LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Carnegie Mellon joins a growing number of campuses whose libraries are keeping themselves relevant in the laptop age by running at least part of their operation round-the-clock and by making other changes to the services they offer. Persistent urging from students unhappy with a 3 a.m. closing time persuaded the staff of Hunt Library to experiment in the fall with leaving its basement and first floor open, Dr. St. Clair said. Hunt, like other college libraries, already operated 24 hours during final exams. Nationwide, the share of campuses boasting all-night libraries is growing, though it's hard without specific data. Read more at: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09004/939526-298.stm

Heidi Lee Hoerman, an instructor in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina, has started a new blog. Future4catalogers is a blog attempting to look at what is coming in the disciplinary realm of bibliographic control. The blog was announced Monday on AUTOCAT.

Safelibraries sent over a link to List of commercial games released as freeware that could be useful for libraries looking to build some gaming resources for cheap. Commercial games released as freeware are games that, in their original license, were not considered freeware, but were re-released at a later date with a freeware license, sometimes as publicity for a forthcoming sequel or compilation release.

With the start of a new year, I have to make a call for suggestions on authors to interview. A thread has been opened at the Erie Looking Productions site for this. Why there? Disqus lets me export comments to Comma Separated Values which I can then import into a spreadsheet program and create a tracker. Tracking down authors for interviews can sometimes be tricky which is why such a bit of case management is needed.

Some of our previous author interviews:
Piers Anthony
David Weber

It would seem the first and last actually famous librarian, soon-to-be-former First Lady Laura Bush, has found a home for her memoir, despite an apparent lack of enthusiasm from several NY publishers.

Scribners is the lucky lady. You can read about it here at Yahoo: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090105/ap_en_ot/laura_bush_book

I wouldn't give a festering bowl of dog snot for her husband but I always liked her. Smart, classy, rational, diplomatic. Seems the wrong Bush went into politics.

She got a lot of money for the book too. More than her husband and close to what Hillary got.

The way we read is changing. This short article introduces the Wovel -- a Web novel. The founder of a small press that publishes wovels says, "There's an installment every Monday. At the end of every installment, there's a binary plot branch point with a vote button at the end." Voting is open from Monday to Thursday, the author writes the chapter from Thursday to Sunday, and publisher posts the installment on Sunday night.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98503490&ps=cprs&sc=emaf

Libraries remain the primary repository of a huge portion of the world’s knowledge, ready to be uncovered by seekers of all kinds. But there are libraries…and then there are libraries. One very common form of library required patrons to pay monthly or annual dues in exchange for access (which may or may not have included borrowing rights). When public libraries began to catch on, these membership libraries (also called subscription libraries) began to dwindle rapidly; there are now just 18 still functioning in the U.S.

And there’s something else: reference librarians who are positively itching to help you find information. I always have to avert my eyes when I walk by the reference desk. If I make eye contact, I invariably get this guilt-inducing “why-aren’t-you-asking-me-where-to-find-old-periodicals” look, and I just can’t bear it.

Troubles for Reference Librarians: Rick Roche:

At the risk of sounding old fashioned and crotchety, let me say that this sounds like the result of having had too much easy success in the past and settling for just enough. I think we as librarians should work to make our tools as easy to use as possible, with the goal of connecting clients and information/content that they seek, but we should convey that the tools are not perfect. I think some of our marketing that says "Hey, use this , it's easy!" backfires on us. Students and other clients believe us and then assume that if the easy search does not find anything, there is nothing to be found. How we can have positive and encouraging promotions that are still realistic is tricky. We need to think about this.

Error Correction of Project Gutenberg eBooks: This is a great and wonderful thing because the one thing in the history of eBooks that separates Project Gutenberg is an everlasting continuing process of improvement.

Hundreds of our eBooks are reissued each year with a variety of improvements, some technical, some in format and/or style of presentation, many with various error corrections.

David Lee King has something for you to ponder, next time you're looking for something to ponder. What can you actually DO at your website? Can you do most of the the real “stuff” that your library offers as activities?

But what else? Can you browse your collection? Probably not. Can you subscribe to feeds, so you can get updates whenever a page is updated with new info? Maybe. Can you instantly contact a librarian to ask your burning question or get clarification through IM, chat, email, or Twitter? Probably not.

New York Times: MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Ben Zimmer, executive producer of a Web site and software package called the Visual Thesaurus, was seeking the earliest use of the phrase “you’re not the boss of me.” (ed-my husband and I were just discussing use of that particular phrase with our son yesterday). Using a newspaper database, he had found a reference from 1953.

But while using Google’s book search recently, he found the phrase in a short story contained in “The Church,” a periodical published in 1883 and scanned from the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Google’s book search “allows you to look for things that would be very difficult to search for otherwise,” said Zimmer. But ...do we really care when the phrase was first used? Don't most little children think of the phrase on their own anyway?

So then; should Google be be the only worthwhile place to search for content in old books? If not Google, then who? Post your opinion if you'd like.

My thanks to Walt for editorial assistance.

This week's episode brings a chat with Cameron Kaiser, the creator of Twitter client ttytter, as well as a piece from The Effing Librarian and a commentary written by the program's engineer.

Links:
Blog entry referenced in the engineer's commentary
The prepared commentary text that was presented
The Twitter client, ttytter
The book by The Effing Librarian
The blog by The Effing Librarian
One book by the podcast production team
Another book by the podcast production team

From the front page of the Boston Sunday Globe: an article on how circulation, program attendance, and visits are booming -- just as government in Massachusetts are facing large budget shortfalls.

He's the king of couch potatoes. A Manhattan man has won his second couch potato contest. Stan Friedman, 47, a research librarian at magazine giant Conde Nast, needed 18 hours, 48 minutes and 17 seconds of sports-watching time to outlast the competition at the second annual ESPN Zone Ultimate Couch Potato Competition.

The participants, sitting in recliners in front of dozens of televisions, weren't allowed to go to sleep or leave their recliners except for restroom breaks once every eight hours. He won a $5,000 prize.

Google News and even more detail at The New York Daily News.

A flood caused by a New Year's Day storm destroyed thousands of books at the library in Estacada, OR on Friday.

"Everything on bottom shelves is gone," said library director Katinka Bryk.

The town is in Clackamas County, where the rains were heavy and Gov. Ted Kulongoski declared a state of emergency.

More from the Seattle PI.

All city libraries will face cuts in their hours of operation unless a judge reconsiders an order forbidding the closing of 11 branches, Mayor Nutter said yesterday.

Staff members at the libraries that Nutter planned to close this year had already been laid off or transferred when the judge ruled that the branches must stay open. That order is forcing the city to operate with fewer employees and causing the city to bleed money by the day, Nutter said.

Wikipedia is a demonstration of the wisdom of crowds? The crowd may be smaller that you think. Full blog post here.

As reported in the most recent regular edition of LISTen, podcast hosting provider Podango collapsed on New Year's Day. All that remained was a parking page. LISHost announced its response that same day.

Along with the families of Atif Irfan, a tax attorney, and his brother Kashif Irfan, an anesthesiologist, employees at AirTran Airways at Reagan Airport outside Washington DC also removed a family friend, Abdul Aziz. Aziz is a Library of Congress attorney (according to LinkedIn, he is a "Legal Information Analyst at Library of Congress") who was coincidentally taking the same flight and had been seen talking with the family. Story from CNN.

Further analysis on this incident from Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News and World Report, whose article is entitled "Does Muslim Family Booted From Plane Strengthen Case for Religious Literacy?"