Group items tagged

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.

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.

Not exactly the first time one of these has been tried, but very close to it. The success or failure ultimately isn't how much access it provides but how much it will serve the needs of the user public.

An article that covers some open access and peer reviewed projects such as the Public Library of Science (www.plos.org) and ultimately makes the conclusion that research should be free because no part of the process should cost very much, and some of the hold up is academia not considering open access journals "prestigious" enough to merit tenure. I would agree in principle, especially if commercial publishers are removed from the equation. However, a lot of applied science and research relies on funding that may involve copyrighted or trademarked material, so some research will always be restricted.

An opinion piece about the erosion of privacy in social media and the lives public figures. While it offers a summary of the status quo, I'm not too sure if the idea we're moving to "Global Village" is correct.

A concerning article about the rate of theft at the Austin public library. Surprising is how only recently have borrowing limits been enacted and patrons required to renew their cards A collections agency is used for delinquent accounts, but there is little mention of a security system or how much is lost due to simple theft.

An article about the world of prison libraries and how they help detainees with learning, job placement, and constructive entertainment such as performing in plays.

The Rolling Stones legend, 69, owes 3,000 pounds for books he borrowed and failed to return to his local public library in Dartford, Kent, when he was a teenager.

Bexar County, TX opens a library without books.

"Since at least the 1990s, when personal computers first became commonplace, public policy experts have worried the ill effects of a Digital Divide. That is, a learning, socialization and economic gap across socio-economic status, race and gender caused by unequal access to computing resources."

The Pacific Branch, one of two branch buildings the Brooklyn Public Library intended to sell, has been given a temporary reprieve. However, the future is murky as the building is old and in need of repairs, while the money raised selling on what has become valuable property could be used for other branches in the system.

"What is social justice? John Vincent cites a definition of social justice as 'every one of us having the chances and opportunities to make the most of our lives and use our talents to the full.'"

Books and Harleys, who would have thought...

An article I found interesting both for how the Douglas County Libraries was trying to own rather then license much of their e-resources and store it on a server, but also how they were working with the metadata for those resources, converting it bu a crosswalk from the publication industry's XML-based ONIX (ONline Information eXchange) or simple Excel into Marc.

This one is just for fun on Friday, but makes a lot of good points.

The Public Library of Science, or PLOS, has created a guide, the Open Access Spectrum, or OAS to help measure a publication's openness.

A positive article about how library use has increased for the public library of Burlington, Iowa. Much of the increase has been attributed to a new building with a single floor for books, several meeting spaces, and in general more programs and events as a result of the heavier patron count.

I couldn't find a way to link directly to presentations or their materials. Probably the most interesting sessions I attended were: Solving the Complexities of Ebook Record Management in Millennium INN-Reach: Implementing Peer to Peer Functionality Between two INN-Reach Systems The Ebooks presentation was about checking for duplication, quality control, and making sure all the records an institution paid for are present and have valid links. There were a lot of good techniques that could be relayed to our members as a group of best practices. The Peer-To-Peer INN-Reach is a new product that allows two INN-Reach systems to share materials as if they were one. It was a done in Ohio as a response after one consortium added two public libraries and began to see their single INN-Reach server overwhelmed. From what I could tell it works well, with each INN-Reach server able to retain it's own loan rules and identity, but did require all the libraries and pickup locations to be added to both servers, which quickly would present patrons with a very long list of libraries to choose from. I wasn't very clear where the super-union webpac resided; whether on it's own server or produced from both of them. The users that were present seemed happy with it.

It looked at several of the recent themes in the library world such as "Library 2.0" and how they've failed or the ideas have been accomplished better outside of libraries. What I found interesting is it was written by the Vice President of Library Support Services for LSSI, the private company that has started to run many public library systems, so I'm curious what his intent was with this article.