- Reference Desk Alert: Help with Halloween-Related Myths
Posted October 31, 2005
One of the many consequences of near-universal access to the Internet has
been the speeded-up proliferation of Internet-spawned urban myths about
every topic under the sun.
Every year around Halloween, for example, reference librarians around the
country get a spate of inquiries about various "news reports" they've heard about and
want some trustworthy librarian to confirm or refute. The updated
Halloween
portion of the Urban Legends website might help with some of those
anxious annual inquiries.
Come to think of it, the Urban Legends
website should probably be set as a permanent "Internet Favorite" at
every reference desk workstation in the land. Our thanks to
LISNews.com for reminding us again of this excellent resource.
- Blog Established for Sirsi/Dynix Customers
Posted October 31, 2005
An invitation has gone out to all Sirsi/Dynix customers to
participate in an independently-operated blog to discuss mutual concerns
and try to influence the evolution of this library automation system. The
blog's name? The Gordian Knot.
From some of the comments we've read that have been posted to other
sites by frustrated Sirsi customers, we predict the Knot will be a lively
blog. We hope there will be several active participants from AFPL: as long
as we're stuck with Sirsi, we might as well band together with others in
the same boat to demand the changes that could make it easier to use.
- Quick Quiz for AFPL Employees
Posted October 28, 2005
How many AFPL staffers are currently using at least one of the following
technologies to either serve AFPL patrons or to train or otherwise
communicate with their colleagues?
- Audioconferencing
- Blogging
- Furling
- Instant Messaging
- MP3 Formatting
- Podcasting
- RSS
- Social Bookmarking
- Teleconferencing
- Videoconferencing
- VoIPing (Voice over IP)
- Web Conferencing
- Webcasting
- Wiki
Actually, perhaps a better question is: How many AFPL staff members even know
what these computer technology terms mean?
These are the “new e-learning tools" (many of them not new at all) listed
in an article in the Fall 2005 edition of Library Journal’s "netConnect."
Oh, brave new world that lies beyond the ken of most of us employed by
Fulton County’s library system. Perhaps the most interesting, and heartbreaking,
question of all: Why are so many of these technologies unknown to
AFPL staff?
- Jesus is Hero of Anne Rice's Next Trilogy
Posted October 27, 2005
Read the story as reported by
Newsweek.
- Dept. of Semi-Intriguing Websites: The Invisible Library
Posted October 27, 2005
Add to that Great Digital Reference Shelf in The Ether another
you-never-know-when-you-might-need-to-refer-to-it database, this one a
list of imaginary books cited
by authors of actual books.
Someone Had To Do This, we suppose, and one Brian Quinette has. The
intrepid Brian has been assembling his list since 1999, and his exhaustive and
exemplary research (based on, among other sources, published books
containing similar lists) has so far unearthed approximately 3,000
imaginary titles. How many more could there be, we wonder?
In the meantime, we probably shouldn't be surprised if library patrons aren't occasionally
asking Interlibrary Loan librarians to help them find, say, Growing
Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms, (one of the dozens of
pseudo-books cited by Richard Brautigan in Abortion: An Historical
Romance).
- Theft Rate Pursuades Gwinnett Public Library to Phase Out All DVDs
Posted October 26, 2005
Quick, what "Library of the Year" doesn't stock feature-film DVDs for adults?
And now, for the same reason ("plagued by thieves"), has decided to get rid
of its juvenile DVDs for kids?
Read the
story as reported by Library Journal.
More details were reported in today's edition of the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. (Warning: The AJC requires annoying registration to read its online
edition.)
At least Gwinnett PL administrators are willing to determine and
publicly acknowledge its library system's DVD theft rate - something AFPL
has never done - probably because it might shock county commissioners into
abruptly banning purchases of this consistently-ripped-off, expensive format.
Interesting questions: what's an "acceptable" loss rate for nonbook
materials in an urban public library system? Or, for that matter, what's
an acceptable loss rate for books?
Kudos to Gwinnett for at least grappling with the issue of rampant thievery,
instead of turning a blind eye to it, as administrators have consistently
done at AFPL.
- Florida County Sued for Banning Gay Pride Library Exhibits
Posted October 26, 2005
Read Library Journal's
update to a previously-posted
LibraryLand bulletin.
- ALA Will Hold Next June's Annual Conference in New Orleans
Posted October 26, 2005
Read last week's press release.
- Dept. of It-Can’t-Happen-Here (Can It?): Gunshots at Boston PL
Posted October 20, 2005
"Local officials promise quick security improvements after a bullet
shattered a window and barely missed striking a child at the Boston Public
Library's (BPL) Mattapan Branch." Read
more at Library Journal.
- Fulton County Government Strikes Again!
Posted October 20, 2005
Update to a story posted
earlier to AFPLWATCH:
"Fulton County tax officials made at least $75 million in mistakes as they
hastily added exempt properties to the county's tax rolls in the wake of a
critical audit. The tax assessor's office also acknowledges that a list of
questionable tax-exempt properties released last week was likely riddled
with problems, and it's now rushing to finish a more accurate review."
That's the lead-in to a
front page news story in yesterday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Warning: The AJC
requires tedious registration to read its online edition.)
- Latest U.S. Internet Use Statistics Released
Posted October 20, 2005
Excerpt from a October 16th blog entry
from Jessamyn West’s blog, Librarian.net:
Please enjoy these data excerpts from the recent
Pew report on the Digital Divide in the United States:
- 68% of adults use the Internet, 32% do not. Sometimes this lack of use
is by choice and sometimes it isn’t.
- 73% of adults live in a household with an Internet connection and 27%
do not.
- 22% of adults have never used the Internet and do not have
access in their homes.
- 38% of adults living with disabilities have access to the Internet.
- 22% of adults over 70 have Internet access whereas 53% of adults
between 60 and 69 have access.
- 11% of Internet non-users say that getting access is too difficult,
frustrating or expensive.
- Google Making Nice with Librarians?
Posted October 20, 2005
Maybe it's damage control (Google having annoyed many academic librarians with
its plans to digitize and index library collections) and maybe it's just
common sense (Google and librarians sharing the same goal of ever-more-efficiently
linking information seekers with the stuff they're looking for). Or maybe
Google wants an easy way to find out (and subsequently exploit for its own
purposes) how librarians are teaching library patrons to use Google. Or
maybe Google has figured out how to quickly assemble a mailing list of information
gatekeepers to later bombard with Google-praising messages.
Whatever the motive(s), Google is launching a quarterly newsletter just
for librarians. If you want to read or contribute to it, you can sign up
here.
- Reference Desk Alert: 20 Tips for Using Internet Search Engines
Posted October 19, 2005
No matter which major search engine you normally use to pluck information
nuggets from the ever-expanding World Wide Web, you can improve the
efficiency of your searches by using these
searching shortcuts, courtesy Wendy Boswell at "CoolLifehacker.com."
- Chapter Eleven Bookstore Chain Declares Bankruptcy
Posted October 19, 2005
A local bookstore chain founded 15 years ago has filed for bankruptcy
protection, according to a
story published by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Six of the
chain's stores will remain open, but seven others will be closed.
- Selector Alert: Another Source of Online Book Reviews Available
Posted October 19, 2005
Time Magazine has picked an online book review website,
The Compete Review, as one of its “50 Coolest Arts & Entertainment
Websites for 2005.” Selectors may want to poke around this site, which is
searchable by subject, and consider adding it to their “Internet Favorites.”
- Keeping Libraries Innovative
Posted October 18, 2005
In three separate installments over the past few months to SIRSI/Dynix's
online newsletter, Steve Abram, a librarian who works for SIRSI/Dynix as
its "Vice President for Innovation," suggests 33 specific ways libraries
can remain vibrant and open to enriching ideas.
Although his employer's automation system leaves much to be desired
(despite a staff committee's recommendation not to purchase SIRSI's system
for AFPL, former director Mary Kaye Hooker bought it anyway), Abram's tips
are excellent ones.
Part 1 of Abram's advice is
here; Part 2 is
here; and Part 3 is
here.
- Fiction Selector Alert: Time Magazine Picks 100 Best Novels
Posted October 18, 2005
AFPL selectors may want to print out and check against their
collections
Time's list of the most important novels published since
Time itself came on the scene in 1923. (That silly cutoff date means this is one Greats list that
will not include James Joyce's Ulysses.) Also of interest is the
link provided that explains how the list was compiled.
Too bad Fulton County's library-unfriendly purchasing regulations will
prevent AFPL selectors from ordering any titles they need from this or any
other list until sometime next February.
- Dept. of Bad Ideas
Posted October 19, 2005
A British county government is contemplating the idea of merging the
operations of rural libraries with rural post offices. Naturally, the
idea's proponents are spinning this notion as a
positive thing.
One would have thought that the damage done to public libraries by
importing into them rude hordes of noisy, demanding email-checkers and
Internet-surfers (a development preceded by public libraries'
acquiescence to the demand for free income tax forms every April) would
have further proposals to mush two entirely separate "information needs"
into one building operated by a single (distracted) staff. Let's hope this
less-than-brilliant cost-cutting idea from Great Britain doesn't catch on
over here on this side of the Atlantic!
- Fulton County Tax Assessors Admit Millions Lost in Revenue
Posted October 18, 2005
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently published an
update to its recent story on the staggering loss to Fulton County
coffers of taxes "erroneously" declared exempt from property taxes.
(Warning: The AJC requires tedious registration to read its online edition.)
The mind reels to think of the extra revenue that might have been
available to fund library services for Fulton County citizens had the
County Commissioners chosen more competent assessors - who, amazingly,
are still drawing county salaries.
- Dept. of Intriguing Websites
Posted October 18, 2005
The Memory Hole is a website all
reference librarians should at least be aware of. It's maintained by the
author of 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know, such as the
federal government's tried-to-keep-it-secret database of workplace injury
sites, a grand jury's report on Philadelphia priests who molested their
parishoners, etc.
- Los Angeles PL Banishes Porn from Library Workstations
Posted October 18, 2005
Read the story.
- AFPL Trustees Elect Officers
Posted October 18, 2005
A Fulton County
press release provides the details.
Fortunately, according to the transcript of the library board's August meeting
(page 48), Acting Chair Karen Handel promises to continue attending the
board's meetings instead of sending a substitute.
- AFPL Staff Cookbook Available
Posted October 13, 2005
 The library system's
staff association is selling a cookbook of recipes submitted by AFPL
employees.
The project was originally conceived as part of AFPL's centennial
celebration back in 2002, but with Mary Kaye at the helm, nobody on the
staff was feeling very celebratory and everybody's surplus energy was
devoted to dodging, defusing, or enduring the havoc Hooker was wreaking on
the institution and its staff pretty much on a weekly basis.
We're glad
the group responsible for assembling the cookbook - those who survived the
McClure/Hooker/Garnes era, anyway - were able to re-group and finish the
project.
As we anxiously await our copy of the new cookbook, we can't help but remember
a certain recipe circulated among AFPL
staff during the aftermath of former AFPL director Julie Hunter's resignation,
a disaster brought on by the bone-headed incompetence of AFPL's former
trustees.
- Libraries and Disaster Recovery
Posted October 13, 2005
Here’s something Money Magazine includes in its
advice to victims of natural disasters:
“Get to the library. Every form you may need to fill out - FEMA
applications, credit applications, unemployment and benefits claims - can
be done for free at your local library. And for families who need to be in
touch, free Internet access also means sending 'I'm safe,' messages to
loved ones. Best of all, you have a bevy of free experts who can help you
research whatever your issues are….Libraries can help relocated families
get information on jobs, local health resources, and relief options.”
(Thanks,
LibraryLovers LiveJournal, for alerting us to the Money article.)
Unfortunately, this advice wouldn't work as well if the local library
itself has been overwhelmed by the disaster. We doubt that anyone
was able to obtain much help from seeking out the devastated New Orleans
libraries depicted in these recent photos.
(Our thanks to Michael McGrorty at
Library Dust for the link.)
- Transforming Libraries
Posted October 13, 2005
In an October 8th posting to the OCLC blog “It’s All Good,” George Needham
reported on a recent speech to the Ohio Library Council conference given
by Omar Wasow, co-founder of Blackplanet.com (an online service aimed at
African-Americans). According to Needham, Wasow said, among other things,
that:
“Libraries must move from a focus on information to one of
transformation....[Wasow] applied the concepts laid out in
The Experience Economy by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore to
libraries, saying that we should pay as much attention to the experience
our users have when they use our services as we do to the services
themselves. 'The experience of being in a library can be as important as
the information available'....”
- Dept. of Both/And vs. Either/Or?
Posted October 13, 2005
“The Google boys would definitely rather re-invent the field than learn
from the librarians. The old skool librarians would rather stick to their
ways than acknowledge that there are reasons why search companies have
reached the mainstream.”
That’s an excerpt from blogger Danah Boyd's description of a recent
debate featuring a Google spokesperson and ALA’s president. Read
Danah’s
entire blogpost.
- Memo to Library Administrators: Listen to Your Users
Posted October 13, 2005
This from Aaron Schmidt (Thomas Ford Memorial Library), in a May 10, 2005
posting to his blog:
"When [your library's users] ask something about the library, or have an
incorrect assumption, it isn’t because they’re stupid, its because they
have different expectations of the library. If one person thinks that, for
instance, your public computers ought to have WordPerfect as well as Word,
maybe more people feel the same way. And maybe this is because Dell, one
of the top (quantity-wise) producers of PCs in the world stopped providing
as many pre-installed copied of MS Office on computers, and rather includes
WordPerfect (true story). Take these expectations seriously, because they
just might be logical, employ the path of least resistance, or save the
time of the reader."
- Homeless Sex Offender Abducts, Molests Toddler in Des Moines Public Library
Posted October 12, 2005
Prolonging the victim's ordeal was the fact that the library's restroom,
where the sexual assault occurred, was lockable. (Gosh, what other
library system comes to mind that permits locked restrooms?)
Read the details as reported by Library Journal.
- Dept. of Convicted Library Directors (Georgia Division)
Posted October 12, 2005
In another update to a previously-posted LibraryLand bulletin,
the Macon Telegraph reports that a federal jury has convicted the
guy who directed a regional public library system in Georgia for 22 years
of theft and witness-tampering. Facing 50 years in prison and a $250,000
fine, he's going to ask for another trial.
Read the details, including the part about this man earning the
highest salary of any library director in Georgia, despite the relatively
small size of the library system he directed.
- Latest Dispatch from the Internet Filtering Wars
Posted October 11, 2005
Library directors in Rhode Island have been emailed instructions for turning
off the filter on library Internet workstations after the American Civil
Liberties Union released a report on how those filters have been blocking
access to constitutionally-protected information and libary-using citizens'
constitutionally-protected access to it.
Read the happy news as reported by the Associated Press at boston.com.
Several years ago, ex-library director Mary Kaye Hooker and the library
board ceded control of AFPL's Internet-interfering software to the state's
Office of Public Library Services. AFPL staff are still getting complaints
from patrons objecting to blocked Internet sites...and staff are still
waiting for the filter-removing instructions previous AFPL administators
repeatedly promised to provide after it became clear that the state's
software blocks sites that some of our adult patrons want to visit.
To make those filter-disabling instructions materialize, is the Georgia
chapter of the ACLU going to be forced to issue a report similar to the
one the Rhode Island ACLU issued - or be forced to file a lawsuit? Wouldn't
it be better for AFPL's new administrators to simply go ahead and Do The
Right Thing for the adult users of its equipment who object to a government
agency deciding which Internet sites they can visit from a public library
computer and which ones they can't?
- Google Says Indexing Everything Might Take a While
Posted October 11, 2005
Google's "done the math" and expects it could take as long as 300 years
to index all the information in the world (whatever that means). But Google
still aims to try it. Google's CEO made his
prediction at a recent advertising convention.
Hmm. Does this mean that some of the people administering libraries
these days should temper their plans for destroying print collections?
Maybe the "completely digital library" that we've heard so much about in
recent years is not exactly an immediate prospect?
- The Filmed Book: A Mixed Blessing?
Posted October 11, 2005
Interesting
essay from the London Times about that tricky dilemma facing
contemporary culture-vultures: whether 'tis best to read the book before
or after you see the movie.
- Supreme Court Judge Denies Emergency Appeal
of Library Gag Order in
USA PATRIOT Act Case Posted October 10,
2005
Read about the
latest development of the increasingly Kafkaesque legal
environment spawned by the Catch-22 secrecy provisions of the federal
government's post-September 11th anti-terrorism legislation.
- "Libraries, Like Books, Need a Spine"
Posted October 10, 2005
Speaking of censorship and libraries - and, these days, we seem to be
encountering more and more of that - a columnist has written a brilliant
and funny (if somewhat typo-ridden) editorial critical of how the mayor and
the library director of a California town recently handled objections to a
scheduled library program featuring a psychic who claims she communicates
with the dead.
Read the editorial.
- Dept. of Intriguing Library Art Installations
Posted October 10, 2005
Carole Leita posted this photo on her
"Infoblog" last April; it's an art exhibit at the University of
California at Berkeley's Doe Library.
Seems like something like this would work really well in the central stairwell at
AFPL's Central Library (...assuming that art installations are exempt from
the feng shui strictures instituted by Acting Central Library Administrator
Doris Jackson.)
- Dept. of Both/And vs. Either/Or?
Posted October 10, 2005
A lot of academic libraries (and not a few public libraries) are moving
their some of their books into storage and filling the freed-up space with
computer workstations. This trend is being decried from various quarters,
including a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. An
excerpt:
[Quoting Alberto Manguel, the author of A History of Reading:] "There are
characters in books that become our own because they speak to us as
intimately as if they'd been imagined for us, and define us as forcefully
as the first time we meet a great teacher or the first time we fall in
love." When has anyone had such an experience while mining data from the
World Wide Web?
Read the
Chronicle article.
- Public Library Blogs On Parade
Posted October 10, 2005
As we've mentioned before (for example, here
and here), more and more
public library systems are launching blogs as a way of engaging
their patrons in a more dynamic relationship with their local libraries.
At least two librarians are trying to keep up with which public libraries
currently sponsor blogs, and providing hyperlinks to them. If you'd like
to see what a public library blog looks like, link to a few of them on
one of these lists:
The Public Library Association has posted to the Internet an excellent
article about blogs for public libraries (advantages, software needed,
content ideas, etc.). A similar article, "Why and How to Use Blogs to
Promote Your Library's Services" by Darlene Fichter is available
here.
Our favorite public library blog at the moment is the
Weblog of Literary and Library News and Resources operated by the
constantly-amazing Waterboro (Maine) Public Library.
Given how useful a library-sponsored blog could be to spreading the gospel
of ye local public library system and all its obvious and not-so-obvious
glories, we remain astounded that AFPL is not exploiting this particular
Internet technology to help rehabilitate its standing among AFPL users,
potential users, and potentially-more-efficient users. Must the
institution wait for the hiring of a full-time PR person and/or a full-time
webmaster to get something like this off the ground and onto AFPL's website?
- Scissors to Replace Bonfires for Destroying Hated Books?
Posted October 7, 2005
A Houston group announces plans to purge public libraries of naughty pictures,
etc. - only this time they plan to cut them up instead of burning them.
Read the story.
October 11th Update:The protestors
showed up at the library not with scissors in hand, but with a mulcher on
the back of a truck.
Read the story or
watch the television report.
It’s only a matter of time before this sort of thing happens here in
Atlanta. The Internet makes mass protests so much more easy to organize
these days that slow-moving, poorly-defended targets like library systems
(not to mention weakened ones like AFPL) are more vulnerable than in
previous decades. Could AFPL administrators locate AFPL's policies and
procedures for coping with challenges to its collections, we wonder? Are
AFPL's allies (assuming we have any left after The Great Hooker Alienation
Campaign) sufficiently informed and mobilizable to deal unclumsily with an
organized assault on its collections by an Internet/email-organized group
of protestors vs., say, the lone outraged parent and the minister of her
church?
- Fee-Based Reference for Cell-Phone Owners Debuts Next Month
Posted October 6, 2005
A commercial venture offering answers to reference questions via cell-phone
goes live in November. Customers must have a cell-phone to use the service,
your answers will be derived only from Internet sites, and you must pay 50
cents for each answer. Details here.
Given the prevailing climate in our society that convenience trumps
every other aspect of any given situation involving a choice among options,
we predict that millions will patronize this service, despite its limitations and the widespread
availability (if not widespread awareness) of free and not-dependent-on-Internet-sources
public library telephone reference services.
Of course, the fact that few AFPL patrons can ever quickly reach a live
human reference librarian via AFPL's Reference Line will drive many
Atlanta cell-phone owners into the arms of the reference entrepreneurs.
And whose fault is that?
- Is the Most Successful Author a Dead Author?
Posted October 6, 2005
Publishers Weekly reported in its September 19th issue (pages 32-35)
that the aggregate sales for all of Saul Bellow’s books in the two months
prior to his death was 2,200. In the two months after he died in April
2005, his publisher shipped 68,231 books to bookstores and book vendors -
a 3,000% increase. Sales of Susan Sontag’s final book increased 500%
following her death last December. Since Hunter S. Thompson died last
February, sales of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas doubled (to 850,000
copies).
- Gag Order in Challenge of USA PATRIOT Act Appealed to Supreme Court
Posted October 5, 2005
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed an emergency appeal to the
U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn a recent lower-court decision
maintaining the secrecy of the name of the library (and forbidding public
protests of the librarians working there) in a case where federal agents
investigating a suspected terrorist seized his library borrowing records.
Read the story.
- "Brew It and They Will Come"
Posted October 4, 2005
Orlando Sun columnist Kathleen Parker makes
an unusually persuasive case for the proposition that selling a legal,
addictive drug on the premises could be the single most powerful public
relations tool available to public libraries.
- Dept. of Hugely Appropriate Library Co-Sponsorships
Posted October 3, 2005
AFPL's Roswell Regional Library, along with the City of Roswell, the Friends of the Roswell
Library, and various local bookstores, are co-sponsoring a community-wide reading event called
"Roswell Reads." Information about the event is available on AFPL's
website and in the city's press release.
This sounds like a worthwhile effort, is certainly being properly
advertised, and will expose more Roswellians to the fact that they have
a public library at their disposal.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if AFPL's Powers That Be could pull off something
like this for Atlanta, Georgia?
- Dept. of Library Heroes (Refused Conditional Gifts Division)
Posted October 3, 2005
A school library chooses to stick to its no-conditions gifts policy
rather than ignoring it for a chunk o' cash. And reaffirms the principle
of intellectual freedom in the bargain.
Read the story.
- "Not Your Parents' Librarians"
Posted October 3, 2005
To find out how some of the approximately 137,000 librarians in the United
States are departing from the dominant stereotype, read this Associated
Press
story.
- Public Library Websites On Parade
Posted October 3, 2005
Librarian blogger David King has examined another public library website.
His review is here.
King's analysis of Las Vegas PL's site and his
previous review of Ann Arbor PL's site - as well as Marylaine Block's
essay about exemplary
library websites - would be of keen interest to AFPL's webmaster, if
AFPL had one.
Continue reading earlier LibraryLand postings.
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