LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Today, May 3, is free ! Make sure you go pick yours up as nothing beats free stuff!

Eric Roger Green Has A Column in The Denver Post:

There is no proof that one can have a truly balanced library collection based on all the ambiguities involved. Librarians will continue to receive collection challenges, which they should. We need to communicate that there is no perfect system. Our patrons must also understand this as well. We can challenge our patrons to take responsibility for this process. We might achieve a respectable, but imperfect representative collection. Or would robot Librarians do better?

The Marginal Revolution Blog Says the partial monopolization of for-fee journals makes it possible to produce status returns to motivate both editors and referees. Returning to the free setting, refereeing will survive insofar as writing detailed referee comments on other people's work helps with your own research; it is interesting to ponder in which fields this might hold.

Library and Archives Canada has announced the elimination of the Canadian Book Exchange Centre.

Opened 35 years ago, the exchange centre is a massive swap shop for public and academic libraries across Canada. Libraries donate books and periodicals their patrons no longer use and, in response to requests by other libraries, the centre redistributes them.

Canadian Library Association executive director Don Butcher said while it's true that libraries collections are shifting to digital, Library and Archives Canada should have consulted the library community before cutting the centre and made a greater effort to find alternatives.

According to Rochelle , who talked to Amazon customer support, libraries that are lending out Kindles (Amazon's ebook reader) to patrons are in violation of the terms of service. She makes some compelling points on questions that Amazon needs to answer, such as ways to disable people from downloading without disabling the account.

This article comes to us courtesy of ALA's Library Direct e-mail. Johnsonton County is on the hunt for books to remove from its collection after removing "How the Girls lost their accents". What scariest of all is that they aren't waiting to react, they're just looking for books that are "offensive."

mdoneil writes "Are you weeding in the 200s.? Well you better be careful about which books you pitch. Some of those books cannot be thrown away according to The God Squad.
No Bibles with the coffee grounds. No Korans in the dustbin. You have to bury them. The books would be covered and buried respectfully though not necessarily in a cemetery. They should be covered and then buried. "Dust to dust" refers to the disposal of all holy vessels."

Book auction from the late AMS (Advanced Marketing Services)...if you're in the Indianapolis, IN area, you might want to check out the announcement here. Auction is in Indianapolis on Tuesday, October 9. A brochure may be downloaded from the auctioneer's website.

Jersey City NJ resident Juan Albornoz describes himself as a "pain in the butt," and is well-known to many city officials for being, as one unnamed council aide said, a "person with an opinion on everything." (translation??) So Albornoz did not shy away from expressing his opinion to the council at their last meeting on June 27 regarding some books from the Jersey City Free Public Library he found in a hamper earlier this month on Mercer Street, outside the library's Main Branch. The books, with their cover torn off and pages gutted - including titles by James Jones, William Kennedy, Joseph Heller, John Irving, R.K. Narayan, Muriel Spark, and P.D. James.

"I let them know that major works of American literature are being destroyed," Albornoz said. "The bottom line is what kind of city is this that would allow this destruction." Library Director Priscilla Gardner wished that he would have taken his opinion directly to her as oppposed to the City Counsel, but unfortunately that's not what Albornoz chose to do. Story from the Hudson Reporter.

Board games have evolved much since the days of Monopoly. Thanks to the Euro game boom of the 1990s, there is a rich variety of board games to explore. At Boardgame News, Giles Pritchard lists age-appropriate games for school children, as well as games that target math, literacy, and negotation skills. These could be interesting for both educators and librarians who plan after-school programs for youth.