LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Latest library extra: quiet zones

Downtown's Central Library offers patrons quiet rooms and about a fourth of neighborhood branch libraries provide “quiet zones” in adult reading areas. An undetermined number of additional libraries will add quiet zones in “the next couple of months,” said Mike Van Campen, Houston Public Library's chief of neighborhood branches.

Van Campen said the quiet zones are designated with signs asking patrons to silence their cell phones.

“There's an expectation that even conversations at a medium volume wouldn't be encouraged,” he said.

Slumming With Charles Dickens: New York Library Relives His American Tours
snippet: "The staging of Dickens In America led to the discovery of two heretofore unknown personal letters written by Dickens to John Bigelow in the 1860's."

Drew University student is accused of stealing, trying to sell historical documents
As an 18-year-old freshman at Drew University, William J. Scott was hired to work at the school’s archives center. He was entrusted with a key to the climate-controlled rooms housing centuries-old letters signed by presidents, generals and the founders of the Methodist faith.

Behavior Changes Linked to March Madness
Charles Clotfelter, Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of Public Policy at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, used data from 78 research libraries in the U.S. to determine the number of articles viewed from February through April in 2006, 2007 and 2008. The number of articles viewed on Monday through Wednesday of those weeks averaged more than 1,000 a day per library.

Clotfelter found that the number of articles viewed through the JSTOR digital repository of academic journals increased an average rate of 5 percent a week in the weeks leading up to “Selection Sunday,” but fell 6 percent in the week right after the NCAA field was announced. The following week, library usage resumed its increase, at a rate of 3 percent a week.

Community College librarian charged in mail threats
A well-respected librarian at Community College of Aurora for years made death threats and deranged insults to politicians, diplomats and former acquaintances, school and federal officials said.

Academic libraries are different than public libraries when it comes to the patrons they serve, but one thing that is the same--disasters and crime. On any given day librarians and staff must be prepared to deal with episodes of theft, inappropriate behavior from patrons in the library, natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes on the east coast and even earthquakes, all of which can do untold damage to collections and the lives of those who work in libraries. Additionally, on college and secondary campuses it seems that we are reminded frequently that there are unstable individuals that care nothing about taking someone's life. Should this cause panic in how we handle the daily activities, the answer is no; however it should cause concern and action. Develop a strong disaster preparedness plan and familiarize yourself and your staff with the necessary steps to take if a disaster strikes. While it is sometimes easy to be amused by the stupid things that people do, we should never forget the seriousness of the actions that a few can take or the consequences of mother nature having a bad day. http://cool.conservation-us.org/bytopic/disasters/

Locked in the Library: It started out like any other trip to the library’s Langdell Hall. Kim’s research on the expansion of judicial power led him to visit the ILS building to obtain some Chinese language material. ILS is connected to the main library by a bridge and—unbeknownst to Kim—has different hours of operation than certain floors of the main building.

Learned about the February 22 opening of the new "EPFL" Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne here in Book Patrol, and researched further to find the website, here.

Light is brought in through the Swiss-cheese holes in the roof, and the pristine whiteness of the concrete surfaces creates a snowy plane, airy, bright, and infinite. The result is a communal space without fixed function. A softly curvy, feminine expanse without hierarchies or straight lines. A series of calm and silent connected spaces created to nurture collaboration, communication, and cooperation over competition. Library, offices, restaurants, and auditoriums are harmoniously linked between a cloud-like canopy above, and a floor that gently rises and falls like a living organism as it inhales and exhales. "Human movements are not linear like in a train, but curve in a more organic way," said architect Ryue Nishizawa, one-half of the Japanese architectural team SANAA, explaining his vision. "With straight lines we only create crossroads, but with curves we can create more diverse interactions."

San Diego students storm offices after noose found
SAN DIEGO – Anger boiled over on the University of California San Diego campus Friday, where students took over the chancellor's office for several hours to protest the hanging of a noose in a campus library.

Colleges test Amazon's Kindle e-book reader as study tool
Now, as several major universities finish analyzing data from pilot programs involving the latest version of the Amazon Kindle, officials are learning more about what students want out of their e-reader tablets. Generally, the colleges found that students missed some of the old-fashioned note-taking tools they enjoyed before. But they also noted that the shift had some key environmental benefits. Further, a minority of students embraced the Kindle fairly quickly as highly desirable for curricular use.