MOBIUS Libraries

Interesting idea. I wonder who okays the books they can read.

Yeah, I think that might backfire a la "Shawshank Redemption": Dufresne: (in response to another inmate's discovery of "The Count of Monte Cristo") You know what it's about? You'll like it. It's about a prison break. Red: We oughta file that under "Educational" too, oughten we?

The benefits of this are pretty clear, and allow some realistic limits, letting prisoners read up to 12 books to take 48 days off of their sentence each year.

Yoshitaka Fujii is accused of faking 172 out of 249 published papers. Many of his papers were considered "low impact," noticed and published but not heavily cited, and therefore not closely looked at. However, Fujii appeared to be highly productive and and as a result was able to get new jobs, research funding, and and public speaking fees. This is a concern for libraries and the validity of research as now it's easier than ever to self publish papers to online journals, and I have some questions how the retractions are handled--would the databases the articles are in simply delete them, or note they are officially retracted to anyone who did cite them?

On the one hand this is nothing new, several entertainment industries are using deep analytics to see how customers use their products. However, many Ebook readers may not be aware that how long they take to read a book or what they read is being tracked. Customers may avoid books on controversial or personal subjects out of privacy concerns, and publishing may being taking a by-the-numbers approach where they depend more on analytics than market experience and become less willing to try new ideas and authors.

[People who multitask] are not being more productive-they just feel more emotionally satisfied from their work.

This is absolutely amazing. The action starts around 4:45 but you've gotta watch till the end.

This is a quick walkthrough meant for librarians who are not sure how to evaluate, plan, and implement technology for their libraries' use.  I'm curious as to what our implementation or IT and Web services folks think of this.

Are print books becoming just another decorative object?

I wonder if that's a moot point; books have been considered art objects for a long time. Maybe with the shift to electronic text, they'll just be seen as more so.

Even though it's not going to be free and open source, it's cool to see that new blazingly fast databases are being developed. 

Penguin Group and electronic-book distributor 3M have made a deal with two New York City public library systems that will return Penguin e-books to library shelves for a one-year pilot. Penguin is one of four major publishers that don't make e-books available to libraries. The pilot, crafted to protect e-book sales, will delay the release of e-books to the libraries for six months after the titles go on sale in stores and online. Each library e-book will expire after a year.

The Library of Congress is having an exhibition of the "Books That Shaped America" as part of a multi-year celebration of the book. The initial book list is here. How many have you read?

A fairly brief article that cites the benefits of on-site book publishing (supporting independent and creative authors), formatting and self-publishing academic material, and supporting in a limited manner a patron driven acquisitions model, offset by the machine's high price of $125-$150,000. I think it would be interesting to see numbers on printing volume and overall operating costs, as well as whether any leasing options are available for the book machine.

I'm glad to see the Espresso is starting to get press. It's been around for awhile, and has the potential to be very useful.

This is a highly critical but reasoned examination of the state of the Library and Archives Canada. The author feels that the national library is losing focus by breaking up parts of it's collection, putting undigitized materials into remote storage where they are harder to access, cutting hours, and reducing staff by up to 20 percent--all of which contribute to the dissolution of the country's past and heritage. What he doesn't offer is an examination of what brought the national library to this state (unavoidable funding cuts or bad decisions to streamline or both) and what can be done to fix it.

I would say this is still more of a niche interest than an "antidote," but it does say something that people would still prefer to use the Espresso Book Machine and publish a physical copy of a book and it still sells rather than create it as an eBook on Amazon or Google Books. Probably the most useful aspect is for small independent booksellers to maintain a large accessible inventory but only keep and produce a small physical supply as needed, which could also apply to libraries--however not mention in the the articles is these units also have a hefty price tag of over $100,000.

The article offers an interesting model of a "Book Place"-- a sort of combination library/bookstore of the future that offers things like printed books on demand if they're not in the store (thanks to the awesome Espresso machine and the 7 million titles it has on EspressoNet), and rental/subscription services for users-- including DRM free options for electronic media.

"Approximately 400 to 600 libraries worldwide have switched to a patron-driven system for purchasing new works, and that number is likely to double over the next year and a half, according to Joseph Esposito, a digital publishing consultant who has spent the last nine months studying the implications of PDA with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation."

A heartening story about how the libraries of Douglas County, CO are bucking the current trend of leasing music from services like OverDrive.  As a result, they negotiate directly with publishers, actually own their electronic books, and are able to display said electronic books directly in their catalog, not just in a ebook-only ghetto (a source of irritation to me).  The author suggests this could start a new trend that might culminate in a loosely-organized, nation-wide system that allows smaller libraries to benefit from the expertise and work from larger systems with more resources, like Douglas County.

Supreme Librarians in Metaspace! Definitely take a look at this promotional comic by Emporia State University School of Library and Information Management. Click on the cover to go to the comic.

Surprise, surprise... Metaspace is populated with cats.

Just used this today to make a diagram of our Evergreen system. It was exactly what I was looking for and it worked flawlessly.