- Metro-Atlanta Growth the 2nd-Fastest-Growing in the U.S.
Posted March 31, 2008
If you thought you'd been issuing an awful lot of new library cards lately,
you're probably right about that. Pity the poor workers in metro counties
growing even faster than Fulton.
A few
details were published last week by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
- Children's Librarian Alert: More Goosebumps Ahead
Posted March 27, 2008
Will the still-popular and lucrative R.L. Stine Goosebumps series (discontinued
in 2000) continue to attract legions of young readers? The publisher is
betting it will.
Details from the New York Times.
Found via LISNews.
- Dept. of Corrupt Library Employees (Sacramento Division)
Posted March 27, 2008
Details.
Found via LISNews.
- Service Desk Alert: Patrons Can Now Watch TV Programs at Internet Workstations
Posted March 26, 2008
The good news for People With Too Much Time On Their Hands (And No Personal
Internet Access Of Their Own) is the freshest hell for public library
workers. The Librarian in Black provides the
scary details.
AFPL library employees should probably gird their collective loins for
a renewed onslaught of demands for free headphones...and the branches that are
already providing them may want to reconsider continuing to do so - or at
least stockpile a few gallons of disinfectant to keep their headphones
lice-free.
- NPR Reports on Book-Centered Social Websites
Posted March 26, 2008
LibraryThing, Goodreads, Shelfari, aNobii, BookJetty, et al. continue to
garner attention in the mass media. Read (or listen to) National Public
Radio's story
here.
Found via LISNews.
Click here to read all Booklover Alerts
- Rule #1 for Parents Dropping Off a Kid at a Public Library...
Posted March 26, 2008
...Make sure the joint is open.
What can happen if you violate Rule #1.
Found via LISNews.
- Should Military Recruiters Use Public Library Meeting Rooms?
Posted March 26, 2008
Here's what's happening with that in
Baltimore.
Found via LISNews.
- Dept. of Meeting Frequency Minimization Tools
Posted March 24, 2008
Last month, Web Worker Daily
posted
12 Top Free Ways to Collaborate Online.
Yes, we all know that A Library Is A Constantly Changing Organism, but,
please, now that most of AFPL's far-flung employees have access to an
Internet-accessible computer, can't somebody Up There in AFPL's Library
Administration experiment with one or more of these ways to reduce the
number of committee meetings (usually conducted at the downtown Central
Library) deemed necessary to complete the library system's never-ending
parade of library projects?
Found via
iLibrarian.
- The Radical Heart of Librarianship?
Posted March 24, 2008
The perpetually quotable Karen Schneider, aka the Free Range Librarian,
has nailed it again. An excerpt from
a recent blogpost:
"The radical, transformative heart of librarianship is to take society’s
pre-programmed thinkers - the products of our educational systems and our
TV culture - and turn them into lifelong readers."
- Booklover's Alert: 80 Online Resources for Booklovers
Posted March 24, 2008
Last week, Lithuanian blogger Zigmas Bigelis posted links to 80 online
resources useful to booklovers, providing a brief comment about each one,
and arranging them into the following categories:
- Social Networking for Book Lovers
- E-books
- Online Bookstores
- Find the Best Prices for Books
- Audiobooks
- Study Guides and Summaries
- Library Resources
- Bibliography and Research
- Book Exchanges/Swapping
- Online Documents
- What to Read
- Miscellaneous
Take a look. We
bet there are several you hadn't yet heard about.
Found via
iLibrarian.
Click here to read all Booklover Alerts
- Booklover's Alert: Rules for (Home) Bookshelves - Should There Be Any?
Posted March 24, 2008
It'll take you at least an hour to read them all, but many of the hundreds
of passionate, hilarious, and indignant - and contradictory - comments to
several recent blogposts on this question make for absorbing reading:
We note with interest that quite a few of the commenters rely on the
local public library to keep their domestic book-storage problems semi-manageable.
Found via LISNews.
Click here to read all Booklover Alerts
- Author Arthur C. Clarke Dies
Posted March 19, 2008
Details at MSNBC.
Found via LISNews.
- Is the U.S. Public Library Morphing into a Video Arcade?
Posted March 19, 2008
Free-lance writer Dave Gibson thinks so.
Found via LISNews.
- Nonbook Selector Alert: New Site Reviews Audiobooks
Posted March 18, 2008
Back in January, MLS student Jeanne Kramer-Smyth launched
Book for Ears, and it's turned into a useful site for public library
selectors casting about for how best to spend their (usually extremely
limited) dollars for audiobooks.
Found via the
Librarian in Black via
Library Techtonics.
- Dept. of Library Display Ideas: Books That Promote More Enlightened Eating
Posted March 18, 2008
Karen Schneider, aka the Free Range Librarian, was recently blogging
about her quest to infuse more consciousness into her eating habits. At the
end of her
blogpost, Karen recommends three bestsellers that contributed to her determination to eat more responsibly:
Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma, Barbara Kingsolver's
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation.
That got us to thinking that a nifty library display could be made out of
these and other not-so-well-known titles....
- Newest Library Blog on the Block
Posted March 17, 2008
Christopher Warren, who works at Gwinnett County Public Library's Suwanee
Branch, recently launched Library Riot.
With so few Atlanta-based biblioblogs being produced by people working
in public libraries, we're glad to see another one's debut. Good luck to
Christopher.
Found via Michael Casey's
Library Crunch.
- California Librarian Fired After Calling Police about Child Porn-Viewer
Posted March 14, 2008; updated March 17, 2008
Details.
Found via LISNews, which
posted links to several follow-up stories here.
- Will the Internet Become a Victim of Its Own Success?
Posted March 14, 2008
As more Internet videos and video-viewers clog up the Internet's pipelines,
the ability of said pipelines to handle the traffic decreases. Gridlock is
predicted to occur as early as 2011.
Details from the New York Times.
Another sad example of the oblivious "destruction of the commons," perhaps?
We can hardly wait for the onslaught of Internet-using library patrons
constantly annoying library staff with complaints about how "their"
Internet connection is "too slow" and can't they be given another computer,
yadda yadda yadda. Early retirement, anyone?
Found via LISNews.
- Dept. of Unusual Bookmarks
Posted March 14, 2008
Some of the library workers who’ve joined
Library Thing have been reporting, with various degrees of bemusement
and/or disgust,
the sorts of things people have forgotten to retrieve from library books
they've borrowed.
Some psychologist could probably get a dissertation topic out of what
people use to mark their places in the books they’ve borrowed and then
obliviously (?) return.
- Recent Massacre in Israel Happened in a Library
Posted March 14, 2008
We hadn't realized that part of last week's round of carnage in Israel
took place in a (seminary) library. Somehow that detail makes the
news seem even more horrific than it already was when we first heard
about it.
Found via the OCLC blog
It's All Good.
- Board Action Turns Gwinnett County Librarians into Internet Police
Posted March 12, 2008
All because one library user didn't like what another library user was
looking at on his Internet screen.
Details from yesterday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
- List of Public Library Blogs
Posted March 12, 2008
For some reason,
AFPL's (only) blog isn't listed
here.
Found via LISNews.
- Donor Gives NYPL $100 Million
Posted March 11, 2008
Details from the New York Times.
Lucky NYPL. We can't help but mention that the notion that some Atlanta
high-roller (Arthur Blank? Ted Turner?) would donate even $1 million to
AFPL any time soon seems completely unlikely. Nor do we think AFPL deserves
such generosity - not until it gets its act together and starts operating
more efficiently. Good places to start: arranging for year-round ordering
of library materials, streamlining its hiring processes, hiring a Library
Technology Honcho - the list of neglected reforms is long
and old....
Found via LISNews.
- Nancy Pearl's 10 Favorite U.S. Libraries
Posted March 11, 2008
Last week, USA Today published brief descriptions of Nancy's faves.
Alas,
none of them are in Atlanta, Georgia. Perhaps before AFPL builds or
renovates any more libraries, planners should take a look at why Ms. Pearl
likes these particular libraries more than most?
Found via LISNews.
- Another Depressing Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Bestselling Novelist
Posted March 11, 2008
This time out, the focus is on the James Patterson factory.
As librarians in every English-speaking country know to their chagrin -
Patterson's works take up at least two full shelves of any library who owns
them all - Patterson seems to be, for the moment anyway, an unstoppable force.
Found via LISNews.
- Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Oprah's Book Club
Posted March 11, 2008
For example, does your library have all the books waved into bestsellerdom
by Oprah's magic wand? The list of those titles and other OBC-related
websites have been compiled at
About.com.
Found via
OPLIN4Cast.
- How Not to Drive Your Library's Customers Away
Posted March 11, 2008
Some recent links to pleas for better treatment of library customers:
Found via
OPLIN4Cast.
- Library Thing (Again) Upstages Most Web-Based Reader-Support Services
Provided by Most U.S. Public Libraries...including AFPL
Posted March 7, 2008
Well, the time seems fast approaching where most public libraries are just
going to be forced to post a link on their websites to
Library Thing, and hang their heads in shame and envy.
Library Thing, the brainchild of Maine-based Tim Spalding (not a librarian,
by the way), does a lot of different
things for book lovers, but its newest feature takes the proverbial
cake - i.e., takes it away from what any self-respecting public library
should have already done long since. LibraryThing Local aims to
provide
"a gateway to thousands of local bookstores, libraries and book
festivals—and to all the author readings, signings, discussions and other
events they host."
Yes, LibraryThing Local is in its infancy, but, like they've quickly
grown other features of Library Thing, the Thing's enthusiastic members
will continue to (quickly) create increasingly more useful content. That
said, Library Thing is light-years ahead of what AFPL has done since the
advent of the Internet Age for its most reliable - if currently most
glaringly underserved - constituency: adult book readers who also
happen to have Internet access and use that access to support and enhance
their book-reading habits.
We guess the question for AFPL is now who will be assigned to post
to LibraryThing Local AFPL's library facility locations and AFPL-sponsored book events (vs. the
yoga classes, health fairs, etc.)? Or will AFPL administrators leave it to
library users to do this for them? Given said administrators'
persistent lack of attention throughout the past decade for supporting
Atlanta's adult readers via interactive features on its website, maybe the
latter course would make more sense?
Alas, alack, the number of missed opportunites for AFPL to support its
adult book-loving users continues to mount with every year that passes....
Found via the
Librarian in Black.
Click here to read all Booklover Alerts
- The Public Library: Doomed...Or Not?
Posted March 7, 2008
Two excerpts from a more-thought-provoking-than-usual discussion at LISNews
about whether public libraries are fast becoming the "dinosaur in the living room" (or not):
"...When I balance a trip to my library to browse for materials against using
the Internet, I'm balancing saving a car trip, avoiding parking hassles,
risking not finding anything, but still getting AN answer or SOME
information. Sometimes that 10% of an answer is enough, and the library
loses out...."
* * *
"Fact: Most people continue to support their public libraries--even those
who don't use them.
Fact: A few public libraries have problems.
Hey, two out of three new restaurants go out of business within 18 months.
That means restaurants are doomed? Eighty percent of new products fail.
That means business is doomed?"
Read the entire,
mind-clearing, perspective re-setting LISNews thread.
- Albuquerque Mayor Orders Local Librarians
to Identify Sex Offenders with Library Cards
Posted March 7, 2008
The willingness of some politicians to turn library workers into Big Brother's
accomplices apparently has no limits. So much for the confidentiality of
public library borrowers' records.
What next? Forcing librarians to examine the immigration status of library
card applicants?
Details.
Found via LISNews.
- "Pull the Plug on the Library"
Posted March 5, 2008
A
guest editorial - and several readers' reactions - published by Florida's
Gainesville Sun.
As the U.S. economy continues to nose-dive for a lot of middle-class citizens
and local politicians resume casting about for ways to cut their budgets,
we can probably expect similar sentiments showing up more frequently in
newspapers across the country.
Found via LISNews.
- Snapshot of Georgia Library Use...and the Phenomenal Growth of PINES
Posted March 5, 2008
The common wisdom is that the Internet has sealed the doom of public libraries.
In Georgia, at least, this doesn't seem to be the reality.
In its February newsletter, the state library office provided a set of
recent library use statistics. According to these figures, Georgians
are not exactly staying away from their libraries in droves, despite the
presumed widespread availability of home Internet access.
Included in the newsletter story are figures for how PINES - the consortium
of public libraries that, glaringly, does not yet include AFPL - has grown
over the past year. Figures like these make us think that PINES is definitely
the way all Georgians will eventually enjoy the benefits of a de facto
statewide library card.
Found via
Lorcan Demsey's Weblog.
- 50 Reasons for Resisting Change
Posted March 4, 2008
Found via the
Librarian in Black via
Library Bytes via
Biocultural Science and Management.
- Dept. of Wonderful Website Ideas for Public Libraries
Posted March 4, 2008
Is there a more compelling way to highlight a library's various services than to post
a series of hyperlinked photos and statements by actual users of that
library?
That's what the Vancouver Public Library's doing.
Take a look.
Library staff at every AFPL facility probably know several loyal users
who'd love to have their photos taken and used in this very public,
supportive way.
Found via
Librarian in Black via
Walking Paper.
- Internet Predators: Myths vs. Facts
Posted March 3, 2008
Not that facts count for much to fear-based campaigns. But
here are some of the interesting findings reported in the current issue
of American Psychologist.
Found via LISNews.
- Another Journalist Discovers that Libraries Are Not Quiet Places
Posted March 3, 2008
From the Baltimore Sun.
Found via LISNews.
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