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Earlier this week the ALA sent a strongly worded open letter to publishers about the need to figure out way for publishers to sell libraries e-books for "equitable use at a reasonable price."

Well, this is ambitious and I imagine will be very time-consuming.  It's a good resource guide to the IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations)'s attempt to liberalize copyright laws on an international scale.

People are turning to libraries with tech-fueled questions about everything from e-readers to social media - and librarians have the answers.

People are turning to libraries with tech-fueled questions about everything from e-readers to social media - and librarians have the answers.

This was a concept that I wasn't too sure if it wasn't ready for prime time or was simply a bad idea. Library patrons could sign up for a "Cloud" account and be given a thin client laptop that would access a Windows 7 image via Citrix which is "their" computer to install programs on or use as needed. However the initial outlay was $300,000 with $5,000 a year ongoing maintenance costs and considerable bandwidth requirements to stream an HD Windows desktop. Further it was limited to only laptops used in the library with a maximum base of 160 users. I honestly couldn't see this as a good idea because of the cost and limited use. It would be cheaper to rent out laptops and re-image when they are returned.

An ambitious plan for Norway to scan all printed material in Norwegian in about 15 years, based on how copies of any new book are to be deposited in the national library and therefore by scanning the entire national library all materials will be digitized.

A plausible explanation on how the Great Library collapsed not in one fell swoop as is often believed but decayed gradually from budget cuts and mission creep until at the end it was a shadow of what it was.

As we get more and more databases/ebooks/whatnot this is an interesting read. Esp. since the person complaining about too many clicks is a historian! Its their job to research and they hate clicking too much-what do our average users think? I had an interesting conversation with a faculty member last week that went something like this: "Brian, I want you to know that it's getting harder for me to get students to use the library- especially the databases- anything beyond three clicks is just too many."

The social worth of libraries and the need for reading and inspiration is examined, in particular I found it interesting how the private prison industry determined it's future cell needs by the percentage of the population that was illiterate.

Create the Library Your Community or Campus Needs Join Library Journal and a roster of design experts for our latest 4-week interactive online course. Starting January 27, 2016, Library Design Workshop will guide participants through complex issues of library space design projects such as space programming, fundraising, and finding the right design team.

A look at the big e-book debate between libraries and publishers.

I think this is a pretty interesting fundraiser.

Haha. I like the tattoo on the guys calf that's just the generic/universal library icon.

Great way to combat voter ID laws.

I've posted a few articles about the Little Free Libraries, it's good to see that they are starting to catch on as a trend.

The 2.8 petabytes of storage space was donated to the Vatican by EMC, as part of its Information Heritage Initiative.

The concept of books as art objects is taken to a new dimension with Meric Ringborg's exhibit, "The Library of Unborrowed Books".

The third of four New York Times articles; written by a school librarian and focusing on how libraries are a participatory culture.

I was a little surprised the number of tweets is at 170 billion , with 400 million a day, but the Library of Congress has been archiving them. Part of the problem in displaying them is simply how; the size and continual growth of the collection would make a massive indexing collection. But also, I wonder about tweets that have been deleted for legal reasons or because of privacy, and whether those would appear in the database.

Includes one of the best brief descriptions of metadata that I've found. The author also, using example photos, illustrates the importance of metadata and its relevance to a material being used.

Nice! Thanks for sharing Jennifer.

This is starting to take off in some libraries.

SUNY Potsdam is intending to cancel subscriptions to the American Chemical Society's journals as they would consume 10 percent of the library's acquisitions budget. The article looks at one of the biggest problems facing academic libraries and serials, namely journals they are required to carry because of accreditation or approval, yet they either can't afford or carry to carry to the detriment of other departments they try to serve.