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"Starting this fall, the 220-member library cooperative Califa Library Group will begin rolling out a $325,000 project with the goal of buying from the smaller publishing companies thousands of e-books that the libraries will own forever."

The United States Postal Service (USPS) may invite some public libraries to double as post offices, Susan Hildreth, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, said on August 1.

MOBIUS needs to do this only instead of empty cake pans they should be filled with cake and instead of going to other libraries they should come directly to the office. A longtime practice of checking out cake pans at libraries in Kansas, particularly in rural areas, has increased as people look for a way to save money while still providing treats for special occasions. More cake pans are being loaned at the Great Bend Public Library after employees recently moved nearly 100 of the pans from a back room to bookshelves, The Hutchinson News reported.

I've heard of libraries in Missouri that loan cake pans, too. I can't remember where she was from, but remember at MLA several years ago a librarian telling me about all the different shapes and "characters" of cake pans they had--cool idea!

An article about a Maker Space at the Westport, Connecticut library, which includes a 3D printing project. 3-D printing is one of the waves of the future and I know the MST library looked at one; hosting the Maker Space in the middle of the library is a good way to promote it but I wonder if the noise and activity will end up distracting to the other patrons.

This is epic. Someday soon libraries will be repositories of genetic information and in addition to 3D printers they will have biological printers. Even though libraries lending seeds is fairly new, in the not so distant future that function will be obsolete as patrons are able to come into the library and print the genetic materials needed to grow any plant species on record.

What sounds like a cautionary tale about keeping libraries open in a time of slashed budgets and electronic resources becomes a concerning episode of institutional decline of libraries in the Philadelphia school system as some "libraries" have operated for years without staff and functioning as essentially a store room.

In a report released today, Tuesday 6 November 2012, the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee says that some local authorities, under considerable pressure to quickly find cost savings, have drawn up plans without taking proper account of local needs for library services and the variety of options available to provide them, and are therefore in danger of failing in their statutory duty to provide a 'comprehensive and efficient' library service. Other councils, however, have found innovative and cost-effective ways of continuing to supply - and in some cases improve - their library service.

Harvard librarians learned that lesson when they set up Twitter feeds broadcasting titles of books being checked out from campus libraries. It seemed harmless enough-a typical tweet read, "Reconstructing American Law by Bruce A. Ackerman," with a link to the book's library catalog entry-but the social-media experiment turned out to be more provocative than library staffers imagined.

I'm just surprised that it took academic libraries so long to catch on-- public libraries were really at the forefront of this movement.

The city of McAllen, Texas converted a Wal-Mart into a spacious public library and won the 2012 Library Interior Design Competition in the process.

"A new report from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project finds that 12% of readers of ebooks borrowed an ebook from their libraries in the past year, and a majority of respondents (62%) don't know if their local library provides ebooks. "

The Digital Public Library of America initiative received $1 million to support the creation of the infrastructure for a national open-access digital library.

The city of New York has been investigating ways to reuse obsolete or underused phone booths. The number of phone booths nationwide has dropped by more than half from 1999 to 2007, and 13,000 booths will likely be unused when contracts expire in 2014. Ideas that have been tested include wireless hotspots, touch screen maps, and bolt in bookcases to make a small library. However, unlike other lending libraries that are community supported by an honor system where a book is donated for one removed, the New York libraries tend to disappear within days to weeks. Despite this some publishers and some neighborhoods have been interested in contributing books.

FREE Virtual Conference! October 18-19, 2013 One of the speakers is our teacher from the MOOC (David Lankes). I'll be attending! The dates are set for the Library 2.013 Worldwide Virtual Conference. The third annual global conversation about the future of libraries is scheduled for To be kept informed of the latest conference news and updates, please Altogether, there will be eight conference strands covering a wide variety of timely topics, such as, MOOCs, e-books, maker spaces, mobile services, embedded librarians, green libraries, and more!

An article that describes a problem but really offers no solutions. I would also describe the experience as not of a walled garden library but the attempts to make access available with copyright and software limitations, versus all material being only in print and physically having to go to a library that owns it to access it.

The Library of Congress is featuring selected pages of Gresham's little-known diary as part of an extensive display of its voluminous Civil War material to mark the sesquicentennial of the war years.

Not really breaking new ground but an interest piece about the St. Louis County Library after county residents improved a tax increase for the system and some details about Vartan Gregorian, the current president of the Carnegie Corporation and the past president of the New York Public Library.

The fourth New York Times article, this time looking at libraries both as gather places and as for solitude. Two of his comments stood out to me: "....we tend to subscribe to a set of norms: studiousness, solitude and quiet above all. These connect the sense that all these disparate places really are one place, consistent across times and cultures." And: "In their long history, libraries have been models for the world and models of the world...."

An interesting approach for a library in Wisconsin where fines are resolved not by money but by food, with the food being donated to the needy. The resolution is not complete, only knocking $1 off for each food item up to $50, but does increase library involvement in the community.

An interesting article that mentions slightly over half of Americans 16 or over have visited a library in the past year, and that the proportions of patrons who felt collections should be moved to make way for tech centers and cultural events was less than those who wanted to keep books. Some interesting ideas libraries have started to use include Redbox style lending machines and Rokus with accounts for Internet streaming video services already on them.

Predicted for a long time, this may be either good or bad for libraries. Good as it may drive some traffic back to libraries, bad as it may end up shutting off the archiving of online news articles and aggregation services that allow a quick overview of what the media is talking about. If news articles continue to be archived in services libraries have access to then it would be a win-win.