- Dept. of Nifty PR Ideas: Spray-Painting Announcements on Library Parking Lots
Posted August 31, 2007
The Johnson County (Kansas) Public Library enlisted a bunch of teenagers to
advertise its new website by spray-painting messages on the parking lots
of multiple branch libraries:
We think this is a great idea for libraries to consider using, and for
news other than improved library websites. If some sort of non-permanent
spray paint could be found (or colored chalk was used instead), libraries
could use this lo-tech method of communication often - at least during the
non-rainier seasons of the year.
Found at
The Goblin in the Library.
- Booklover's Alert: A New Typography Blog
Posted August 31, 2007
People who love books often appreciate one or more of the various "book arts"
that make books possible. The subset of book-lovers interested in
typography - and the computer-owning subset of that subset - will probably
enjoy the new blog entitled
I Love Typography.
Found via Fade Theory.
Click here to read all "Booklover
Alerts" posted to AFPLWATCH
- Towards a More User-Trusting Library?
Posted August 31, 2007
Here's Library 2.0
advocate David Lee King's
latest attempt to schematically represent the ideas of a user-centric
(and technology-embracing) library:
- Dept. of Book-Based Art: Jonathan Callan
Posted August 31, 2007
Found via
Bibliophile Bullpen via
Rag & Bone Blog via
Moon River.
Click here to read all "Booklover
Alerts" posted to AFPLWATCH
- Teenager Circumvents $84 Million Internet Filter in a Mere Half-Hour
Posted August 29, 2007
This story out of Australia has been pinging around the blogosphere for
almost a week now. Librarian blogger
Jessamyn West has posted what we think is the best set of links and commentary.
All we can say is that somebody's making a Heap o' Money out of parental
anxiety (and the politicians who love to capitalize on it), and not just
in Australia.
- Thieves Rob Amsterdam's Public Library Headquarters
Posted August 29, 2007
Not many
details.
Found via
LISNews.
- Beloved Short-Story Author Grace Paley Dies at 84
Posted August 27, 2007
Details
from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Found via
LISNews.
- Elderly Driver Inadvertently Rams Car into Library Wall
Posted August 27, 2007
Luckily, no injuries. A few
details at LISNews.
- Another Day, Another Library Computer Masturbator Arrested
Posted August 27, 2007
Details from Minnesota's Pioneer Press, via
LISNews.
We haven't done any research on the subject on the frequency of
computer-assisted masturbation in public libraries, but we have a hunch
that flagrant genital-fondling (by males, anyway) became a permanent, if
occasional, feature of public library activity within a few weeks after
the first public library opened its doors. Certainly the public masturbators
joined the ranks of library visitors long before computers were installed,
or even invented.
Laptop computers and the introduction into more and more libraries
of wireless access to the Internet do not cause more people to
fondle themselves inside libraries (or, with wi-fi, in library parking lots),
but they certainly provide people more opportunities to do that, whatever
else computers and wi-fi make possible for grateful non-masturbating
library visitors.
However, the fact that wi-fi access is likely to take place throughout the
library (wherever there's a chair or stool for a laptop-toting visitor to
perch upon) makes us wonder how library staff are going to minimize their
own and their visitors' exposure to their libraries' computer-assisted
masturbators, including the laptop-enabled ones.
Good luck to the writers of AFPL's wi-fi-use procedures on this particular
issue.
- Poll: Only 1 of Every 4 U.S. Adults Read a Book During Past Year
Posted August 23, 2007
Highlights of the poll's results, according to a
story at CNN.com:
- One in four Americans read no books last year
- More women are avid readers than men
- Southerners read more than rest of country
- Democrats, liberals read slightly more books than GOP, conservatives
Found via LISNews.
- Dept. of Slippery Slopes:
The Upshot of Searching (Library Catalogs, Say) by Keywords Only
and of Blithely Abandoning Headings-Based Cataloging of Library Materials
Posted August 23, 2007
Thus sayeth cataloger Martha M. Yee:
"Leaving information organization in the hands of commercial interests
such as Google and Amazon.com would be the first step in the process of
removing the library and the library profession from the information
provision chain altogether. Publishers already have the ability to sell
information directly to the consumer on a pay-per-view basis. If we move
toward a society in which that is the only way users can get information,
we will have a society that replicates in the information sphere our
current huge economic gap between haves and have-nots, and that places all
the power to control the availability of information in the hands of
entities that are completely profit-driven and have no incentive to serve
the greater good of society as a whole. Do we really want to follow our
leaders down this path?"
Read Yee’s entire screed.
We have been warned.
Found via Library Link of
the Day.
- Back to the Future: Books by Mail to Replace Nova Scotia Bookmobile
Posted August 22, 2007
Older people, citizens who don't own vehicles, disabled citizens, and residents
who live more than 10 miles from the nearest library qualify for a free
books-by-mail service that has supplanted a Canadian library's bookmobile
service.
Details.
br>
Did anyone at AFPL do a cost-benefit analysis of bookmobiles vs. books-by-mail
services before adopting plans to revive AFPL's long-mothballed bookmobile
service, we wonder?
There are several unserved areas of the county that are going to be without
a conveniently-located public library for some years to come; perhaps a
temporary, small-scale books-by-mail project could be undertaken to deal
with this fact while citizens living in those outlying areas wait another
eternity for their libraries to be built? Perhaps a grant of some sort could
be obtained for instituting a books-by-mail pilot project for any
Fulton County resident with mobility difficulties?
Found via
LISNews.
- New Biblioblog: "The Luscious Librarian"
Posted August 22, 2007
Last month, from somewhere inside Atlanta, a 26-year-old African American
female librarian began blogging her book-related thoughts (and her thoughts
about many other things as well). Take a look at
The Luscious Librarian.
Found by chance via Google, while stumbling around looking for something
else.
- Video Circulation by Public Libraries Grows 340% in Past 20 Years
Posted August 21, 2007
Some figures to offset the dismal decrease in public libraries' book
circulation over that same period.
Found at via LISNews' latest installment of "
This Week in LibraryBlogLand."
- Thieves Steal Quilts from Library Exhibit
Posted August 21, 2007
We thought the main things predators wanted to steal from public libraries
was either their computers or the copper tubing from their air conditioning
units.
This library in Massachusetts recently found out what else some library
theives are prepared to steal.
Found via LISNews.
- Library Book Borrowing in U.S. Half What It Was 150 Years Ago
Posted August 18, 2007
By far the steepest recent (and, so far, continuing) decline occurred after
1978:
An analysis of these figures, and of others just as interesting, were
posted on the Internet last month by researcher Douglas Galbi.
- 2007 Decatur Book Festival
Posted August 18, 2007
Having waited in vain for information about this year's festival
to show up on AFPL's website, we'll
mention it here instead. The festival begins the final weekend in August,
and we're certain there are many Atlanta and Fulton County folks who will
make plans to attend the festival once they see
all the events on offer.
- Entire Staff of Connecticut Library Must Submit to TB Tests
Posted August 17, 2007
Details
from the Danville News-Times.
Almost laughable, given the diseases and infections public library
employees (and library volunteers) are exposed to in the course of their
work in the libraries of every large city, including Atlanta.
Found via
LISNews.
- Atlanta's Woodruff Park Now Offering a "Reading Room"
Posted August 16, 2007
The decade-long struggle to make Woodruff Park as appealing to downtown
workers and residents as it always has been for the homeless and/or deranged
is highlighted in
a brief story in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Unfortunately, the newspaper story doesn't make clear the role of AFPL's
Central Library staff in the park management's not-so-recently-introduced
"Reading Room." Yet another example of why AFPL administrators needs to get
a PR honcho finally hired and out
there publicizing the contributions of library employees to the many efforts
to make downtown Atlanta more tolerable for people who spend considerable
amounts of time there.
- What is it about library bureaucracies that cries out for satire?
Posted August 16, 2007
From somewhere in the Netherlands, a new library satire blogger enters
the biblioblogosphere.
The Obnoxious Librarian from Hades’
August 15th post will resonate painfully with the dozens of AFPL employees
who are forced to periodically endure unavoidable-but-predictably-unpleasant
interactions with A Certain Internal-Customer-Oblivious Someone in the
library system’s business office.
Found via
LISNews.
- What Computer Skills Should the Least Tecno-Savvy Amongst Us Possess?
Posted August 16, 2007
New York-based librarian (and blogger) Emily Clasper recently posted a list
of
Minimum Technology Competencies for Librarians, and her readers promptly
chimed in with additional suggestions of their own. It all makes for
interesting (and, in some quarters of AFPL-land, depressing) reading.
Found via LISNews’ latest
This Week in LibraryBlogLand.
Now, would somebody in AFPL’s administration please take this technology
skillset ball and run with it? At a minimum, could there not be some sort
of non-painful techno-training session offered at the much-publicized Staff
Development Day slated for October?
- Toys for Techies: A Color Keyboard
Posted August 15, 2007
One of these puppies (pricetag: $127) would be a great prize for, say, some
lucky Library-Employee-of-the-Quarter: a keyboard whose keys light up in a
pattern set by the aforementioned lucky prize-winner!
Found at
Outside of a Dog via Fade Theory.
- House o' Books
Posted August 13, 2007
We've posted various samples of book-themed art to AFPLWATCH before, but
we think this Italian creation takes the proverbial cake. Both the interior
and exterior of Venetian sculptor Livio de Marchi's life-sized
Casa di Libri consists almost entirely of carved book forms.
Found via
Outside the Dog via
The Popular Edge.
Click here to read all "Booklover
Alerts" posted to AFPLWATCH
- Strike Involving Vancouver Library Now Two Weeks Old
Posted August 11, 2007
Details at Library Journal.
- Bookmarks-for-Booklovers Alert: Another Day-by-Day-in-Literature Website
Posted August 11, 2007
Today in Literature joins
Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac among the Internet's
providers of a daily dose o’ cultural history.
For not much money, libraries can subscribe to TinL. Mayhap AFPL’s
electronic resources honchos could consider buying a subscription and
placing a link to TinL on the library’s website - along with a link
to the Writer’s Almanac. Such links would be a nice (cheap) enhancement of
the library’s site, we think.
Found at Cool Tricks and
Trinkets Newsletter #467.
Click here to read all "Booklover
Alerts" posted to AFPLWATCH
- Oakland Library Patron Sentenced for Intimidating His Librarian
Posted August 9, 2007
A few
details, via LISNews.
Most employees at AFPL who work daily with the largely-uncivilized
public could conjure up memories of a few dozen local library patrons here
in Atlanta, Georgia who should've been arrested and dealt with similarly.
- Book Covers: The Good, The Bad...and the Truly Hideous
Posted August 9, 2007
An Asheville-based librarian blogs some of the worst of the worst at
Judge a Book by Its Cover.
Much hilarity therein: both the arresting covers themselves, and the
accompanying commentaries of the blogger and her readers.
Found via
Bibliophile Bullpen.
Click here to read all "Booklover
Alerts" posted to AFPLWATCH
- Making Life Easier For Computer-Owning Library Patrons: Suggestion #43
Posted August 9, 2007
According the Peter Webster's "The Library in Your Tool Bar" published
in this month's Library Journal, more libraries are offering free download of a computer toolbar that
searches their libraries’ catalogs.
Harris County (Texas) Public Library began offering such a toolbar over
two years ago to their computer-owning patrons who use Internet
Explorer or Firefox as their web browser.
One would think that every forward-thinking, circ-hungry,
customer-supportive library would offer such a toolbar, so its
computer-owning patrons could dispense forever with the annoyance of
having to access the library's website before beginning a library catalog
search. One would think that AFPL could do this. One would think.
- PR Toolbox Alert: Make Your Own "Hollywood" Graphic
Posted August 8, 2007
Perhaps the allegedly-soon-to-be-hired PR honcho for AFPL could
create something similar to insert in some of the inevitable "Vote YES
on the library referendum!" propaganda (the printed kind and the electronic
kind) that will need to be produced (if all goes according to plan) around
this time a year from now?
Found via
Library Stuff via
Marketing Begins at Home.
- Behold, the Amazing E-Learning Toolbox
Posted August 7, 2007
The UK-based Center for Learning & Performance Technology has posted
a mind-boggling, searchable
directory of virtually every possible technique (over 1,600 of them!)
that anyone anywhere might need at some point to efficiently and/or
engagingly convey information electronically.
Trainers, committee chairs, administrators, webmasters, and bloggers should
bookmark this site pronto. And the section devoted to "Personal Learning
Tools" will be useful to just about anyone who operates a computer (or an
iPod or other computer-based mobile device).
We especially like the site's display of the number of tools available
(free and otherwise) per technique, the helpful categorization of the tools, and the
ability to browse the tools alphabetically.
Found via
It's All Good.
- Onwards and Upwards Towards Better Brochures!
Posted August 7, 2007
If you work in a library, you are constantly distributing various kinds of
brochures, most of them created by people who are not you. But the day
will come when somebody's going to expect you to create a
brrochure about this, that, or the other thing that library users are
also constantly asking you and your colleagues about. In fact, that day
will probably come more than once.
Take pity on your library's users and make your first, second, or hundredth
brochure a good one. The Ohio-based
LibTalk Blog has posted a heedworthy list of brochure-creating tips
and links to examples of superior library brochures.
- Dept. of It-Can't-Happen-Here...Or-Could-It?:
Owner of Multiple Library Cards Sells $35,000 Worth of Borrowed Books on Internet
Posted August 6, 2007
Details about this recent incident at the Denver Public Library.
Found via
LISNews.
- Selector/Booklover Alert: Internet Website Aggregates U.S. Book Reviews
Posted August 7, 2007
According to Cool
Tricks and Trinkets Newsletter #466, the Internet's
Cool Compendium "offers up a daily dose of select book reviews by
respected newspapers, magazines, and journals from all around the world.
The aim of the site is to make it is as easy as possible for people to find
and read quality reviews, without having to navigate a virtual obstacle
course of literary blogs and websites. Check out the reviews of the day,
or browse through diverse publications such as BBC News, London Review of
Books, Moscow Times, Mother Jones, The New Yorker, Salon.com, and many
more."
Click here to read all "Booklover
Alerts" posted to AFPLWATCH
- Service Desk Alert: Websites for Information about Countries
Posted August 7, 2007
Common library scenario: Little Johnnie's mommy is frantic. Johnnie has a
report due tomorrow and all the books on the country he's been assigned a
school report on have been checked out by all the other little Johnnies
in the county whose geography teachers have assigned them to do school
reports on various Countries o' the World.
The Internet to the Rescue: The Librarian in Black and her readers have
posted a list of country profile-containing Internet sites for you to
print out and give to Little Johnnie's frantic mom.
(We're assuming here that Frantic Mom has a home computer with an Internet
connection or that she has time to sit down at a library computer before
leaving the library. We're also assuming that Little Johnnie's teacher
hasn't banned all Internet sites as legitimate sources for Little Johnnie's report.
If Little Johnnie is lucky, said teacher will have merely - and
irrationally - banned the often excellent entries on countries in the
Wikipedia, a Web-based source
unmentioned by the intrepid LiB and her readers).
- Print-on-Demand Machine Demo at New York Public Library
Posted August 7, 2007
The inventors of the $20,000 vending-machine-like "Espresso Book Machine" will be
marketed to the 16,000 public libraries and 25,000 bookstores in the United
States. Cost of a 300-page instantly-printed book? About $3.
Details from the New York Times.
Found via
LISNews.
Click here to read all "Booklover
Alerts" posted to AFPLWATCH
- Dept. of Library Promotion Campaigns: Merchant Discounts for Library Cardholders
Posted August 6, 2007
According to the New Jersey-based
Library Garden, Kentucky's
Kenton Public Library will soon be "partnering" (hated word)
with a bevy of local merchants who've agreed to offer temporary discounts
to library cardholders to publicize the value of libraries to the life of
the local community.
Perhaps AFPL's PR person - once he/she's
finally hired - could consider mounting a similar campaign here in
Fulton County, Georgia, where there are plenty o' local merchants to
"partner" with.
- Newspaper Criticizes "Mission Creep" in Tampa's Public Libraries
Posted August 1, 2007
Read this sensible, taxpayers-simply-can't-afford-libraries-trying-to-be-all-things-to-all-people
editorial from the Tampa Tribune.
Tampa's libraries aren't the only ones trying to be all things to all people.
We especially like the writer's suggestion that the county government
consider relocating public access Internet terminals into county recreation
centers and senior centers. Now there's a concept worth adopting
throughout LibraryLand, including the part of LibraryLand in Fulton County,
Georgia!
Found via LISNews.
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