Retiring Guy's Digest

Monday, January 30, 2012

It's only Monday, but this is still the best ebook headline of the week

E-Readers Stimulating the Sales of Erotica eBooks. (Good Reader, 1/30/2012)

Excerpt: Sales are rising of erotic ebooks due to the constant proliferation of e-readers. At any given time there are numerous erotica books in the best seller list on Kobo, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

British Columbia owned eXtasy Books [homepage not explicit] recently told the CBC that “Customers are starting to discover them and finding that they can read certain books that they do not want other people to see and in privacy.” The e-publisher notes that sales took off in early 2010 and doubled last year. She expects them to triple in 2012 with a majority of downloaders being female. Xtasy has more than 1,000 titles in its “store” including ones such as the paranormal Dragon’s Pearl, the hybrid fantasy/Victorian Lady Mechatronic and the Steampunk Pirates and the Western-tinged Dead Man’s Diamond.

John Evangelist Walsh Explains How Monroe Wisconsin Got Its Library

LINK (page 1 of 12)

LINK

Hat tip to Janel Keizer, one of my LIS 712 students this semester.

Jonathan Franzen Has Something to Say about Ebooks

Jonathan Franzen: e-books are damaging society. (The Telegraph, 1/29/2012)

Excerpt: The author of Freedom and The Corrections, regarded as one of America’s greatest living novelists, said consumers had been conned into thinking that they need the latest technology.

“The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology. And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it. It’s a bad business model,” said Franzen, who famously cuts off all connection to the internet when he is writing.

“I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change.

“Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don’t have a crystal ball.

“But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”

School Library/Public Library Merger Under Discussion in Stanley, Wisconsin

This news didn't register on Retiring Guy's radar screen last year.

Ongoing opposition building for Stanley library merger. (Chippewa Herald, 1/29/2012)

Excerpt: A decision on combining the Stanley-Boyd School library with the D.R. Moon Public Library is still far off, but opponents have been gathering their support. “

Presently, we have over 500 signatures in support of preserving the public library and continuing it in its current location,” Stanley resident Brian Stolie said.

Stolie and others in Stanley have been working on a petition to stop the city and school from a proposed merger of the public and school library. The plan would call for the public library to move from its current building on Fourth Avenue into the school library, about half a mile away.

The city and school have been discussing the merger for a few months, using a fact-finding committee to examine costs, space and other needs to combine the two libraries. [Has this committee distributed any public reports? Apparently, the school board minutes aren't available online.]

The biggest concern:

Stanley-Boyd School District board meetings.

Public/School District Library (action) appears on 7/25/2011 agenda under Effective Curriculum and Instruction.
Public/School District Library (report) appears on 8/22/2011 agenda, and 9/26/2011 agenda.
10/24/2011 agenda under Effective Curriculum and Instruction.
Public/School Library in accordance with Wisconsin State Statute 19.85 (1)(c) appears on 10/24/2011 agenda under Closed Session; Public/School District Library (report) appears on same agenda under Effective Curriculum and Instruction.
No agenda items on this issue since October 2011.