside Famous Authors' Personal Libraries
Alongside the formidable collections—featuring Alison Bechdel, Stephen Carter, Junot Díaz, Rebecca Goldstein and Steven Pinker, Lev Grossman and Sophie Gee, Jonathan Lethem, Claire Messud and James Wood, Philip Pullman, Gary Shteyngart, and Edmund Whit—are short interviews with the authors about the books most important to them (including their top 10), their style of organization, and their thoughts on what the future of books might hold. (Cue in writers on the future of books.) The interviews are prefaced by Leah Price's fascinating brief history of bookshelves, from the rise of the vertical book on a horizontal shelf to how social bookmarking services are changing our relationship with tagging and indexing information.

Seeing Terror Risk, U.S. Asks Journals to Cut Flu Study Facts

Bibliofuture — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:21:11 +0000

For the first time ever, a government advisory board is asking scientific journals not to publish details of certain biomedical experiments, for fear that the information could be used by terrorists to create deadly viruses and touch off epidemics.

Full article

No predictions this year; just questions

Bibliofuture — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:05:50 +0000

Book industry consultant Mike Shatzkin has a series of questions for the book industry for the next year. The questions are for these groups:
The biggest publishers
Publishers bigger than small, but not Big Six
Smaller publishers
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Independent bookstores
Authors
Agents
Illustrated book publishers
The industry

A Tumultuous Year in Books

Blake — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:27:45 +0000

A Tumultuous Year in Books
This has been a tumultuous year for the book business, a time of profound change in the way books are distributed and read. It is no exaggeration to say that the widespread acceptance of digital devices and a simultaneous contraction of shelf-space in stores qualify as a historic shift.

2 former librarians face legal issues in Louisiana

Blake — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:25:35 +0000

2 former librarians face legal issues in Louisiana
The former directors in East Baton Rouge, LA seem to be in legal trouble. One was placed on administrative leave in June, after exchanging text message with and agreeing to meet a federal agent he thought was a 13-year-old boy. In the meantime, the library board in East Baton Rouge was evaluating the other's performance when they discovered that he had been arrested and charged with sexual assault and impersonating a police officer 15 years ago in Cullman. He also lacked the state certification required for the position.