Reminds us of the time when former AFPL board member William McClure went
to a library conference and "met someone" who shortly thereafter ended up
on AFPL's payroll - and at a higher salary than the salaries given
to other applicants hired into similar vacancies.
Library Quotes du Jour
Posted July 31, 2006
Two pithy statements from “Making ‘E’ Visible” by Lesley Williams published in the
June 15, 2006 issue of Library Journal (pages 40-43):
“For most library patrons, libraries are the antithesis of the online world. They have no idea that most
libraries and librarians have been online far longer than they have."
* * *
“'Database' is a scary word....We need to find ways to describe our [licensed] online services that
sound appealing and familiar, such as ‘e-collections,’ ‘electronic library,’ ’24-hour library,’ ‘desktop
library,’ etc."
Among the comments posted to the TechCrunch blogpost:
"The courts will strike this down. It will never get enforced, per injuctive relief. If it does get
enforced, then most kids will find ways around it. It will be, however, another way to arbitrarily
arrest and fine people. Just think, soon it will be a crime just to talk to children, unless you’re the
parent, and have the courts permission. Maybe they should just raise kids in vats, so they’ll have
total control of their every formative experience."
AFPLWATCH Comment: Maybe it's time AFPL stopped taking the feds' money
so it can ignore what politicians believe about the pros and cons of
certain kinds of Internet sites, and let library users, including kids and
their parents, make their own judgments about them.
[Poster image originally uploaded by blogger
David King.]
More on the Movement to Shrink Fulton County
Posted July 28, 2006
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article yesterday
that describes one of the interesting motives behind the plans of "the
second most powerful" person in the Georgia General Assembly to
re-establish one of the counties that was merged to create Fulton County.
His description of the Fulton County Commission: "It's dysfunctional, yes, but
also arrogant, which is worse," he said. "It's a little fiefdom, and I want to bust it up."
At the ALA TechSource blog, "Free Range Librarian" Karen Schneider lets
loose with another
thoughtful diatribe against library practices that drive her nuts.
(Be sure to peruse her readers' pet peeves as well, some of which are
posted at Karen's FRL blog.
Foot-Kisser at Ohio Library Indicted
Posted July 26, 2006
You won't believe the line this guy fed to get up close and personal with
the toes of more than one female visitor to this Youngstown, Ohio public
library.
Details.
Independent Bookstore Trend: Less Space for Books
Posted July 26, 2006
The owner of a bookstore in California removed all the bookshelves in the
center of his store to make way for a music stage and places for people
with laptops to sit.
Hmm, sounds like some library administrators we know. Well, former
library administrators. (Remember Mary Kaye Hooker's "Too Many Books!"
comment about AFPL's Central Library?)
Even with Hooker hopefully out of the library-administrating business,
there's still a lot of support out there in LibraryLand to emulate
bookstores - as opposed to figuring out how libraries and bookstores differ,
and capitalizing on those differences instead of trying to obscure them.
To find out why the California bookstore owner did what he did,
and is glad he did that, read the
story published by the San Francisco Chronicle. The reporter's
comment that fewer people are hanging out in bookstores and merely visiting
them to pick up what they've ordered online will ring a familiar bell with
workers in public libraries.
Cities in North Fulton to Form Their Own County?
Posted July 24, 2006
The idea of recreating Milton County (absorbed into Fulton County after the
Great Depression) has been kicking around for some time now. The continuing
poor reputation of Fulton County government (and the current control of
the state legislature by the Republican Party) that triggered the formation
of new cities in North Fulton is now being harnessed behind a push to
break away from the county altogether.
The creation of new cities didn't affect the county's public libraries,
but the creation of a new county certainly would. The movement's success
could also jeopardize the building of any new libraries in Northern Fulton
between now and then.
Read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
article about the move to shrink the influence of Fulton County
government even further than it has been by the recent successful
city-creating referenda.
It will be interesting to see how this movement to form a separate county
plays out as the library board and Fulton's commissioners ponder the
library's plans for (finally) building more libraries in the northern end
of the county.
Dept. of Great Ideas for Libraries: Starting a "No" Log
Posted July 24, 2006
Back in November 2005, American Libraries published an article by
Kathy MacMillan entitled "Generating Goodwill: Turning No into Yes."
MacMillan described how staff at her library (a public library in Maryland)
keep a running log of all the times they have to say No to patrons - everything from "No, we don't own this
book" to "No, we don't fax things for people here." The library staff reviews
the log periodically and tries to figure out which instances of No could
be changed to Yes.
Other libraries have adopted this idea, and at at least one library system
has created a wiki to handle the log.
AFPL has done very little with using Internet technology to support
better communication among library staff (and, alas, even less to support
more communication between staff and computer-owning library patrons).
Even if establishing a wiki seems too "radical" for library administrators
to implement, we don't see why every branch can't set up a local "No log"
in Word at their service desk, then print it off and discuss it at staff
meetings. Many of us would be appalled at the number of times we say No
to our patrons, and capturing this information in a systematic way would]
be a first step toward Getting To Yes.
Of course, a system-wide wiki at AFPL - by opening up the entire system
to candidates for systemwide policy/procedure changes and by allowing comments
from staff that all staff could read - would considerably speed up the
effectiveness of such a customer-service-improvement program.
Air Conditioning a Neglected Marketing Factor for Public Libraries?
Posted July 22, 2006
Marylaine Block’s
latest Ex Libris essay is about how some public libraries are
advertising themselves during this heat wave as (literally) cool places to
flee to in hot weather.
Publishing Factoid du Jour
Posted July 22, 2006
“The top dozen or so trade houses put out roughly 25,000 new titles last
year, and only about 10% of them found their way into large print.”
--Robert Masello, “Enough with the Fine Print: Big Fonts are Not Just for
Geezers,” Publishers Weekly, March 20, 2006, page 64
Iowa State Library Office Sponsoring Readers Advisory Website
Posted July 19, 2006
Although still in its infancy (mostly a bunch of booklists, and not very
interesting visually), this bare-bones
website is an example of something that other state library offices
could be providing to public libraries. State library offices that did a
good job of this could invite their state's public libraries to include a
link on each of their own websites to the state site, and save a lot of
people a lot of local wheel-reinventing.
Meanwhile, many public libraries haven't been waiting around for state
government bureaucrats to help their libraries' patrons quickly identify
that Next Great Read.
A tiny, random sample of public library systems elsewhere that include
readers advisory features on their websites:
Dept. of Nifty Library Advertising Ideas: Billboards on Buses
Posted July 19, 2006
Courtesy
The Travelin' Librarian, here's a
photo of how a Friends of the Library group in Nebraska spent some of
its funds promoting its library (and one of its award-winning librarians).
Dewey 900s Selector Alert: Homework for Buying Travel Guidebooks
Posted July 19, 2006
What’s a library selector to do about all the travel guidebook series on
the market these days? Here’s the challenge:
Let’s Go has more than 50 titles covering six continents; Rough Guides
takes in more than 200 destinations. Fodor’s lines encompass more than 14
different series, and Frommer’s titles number more than 330. Michelin now
offers about 200 different guidebook titles, while Lonely Planet’s number
exceeds 600.
And those are just the biggest of the biggies. While there are several
strategies a library selector could use to build a coherent travel guide
collection, all selectors would benefit from reading the brief historical
sketch about the major travel guidebook series that was featured earlier
this year in Publishers Weekly (and from which the quotation above appears).
Read the article.
Fulton County's "Municipalization" Makes the New York Times
Posted July 18, 2006
An alert reader sent us this
link to an interesting analysis of what's behind the defection of
Sandy Springs and other communities from the clutches of Fulton County's
politicians. The article includes an interesting comment made by one of
Fulton's commissioners about the alleged difference between libraries in
the north end of the county and those in the south end.
Denver PL Website Includes Reading Recommendations
Posted July 14, 2006
Denver posts to
its website not only staff-recommended books, movies, and music, but
patron picks as well. Each recommendation comes with a thumbnail photo,
the name of the recommender, and a short annotation.
And AFPL isn't doing something like this because....???
Dept. of Fuzzy Government Accounting Practices (New Jersey Division)
Posted July 13, 2006
Municipal politicians who promise voters not to raise taxes but who then
turn around and increase government spending have come up with a new device
to hide their hypocrisy: charging rent to the public libraries they operate.
That way, they can reduce a library's budget without calling it a budget
cut.
We're not making this up: it's happening right now in
New Jersey. (Our thanks to
The Annoyed Librarian for bringing this news to her readers' attention.)
We think this maneuver is much more diabolical than deducting from a
library's budget the amount of revenue generated by overdue fines, which
is what local library administrators fear would happen if citizens insisted
that overdue fines be used for library expenses instead of being used as one
of many revenue streams feeding directly into the city/county treasury.
And if Fulton County's recent revenue-loss problems aren't effectively
dealt with, we predict Fulton's commissioners may one day be tempted to
pursue "the New Jersey solution" to its fiscal woes. Meanwhile, we hope
the voters in New Jersey will soon retaliate at the voting booth for the
blatant hypocrisy of its sorry bunch of elected officials.
20-Year Old in Colorado Steals, Resells Library Materials Worth $800
Posted July 13, 2006
We're just surprised that (a) the thief didn't get away with stealing
a lot more before she got caught ($800 is peanuts compared to the hauls
achieved by individuals who've stolen from AFPL); (b) the thief didn't
realize she could have scored a lot more money by stealing and re-selling
DVDs than books (the m.o. of library thieves here in Atlanta); and
(c) lawmakers don't spell out that bookstore owners who buy stolen property
from libraries will be prosecuted for "accepting stolen goods" (it's not
like library property isn't marked as such).
Loss Rate at Clayton County PL: 28,000 Items per Year
Posted July 12, 2006
And that's just the stuff that's properly borrowed and not returned: the
figure apparently doesn't include the stuff that's stolen by thieves.
Details from the Clayton News Daily.
God knows how many items disappear from the shelves of AFPL libraries
every year. (The number of "disappeared" DVDs alone would freeze the blood
of your typical taxpayer.) Why, we wonder, isn't this items-never-returned
and items-otherwise-missing data routinely made available to the public,
which foots the bill for re-purchasing all this stuff? Why aren't
local television stations looking into this shocking fact about
public library operations instead of trying to agitate people about the
(much less controllable) accessing of pornography on library computers?
Dept. of Library Programming Ideas: Showing Live TV Sports Events
Posted July 12, 2006
Now there's a guaranteed crowd-drawing use of a public library's meeting
room or auditorium. Especially if those television shows can be projected
onto large screens.
The Princeton Public Library
did this for the recent World Cup finals, and they might do something
similar for next year's Superbowl.
What we like most about this idea is the fact that an estimated one-third
of the attendees at PPL's event hung around after watching the game to
check out library materials. And wouldn't projecting televised special
events in an otherwise unused auditorium also create more sitting room
elsewhere in the library: namely, those spaces often occupied all day long,
day in and day out by homeless people?
Publisher Creating Video Previews for Books
Posted July 12, 2006
The idea is that bloggers will watch the ads and post reviews, thereby
jump-starting the buzz about these books.
Details.
Hey, why don’t libraries do something similar about books (oldies as
well as newbies) that they’re recommending for patrons? Oh, wait. First,
libraries need to start recommending books. And sponsoring a blog to
communicate those recommendations to their readers. (Many do this; AFPL
doesn't.)
Library Enhancing Daily Closing Announcements with Music?
Posted July 12, 2006
We’re not sure if this is a joke, a proposal, or a done deal, but
here’s how one local library may or may not be augmenting its closing
announcements with jazzy music.
Although the announcement is kinda cute, we're not sure that dumping one
more noisy episode into the ears of captive library patrons is A Good Thing.
(It might help wake up some of the snorers, though.) File this, perhaps, in
that bulging file labeled "Dept. of Clever but Dubious Ideas for Allegedly
Making Libraries More Appealing"?
Selector Alert: Here's Another Zeitgeist-Checking Resource
Posted July 12, 2006
Some savvy selectors of library materials make sure they check Amazon.com’s
bestsellers (either bestselling titles overall, or bestsellers within the
Dewey subjects they select for), and that’s A Good Thing. But wouldn't it
also be useful to know the titles of the most-discussed books on the
most-visited site on the Internet? And, no, that wouldn't be Amazon, or
even Yahoo or Google, but MySpace, whose exploding rate of expansion is
nothing short of
remarkable.
Selectors who want to make efforts to keep up with who's reading what
will want to bookmark MySpace, then, at regular intervals, check out its
books-being-discussed feature to
find out what those titles are…and then make sure those books (or the
first top ten, or top twenty, or whatever) are in their libraries.
Selector Alert: Amazon Displays Bestselling Items by City
Posted July 12, 2006
Who knew?
Here, for example, are the current bestsellers of Amazon.com products
in Atlanta. (Amazingly, you can get separate tallies for College Park,
East Point, and other metro-cities.)
This could really help selectors who take the time to use it (and who use
it often, such as every time they're about to submit an order that's based
on other sources). Especially since some of the titles on these lists we
can guarantee you will never have heard of. (Whether AFPL's vendors can
supply these titles is, of course, another question.)
The search screen for searching Georgia city bestsellers in Amazon.com’s
“Purchase Circles” feature is
here.
How U.S. Teenagers Are Using the Internet
Posted July 12, 2006
Read Stephen Abrams'
summary of the findings of a recent study.
Woodruff Library Ready to Store King Papers
Posted July 11, 2006
Details from an article in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Dept. of Intriguing Book-Related Blogs
Posted July 11, 2006
You don't hear much about bookplates these days. They belong to a past era,
I feel -- certainly pre-digital. However, in theory there is no reason on
earth why bookplates should not have a resurgence of popularity. After all,
these days there are so many computer-based ways to produce and print
fantastic bookplates of your own. Anyway, If you want a few ideas, nip over
to Lewis Jaffe's
Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie and see what he's collected. You
might be inspired. (A bookplate, by the way, is a label that you stick
inside the front cover of a book when you buy it, to show that it's yours.
Not everybody knows that. You do, of course. But not everybody.)
Dept. of Unflattering Media Spotlights: Now It's AFPL's Turn?
Posted July 10, 2006
Month before last, when a television station in Cleveland, Ohio did a
so-called investigative report on
criminal activity in the public library, we wondered whether one of the
local stations might not be tempted to do something similar here in Atlanta.
Well, it looks like we won't be wondering much longer.
The ad on WSB-TV's webpage is similar to the video trailers that have been
running all weekend: "Monday at 5pm. Disturbing acts in public libraries!
Channel 2 exposes the three most outrageous cases."
July 11th Update: If you missed the segment
when it aired, you can read (or watch) it
here. Or rather, part one of the report: there's more to come (the
inevitable "accessing porn on the library's Internet computers" part) on
Tuesday night.
We think that WSB-TV is missing the really shocking story affecting
metro libraries these days: Fulton County commissioners having awarded a
county security contract to a company that ended up repeatedly not paying
its employees, which led to security officers (in the county's libraries,
among other places) understandably walking off the job.
Memo to County Attorneys: Sunday Work Requirements Could Be Expensive
Posted July 10, 2006
There is a bit more information about another
previously-posted LibraryLand bulletin. In May, a federal judge ordered
a Missouri public library to reinstate a librarian fired three years ago
because she said working Sundays would interfere with her religious practices.
The fired employee's attorneys now want the library to pay the plaintiff's
$250,000 legal bill.
Details.
Homeless Sue Library for Two-Book Checkout Limit
Posted July 10, 2006
State of the Library Blogosphere, 2006
Posted July 10, 2006
A nifty graph here
showing that there are about twice as many U.S. public libraries sponsoring
blogs this year than last year.
Why isn't AFPL among them?
Texas Woman Arrested for Overdue Library Books
Posted July 10, 2006
AFPL director John Szabo is quoted (from a few years ago, when he was still
in Florida) in this
blogpost.
Selector Alert: Resources in Libraries for Small Business Startups
Posted July 10, 2006
LISNews has alerted its readers that an
article in the online edition of last Wednesday's Washington Post
contains a half-dozen links to library websites that list books and
databases useful to someone who's starting a small business. AFPL selectors
might want to check those lists to help fill any gaps in their collections
of that material in their own libraries.
Read the article.
Twenty Pointers on Customer Service
Posted July 8, 2006
Some long-time AFPL employees will remember being herded through customer
service training back during library director Marilyn Mason's regime.
Trainees were taught to do things like answer their phone before the third
ring, the meaning of "internal customer," and a lot of other useful things.
Unfortunately (both for internal customers and the other kind), most
employees now on AFPL's payroll have never received a smidgen of formal
customer service training.
The "Blog about Libraries" has recently posted an ad-hoc list of customer-mindful
principles. It's a good list:
read it and think about how following these simple rules more habitually
could make many workplace interactions more pleasant and productive.
Kentucky PL Sponsors Mock "Idol" Contest for Teens
Posted July 8, 2006
We're not so sure that sponsoring such a contest will result in more
teenage readers, but perhaps that's never been the goal of programming for
teens. (What is the point of library programs for teens, we
wonder?) Anyway, here's the
story.
Sucky Library Catalogs Redux
Posted July 7, 2006
For anyone who'd like to explore a handy list of links to the recent spate
of comments in the biblioblogosphere about flaws in library catalogs,
"Free Range Librarian" Karen Schneider (the inventor of the "sucky OPACs"
tag) has kindly alerted her readers to what looks like an exhaustive
roundup that library school student
Jennifer M has compiled.
Great work, Jennifer! Now, if only AFPL had on staff a Technical
Services Manager. Perhaps he/she could dig deep into this discussion and
then help guide AFPL staff toward selecting a more user-friendly product
than the one Mary Kaye Hooker unilaterally foisted upon our library
system's hapless patrons (and staff).
Former AFPL Director Yates Dies
Posted July 6, 2006
Ella Yates died last week at age 79. A former director of AFPL (1976-1981)
and the library system's first African-American director, Yates also served
as interim director at AFPL after Julie Hunter resigned and before Mary
Kaye Hooker was hired. An alert reader provided this link to Yates'
obituary in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the information
about Yates' career that American Libraries posted June 30th on the
Internet is
here.
Library of Congress Issues Batch of New Subject Headings
Posted July 6, 2006
Every new set of LC Subject Headings contains some surprises, and
this set (published by Harper's Magazine) is no exception. Our
personal fave is "Haircutting--Religious Aspects," although "Middle-Aged
Sexual Minorities" and "Nymph Fishing" are pretty tempting candidates, too.
(Our thanks to Fade Theory for posting
this exciting news.)
Dept. of Unkind but Widely-Applicable Workplace Quotes
Posted July 6, 2006
Does this sound like anyone you work with?
"He couldn't get a clue if he was drenched in clue pheromones, dancing in
a clue field in the middle of clue mating season, wearing a clue suit, and
shouting, "Clooo! Cloooo!"
Of course, the gender pronoun here is not used literally.
We ran across this little gem at
Dances with Books, and couldn't resist passing it on to our readers,
some of whom we know for a fact work for or with Profoundless Clueless
Colleagues. A pity, too, especially when that Colleague is a power-abusing
supervisor or manager.
Dances with Books,
incidentally, is also the blog that (among many other hilarious postings)
recently reprinted this penetrating rhetorical question asked by
"Chuck" in response to an LISNews' report about a recent brouhaha in
Massachusetts when parents objected to a library program where kids played
poker for fun (and for candy):
Can't every library have a "if you are a crazy, bassackwards, sheltered, snake-handling,
repressed, nosy, provincial yahoo your complaints will be routed to the dumpster" policy?
Assuming NetFlix will allow its DVDs to "circulate" to third parties, this
sounds to us like a really useful (and inexpensive!) resource for libraries
to use for all those DVDs that a few patrons might want to borrow, but whose
probable demand wouldn't be sufficient to justify purchasing them. And
getting a DVD from NetFlix to a particular patron would certainly be faster
than obtaining a (cataloged and processed) DVD from a vendor (...particularly
the nonbook vendor AFPL is currently under contract to buy its DVDs from!).
Public Libraries and "The Long Tail"
Posted July 5, 2006
For the past year or so, there's been quite a bit of discussion throughout the
biblioblogosphere - though not, alas, at AFPL - about "the long tail."
Here's a
recent example.
Though somewhat difficult to explain, "the long tail" has something to do
with the largely unheralded and undocumented but persistent demand for
nonbestselling, non-heavily-advertised, older materials. The interesting
thing about "the long tail" is how libraries - as opposed to, say,
fad-driven media or mass market-driven bookstores) are uniquely and
better-positioned to cope with it.
We think a lot more discussion of "the long tail" needs to be going on
among librarians. It may be that all the effort libraries invest in
trying to compete with bookstores, the Internet, etc. to meet "all" the
information and "recreational reading" needs for everyone is barking up
the wrong tree - that putting more resources into doing only what a library
can do (best) makes more sense.
What's more important: that a library patron be able to obtain from her library the
latest thriller by Bestselling Author X...or that the patron, having
bought that thriller (or borrowed it from a friend) decides she wants to
read more of that's author's books, and discovers that her library has
carefully created a collection of all of the previous titles written by
that author?
It's not an either/or situation, of course: libraries can try to both
supply bestsellers and thoughtfully develop their holdings of no-longer-
bestselling items. But are library selectors doing this? Or are they
falling all over themselves (and spending most of their library's money)
breathlessly following media frenzies and never getting around to the
tedious work of developing coherent, complete, thoughtfully-selected
collections?
Are AFPL selectors adequately trained in the nuances of pursuing "the long
tail"? Do AFPL collections contain complete or near-complete runs of authors'
works? Are the classics there, for those patrons who decide they want to
read one of those instead of the latest Danielle Steel? Do selectors know
enough to recognize a nonfiction "classic" vs. a older nonfiction title
they plan to weed simply because it wasn't published recently? Can patrons
find in their public library anything different from what they find in
their local bookstore? Instead of tyring to simulate a bookstore's stock,
in what respects should libraries be trying, on purpose and constantly, to
distinguish their collections from the stock found in a bookstore?
From the horror stories we've heard over the past few years about the
wholesale weeding of older titles (merely because they are older) from
certain AFPL libraries, we wonder how many AFPL selectors have given much
thought to "the long tail" (or would be allowed time to think about it,
and to do something about their conclusions and observations). And that's
tragic for the library patrons of the future - people who, after all, will
not be part of a mass market, but will be members of tiny "niche markets"
that libraries could better serve through more thoughtful collecting (and
more thoughtful weeding) than is now the case.
Library Patron "Nearly Trampled..."
Posted July 5, 2006
"The library didn’t open till noon and I arrived a few minutes prior.
Once the doors were unlocked, I was nearly trampled by the people anxious
to secure a seat at one of the public computers. I am so glad I no longer
work in public libraries. From what I’ve seen, their job seems to be more
and more that of computer use referee and tech expert. Given the driven
look in the eyes of some of the people headed for the computers, I sure
wouldn’t want to be the one to tell them they had to relinquish their
chair to another patron."
We feel this ex-library employee's pain...every day. Perhaps a library
employee's salary should be based partly on the number of publicly-available
computer workstations available at that employee's work site?
Librarians File Their "What I Learned at ALA/New Orleans" Reports Posted July 2, 2006
For those of us Left Behind while a few of our colleagues ventured into
post-Katrina New Orleans last week, blogger Jessamyn West provides
links to some of these reports.
And for those of you who've been paying far too much attention to the World
Soccer Cup competition to notice,
Library Garden has posted a brief report on the winners of this year's
Bookcart Drill Team World Championship.
Pros and Cons of Adapting the NetFlix Model in Public Libraries Posted July 2, 2006
Most people who've signed up for NetFlix, the company that pioneered
no-shipping-charges home delivery for DVDs, will tell you it's the best
thing since sliced bread. For a while now, various bibliobloggers have been
tossing around the idea of importing the NetFlix model into public libraries.
A recent example: Kansas City Public Library David King's
proposal and the even more interesting reader comments.
We predict that, as library users increasingly find themselves with
less time to visit public libraries (and as gasoline-based trips become
more expensive), the more citizens are going to insist that public
libraries provide home-delivery services for library books. Accommodating
that demand without instituting fees is going to be a major
challenge for library funders, but we think that instituting fees (and
therefore instituting different levels of service) should be resisted by
librarians and others who provide library-based services to the public.
Advice for People Interviewing for Library Jobs
Posted July 2, 2006
A few pointers from someone who's "been hiring librarians for over
fifteen years."
.com
