- Science Fiction Writer Philip Jose Farmer Dead at 91
Posted February 27, 2009
Details published by the Chicago Tribune.
Found via Bibliophile Bullpen.
- Yet Another Great Internet-Based Public Library-Promoting Tool NOT Used by AFPL
Posted February 27, 2009
A public library system in Washington is creating reader recommendations (and warnings) via short and humorous show-and-tell
YouTube videos that it loads onto a blog it's named the One-Minute Critic.
Found via the OCLC blog It's All Good.
- Nonbook Selector Alert: Street Dates for DVDs of 2009's Oscar-Winning Feature Films
Posted February 25, 2009
Fortunately, this year's (unfortunate) six-months-long ordering season recently began, and nonbook selectors can now order
this year's Oscar-winning feature films that are available on DVD, or soon will be. Exactly when was posted earlier this
week at the Florida-based Blah, Blah, Blah Blog.
Found via Stephen's Lighthouse.
- Booklover Alert: Another Beloved British Author's Home Opens as Public Museum
Posted February 25, 2009
Agatha Christie fanatics can now start booking their flights for England: the house in Devon where she summered for 30 years has
been restored and is now open to the adoring public. The Guardian has the
details.
Found via
Bibliophile Bullpen.
Click here to read previously-published Booklover Alerts
- AFPL Makes Third Tier of LJ's Public Library Rankings
Posted February 24, 2009
AFPL received a three-star ranking (out of a possible five stars) in its budget group (more than $30 million per year) in a
recent ranking of 7,115 U.S. public libraries published in Library Journal. Although no other library system in
Georgia (of any size) garnered three, four, or five stars, fourteen other U.S. library systems fared better in the
survey, with two Ohio systems (Cleveland’s and Columbus’)
at the top of the budget group that includes AFPL.
Factors considered in the survey were per capita figures for total circulation, number of patron visits, program attendance,
and Internet terminals use. The top-ranking library circulates 500% more items than AFPL.
- Coming to a Library Near You?
Posted February 23, 2009
Wowbrary is a California-based nonprofit venture that's trying to get public libraries
across the country to let them notify those libraries' users about the newest materials arriving in those libraries.
Naturally, Wowbrary describes its service as a win-win situation: patrons conveniently and efficiently find out what's new
at their local library, and libraries suddenly have a cost-efficient way to remind patrons once a week of the great new
stuff that's just become available for borrowing from the library.
The service is free to library patrons who decide to sign up with Wowbrary because a participating library system the size
of AFPL pays Wowbrary several thousand dollars a year to operate the service, and allows Wowbrary to routinely scan the
library's database. The only additional cost for the library other than the annual subscription price is the cost of being
prepared for a sharp increase in the number of Holds that patrons will place on new library materials as a result of the
extra publicity about its newest materials.
Some libraries have welcomed Wowbrary as a painless and cost-efficient way to forge better bonds with its computer-owning
constituencies; others would probably be reluctant to give outsiders access to their databases and/or to raise or divert
funds to paying for the service.
We hope AFPL's Powers That Be will weigh the pros and cons of joining forces with Wowbrary.
AFPL administrators have had plenty of time since the advent of the Internet to develop some method of its own to automatically notify its patrons
of new library materials and, for various reasons, hasn't accomplished that. Partnering with an outfit like Wowbrary could
quickly close that glaring gap in the reasonable expectations of library users, and Wowbrary could produce a quantum leap
in circulation figures, as there are many, many card-holders who would respond to an automated notification system.
And if funds aren't readily available for AFPL's joining Wowbrary, perhaps the Library Foundation could provide those funds
on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of AFPL library card-holders who have Internet connections and would greatly appreciate
this effort of the Foundation to make AFPL's collections more conveniently accessible?
Found via Stephen's Lighthouse.
- Carter Presidential Library Announces $10 Million Renovation
Posted February 22, 2009
Jimmy Carter has raised $7 million already for the renovation; the library will closed down at the end of April and
reopen in October. Details from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Our congratulations to the Carter Library. But we're wondering: Assuming some of those donors to the Carter Library
renovation are local, does that mean it's now even more unlikely than it already was that local donors will be found to
raise the $60+ million in private funds that will be required to build a new Central Library for AFPL?
- Bomb Threat from a Gwinnett County Public Library Computer Results in Arrest
Posted February 22, 2009
Details - including the fact that the police obtained a warrant to search the library computer's log-in files - were
published last week in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
- Dept. of Books as Art
Posted February 16, 2009
 The gigantic sculpture by Tom Bendtsen is one of many arresting images of, um,
"re-purposed books" posted at Bibliophile Bullpen over the past few years.
We've posted photos of a few of these creations to "LibraryLand" before, some of them supplied by Bibliophile Bullpen, some
of them supplied by others.
All of the books-as-art and books-as-utility-objects posts noticed by Bibliophile Bullpen - some of them clever, some of
them merely tacky, and a few of them fairly mortifying - are conveniently archived at
"1001 Uses".
A bonus at many of the images: the blogger's mordant commentary.
And, while we're pondering the use of books as art, here's something by Palestinian artist Emily Jacir that she calls
"Untitled" - but that we might have called "Don't Try This at Home." It was recently posted at
Book Patrol.
- Publicity / Park Passes / Public Libraries
Posted February 9, 2009
Here's how a nearby library system turned the "free park passes at your local public library" partnership with the
Georgia Parks Department into some positive publicity for the library via a story in the local newspaper.
Couldn't AFPL maybe do something (finally) to publicize the recent unveiling (finally) of its free wi-fi service?
Found via LISNews.
- Dept. of New Yorker Articles of Particular Interest to Librarians
Posted February 9, 2009
The New Yorker often runs stories of interest to the denizens of LibraryLand. The latest is an engrossingly-told tale
told by one of the magazine's most well-known nonfiction writers, John McPhee, about several of his fascinating adventures
with the magazine's intrepid fact-checkers.
You'll have to register to read the story online,
but we're assuming many WATCH readers subscribe to the print version, and that they will eventually stumble upon this story,
once they finally catch up with the backlog of their New Yorker reading and pick up the current issue.
And if WATCH readers work at AFPL and don't stock the New Yorker in their periodicals collections, perhaps they
should consider correcting this grievous oversight?
- U.S. House of Representatives Delays Until June the Analog-to-Digital Television Switchover
Posted February 6, 2009
Just in case some worried library patron asks, here's the scoop.
Found via Stephen's Lighthouse.
- The Zombiefied Austen: Clever Literary Mashup...or Disgusting Literary Ripoff?
Posted February 3, 2009
 Quirk Books will soon publish a rather radically transmogrified version of Pride
and Prejudice: the original text augmented with a parallel plotline of the indominable Jane battling zombies running
amok in her little corner of the world.
As you imagine the scenarios of (a) purchasing this item for your library, knowing full well it will be in high demand, and/or
(b) lending it out some day next fall (say) to some Actual Patron standing on the other side of the service desk, do these
scenarios excite you or depress you?
Is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies a creative homage or merely another dismal trashing of yet another literary
treasure? Will the new book introduce a whole new audience to the pleasures wrought by Ms. Austen, an audience who might
otherwise have ignored her exceptional (unaugmented) novel? Do you look forward to reading this novel yourself, or would you
not touch it with a barge pole? Perhaps even more telling, are you already looking forward to seeing the movie? Is the
prospect of stocking this book just one of the many things that makes working in a public library so delightful...or is it
more evidence that you have joined the ranks of those who feel they may have Lived Too Long?
Whatever your reactions are to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, we can probably agree that this sort of thing sheds
new light on why most authors and their heirs are such stubborn defenders of copyright laws, and that the publication of this
book is a particularly vivid example of what can happen to any novel that dwells (as they all inevitably do) in that spooky
and vulnerable - and sometimes lucrative - place called The Public Domain.
Found via Paper Cuts.
Read previously-posted Booklover Alerts
- Selector Alert / Library Exhibit Idea: Charles Darwin
Posted February 3, 2009
This month marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of his paradigm-shifting book
On the Origin of Species. Lorcan Dempsey has posted an
interesting summary of how Darwin is represented in OCLC's WorldCat.
AFPL selectors might want to check their collections to see how adequately (or inadequately) Darwin is represented in their
own libraries, and those in AFPL's employ who assemble book exhibits might want to root around in their local collection to
see how they might highlight the profound influence Darwin has had in all sorts of intellectual (and legal) realms.
- Atlanta Moves Up in Rankings of "Most Literate U.S. Cities"
Posted February 3, 2009
We somehow overlooked the publication of an annual ranking of the relative "literateness" of U.S. cities.
The sponsor of the annual survey has changed since it was begun back in 2004, and the survey's methodology and criteria
have also changed since then. Still, for what it's worth, Atlanta has fared badly and well in the survey: it ranked
15th in 2004, jumped to 4th in 2005, tied for 3rd in 2006, fell to 8th in 2007, and last year came in as the 8th most
literate U.S. city. The number of libraries and bookstores figure heavily in the rankings.
Details.
Found via Library Journal.
- Niftiest New Way to Use DNA Analysis in the Bibliosphere...
Posted February 3, 2009
We all have heard how labs examining DNA samples have unexpectedly enriched all sorts of fields - everything from
anthropology to genealogy to prisoners rights. Now this technology has opened up a whole new and promising prospect in the
never-ending work of authenticating and dating ancient manuscripts - or at least the manuscripts inscribed on parchment.
Details from
e! Science News.
Found via Fade Theory.
- Idea for President's Day Book Exhibit: Books President Obama Has Read
Posted February 2, 2009
In the two books he wrote himself before being elected U.S. President, Obama mentions several books as important influences
on his development or his beliefs; since then, he's mentioned other book titles in various interviews. New York City's McNally Jackson
Booksellers compiled a comprehensive list of
these titles and is displaying them (and will host a related lecture) in its store - something a public library could
adapt for its own book display.
And with the new book ordering season about to commence at AFPL, book selectors might want to check this list to make sure
they own these titles in case some citizen decides he or she wants to read one of the books Obama found intriguing enough
to mention as personally influential.
We just wish Obama had remembered to say which of these books he'd borrowed from a library when he decided to read them.
On the other hand, perhaps we should just be grateful that we have a U.S. President who has read more than a few books in
his lifetime, remembers what those books were, and credits them with shaping his beliefs.
Found via LISNews.
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