Saturday, June 2, 2012
Another "50 Shades of Grey" Post: Thanks, Helen, I don't know why some of our colleagues find this so hard to say
Local libraries can't keep steamy novel on shelves. (Upper St. Clair Patch, 6/2/2012)
Harford County Public Library's "selective materials" policy. (6/1/2012)
"50 Shades of Grey" @ the Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library. (5/27/2012)
No "Shades of Grey" @ Fort Bend County Libraries. (5/26/2012)
Brevard County Public Library reverses its decision on "50 Shades". (5/26/2012)
A Woman's Touch is Riding the "50 Shades" Wave. (5/26/2012)
Is there some wiggle room in your collection development policy? 5/24/2012)
Have you dusted off your policy on erotica? (5/22/2012)
Pulling "Shades" doesn't keep the noise out @ the Brevard County Public Library. (5/15/2012)
"We do not collect erotica @ Gwinnett County Public Library" (5/13/2012)
Will Fond du Lac residents now be clamoring for this books. (4/12/2012)
Common Card Test Run @ New York City's Public Libraries
Libraries Explore Shuffle on Cards. (Wall Street Journal, 5/31/2012)
Excerpt: Library officials described the common card for students as a first step toward integrated customer service for readers across the city—a move they believe would boost library use by making it easier to find and check out books. "The idea is that every New Yorker should be able to have access to the material in all of our libraries," said Linda Johnson, president of the Brooklyn Public Library. "If you live in Brooklyn but you find yourself in Manhattan, you can go to the library there and vice versa. It doesn't matter where you live and where you go to school, you can go to the library."
Friday, June 1, 2012
Wisconsin Hunters Rights Coalition "Mighty Mouse" Moment
Excerpt: I am committed to the idea, in order for hunting/fishing to prevail, we have to develop ways to provide outdoor opportunities for all citizens. Public lands should be more than just space where hunters can spend time, they should be managed for quality experiences, especially by young boys and girls who may have grown up like me. [Emphasis added.]
OK. Is that "managed especially by young boys and girls".....
or
"...quality experiences, especially by young boys and girls".
Standing with Walker.
Governor Walker is all over this Wisconsin Association of Bear Hunters webpage.
For Dr. Kroll's reading list.
Deer Hunter Demography: Projecting Future Deer Hunters in Wisconsin. (Applied Population Laboratory, September 2008)
Harford County Public Library's "Selective Materials" Policy
Harford library stands behind decision not to carry 'Fifty Shades' trilogy. (Baltimore Sun, 5/31/2012)
Excerpt: "When this book came out," Hastler said, "it was a different book than what's normally on the best sellers list."
What she was referring to are the numerous reviews of the book that not only called it horribly written, but also pornographic.
As Jennifer Ralston, HCPL materials management administrator, noted in an e-mail Tuesday, of few of those reviews came from The New York Times, which described the book as "mommy porn," and USA Today, calling it "NC-17 bondage."
"[I] looked at our [selection] policy and it's clear that we don't buy pornography for the library," Hastler said.
I looked at it, too, and found a number of sections that provide various degrees of support for the selection of "50 Shades".
Several factors went into the decision not to buy copies of "50 Shades."
"When we purchase anything," Hastler explained, "we have our board-approved selection policy [to use]."
The library looks at different criteria in that policy — the quality of writing, what is popular, if there are holes in a certain genre collection, how well received an author is, the cost of a book, customer requests and looking at professional reviews. [Emphasis added.]
The Freedom to Read statement notes that the individual cannot restrict the freedom of others to read, but the materials selectors at the Harford County Public Libraryapparently feel free to do so.
The online public access catalog for the Baltimore County Public Library shows 1072 holds sfor the print copy of 50 Shades of Grey.
Related posts:
"50 Shades of Grey" @ the Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library. (5/27/2012)
No "Shades of Grey" @ Fort Bend County Libraries. (5/26/2012)
Brevard County Public Library reverses its decision on "50 Shades". (5/26/2012)
A Woman's Touch is Riding the "50 Shades" Wave. (5/26/2012)
Is there some wiggle room in your collection development policy? 5/24/2012)
Have you dusted off your policy on erotica? (5/22/2012)
Pulling "Shades" doesn't keep the noise out @ the Brevard County Public Library. (5/15/2012)
"We do not collect erotica @ Gwinnett County Public Library" (5/13/2012)
Will Fond du Lac residents now be clamoring for this books. (4/12/2012)
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Lee Rainie on the New Social Operating System of Network Individualism
He and co-author Barry Wellman describe 3 revolutions in their book:
- Internet broadband
- Mobile connectivity
- Social networking
(Not yet available in LINKcat)
Some of my Wisconsin colleagues may remember Lee Rainie from his presentation at the 2009 WLA conference.
Here's a more recent presentation by Rainie.
Cooney Center QuickStudy on the Nature of Parent-Child and Child-Book Interactions When Reading a Print or E-book
For Young Readers, Print or Digital Books? (MindShift, 5/29/2012)
Excerpt: The study, the first of its kind to qualify the difference between basic and enhanced e-readers versus print books, examined 32 pairs of parents and their 3–6-year-old children as they read a print book and an e-book together. Half of the pairs read a basic e-book and the other half read an enhanced e-book.
Researchers found that while the multimedia features of enhanced e-books grabbed children’s attention, those same features also distracted young readers and led more to “non-content related interactions.” Features like animation, sound effects, videos, and games made it more difficult for some parents to keep kids focused on reading and diminished kids’ recall of the text. Parents continually had to tell kids not to turn the page or not to touch the tablets, according to Chiong.
The implication? Parents and teachers should choose basic e-books like the Kindle or Nook over enhanced e-books, such as the iPad, if they want a more literacy-focused co-reading experience with children .
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Typewriters @ the Library
Just in case you need a refresher course.
In Praise of Typing, the Clattering Kind. (The New York Times, 5/30/2012)
Excerpt: When I stumbled across a Web site mention of it a few months ago, I immediately envisioned an enclave where Mark Twain would feel at home. You know, dark-paneled walls, period carpeting, maybe a large, stuffed bird in the corner.
And of course a boxy, aggressively unergonomic typewriter, with a surfeit of levers, spools, guides, knobs, releases, gauges, clamps and keys.
Naturally, the Typewriter Room is nothing like that. It’s a cubicle-size room with glass walls that expose it to the rest of the library. It has a utilitarian, built-in desk. And while a small sign advises that the space is “designed for a maximum of two people to use comfortably,” that’s an optimistic assessment given the room’s single wooden chair.
The Typewriter Room’s typewriter is similarly bereft of romance. It is electronic, a TA Adler-Royal Satellite 40, with the beige plastic contouring of a fax machine from 1987 and a 700-character memory that allows you to go back and correct typos you made three sentences earlier. And yet despite its utter lack of charming Luddite clunkiness, it’s just ancient enough to deliver a completely different experience than one has when typing on today’s increasingly vestigial computer keyboards.
Fill in the blanks.
In Praise of Typing, the Clattering Kind. (The New York Times, 5/30/2012)
Excerpt: When I stumbled across a Web site mention of it a few months ago, I immediately envisioned an enclave where Mark Twain would feel at home. You know, dark-paneled walls, period carpeting, maybe a large, stuffed bird in the corner.
And of course a boxy, aggressively unergonomic typewriter, with a surfeit of levers, spools, guides, knobs, releases, gauges, clamps and keys.
Naturally, the Typewriter Room is nothing like that. It’s a cubicle-size room with glass walls that expose it to the rest of the library. It has a utilitarian, built-in desk. And while a small sign advises that the space is “designed for a maximum of two people to use comfortably,” that’s an optimistic assessment given the room’s single wooden chair.
The Typewriter Room’s typewriter is similarly bereft of romance. It is electronic, a TA Adler-Royal Satellite 40, with the beige plastic contouring of a fax machine from 1987 and a 700-character memory that allows you to go back and correct typos you made three sentences earlier. And yet despite its utter lack of charming Luddite clunkiness, it’s just ancient enough to deliver a completely different experience than one has when typing on today’s increasingly vestigial computer keyboards.
Fill in the blanks.
2010 @ the _________Public Library
2011 @ the ________Public Library
What does the library look like in "the most godforsaken place in Massachusetts"?
Open Mon-Thurs 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
South Branch
Open Mon., Wed., Sat., 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Closed Sat. during summer months
If not now, when?
2011 children's programming:
- 356 programs
- 10,477 attendance.
According to this PowerPoint presentation (latest municipal budget info available online)...
... 7 library employees, out of a total of 115 city employees.(FTE or actual not specified), were targeted for layoffs in this budget.
2011 library circulation: 143,518. (1.88 per capita vs. a state average of 12.)
Lawrence Mass. dubbed "Immigrant City" in the mid-19th century, has a rich, though long fading, manufacturing history, particular in the area of textiles.
New Branch Library Opens in Oklahoma City
Excerpt: As Oklahoma City continued its growth further toward the northwest, the need for a neighborhood library in northwest Oklahoma City has been in the hopes of the Metropolitan Library System for many years.
Ballou said the new library that opened May 22 has been a work in progress for a long time.
In the 1970s the library system first started discussing placing a library in the far northwest area of Oklahoma City, Ballou said.
“From all of the population figures we received in the past few years it was clear we were
underserving this part of Oklahoma City,” Ballou said.
Madison Alder Develops a Case of Nerves Over Library Director Candidates Meet-and-Greet
Grass Roots: Madison library director finalists to appear Wednesday; the public is sort of welcome. (Capital Times, 5/29/2012)
Excerpt: There’s a meet-and-greet scheduled Wednesday for the two final candidates to replace retired Barbara Dimick as the director of the Madison Public Library, but at least one board member would prefer that the general library-card-carrying public not be greatly involved in this particular meeting.
“Technically, it’s a public meeting, but I’m not encouraging the public to attend,” Ald. Larry Palm tells me. “If there are hundreds of people there, no one will be able to talk with anyone.”
What’s more, the integrity of the hiring process needs to be protected by preventing anyone from lobbing an inappropriate question at a candidate (think sexism and the like), jeopardizing its legality, says Palm, who is chairman of the library board's personnel committee.
The session at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the Olbrich Botanical Gardens Atrium, 3330 Atwood Ave., will start with an opportunity for “selected members of the library community” to meet and chat with job candidates Gregory Mickells and Joellen Risacher.
Related post:
Meet the two finalists for Madison Public Library Director. (5/23/2012)
Many Communities Create Child Safety Zones
Public-Place Laws Tighten Rein on Sex Offenders. (The New York Times, 5/29/2012)
Excerpt: From North Carolina to Washington State, communities have designated swimming pools, parks and school bus stops as “child safety zones,” off limits to some sex offenders. They are barred from libraries in half a dozen Massachusetts cities, and from all public facilities in tiny Huachuca City, Ariz.
“Child safety zones are being passed more and more at the city and county level,” said Elizabeth Jeglic, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It’s becoming more and more restrictive. They’re not only limiting where sex offenders can live, but they’re limiting their movement as well.”
Louisiana takes a statewide approach with its library ban for certain sex offenders.
House backs limit on sex offenders. (Baton Rouge Advocate, 5/25/2012)
Excerpt: The Louisiana House altered then approved legislation that would put public libraries off-limits to certain sex offenders. The House voted 63-23 for the measure, which returns to the Senate for concurrence in House changes.Senate Bill 753, sponsored by state Sen. Dale Erdey, R-Livingston, would make it unlawful for a person convicted of a sex offense when the victim is under age 13 to be physically present in or on public library property. The same offender would be banned from loitering within 1,000 feet of the library property.
Iowa passed a sex offender law in 2009 with the following public library stipulations:
A sex offender convicted of a sex offense against a minor shall:
- Not be present upon the real property of a public library without the written permission of the library administrator.
- Not loiter within three hundred feet of the real property boundary of a public library.
- Not be employed by or volunteer for a public library.
Sex offender policies in selected Iowa public libraries.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
A Volunteer-Run Library in Rural Ohio and a Proposal to Add Volunteers In San Jose
Whitehouse Community Library grows, fills a calling. Branch adding programs on 'shoestring'. (Toledo Blade, 5/29/2012)
Excerpt: Without any tax dollars funding its day-to-day operations, the library is staffed by 40 volunteers, and it relies on donations to keep its shelves stocked.
It's a community library -- one that has a small-town feel since the building at 10651 Waterville St. was several mobile school classrooms.
But at a time when many school librarians are being laid off and public library hours are getting cut, Whitehouse library trustees said they are proud their programs are growing this year.
"I'm very saddened by the status of libraries. … Libraries are not being funded in the way they need to be. That's crucial," said trustee DeAnna Bradley, a retired media specialist and librarian for Toledo, Anthony Wayne, and Springfield schools. "We're kind of filling a niche."
This summer, Whitehouse's library is adding a summer reading program for 13 to 17-year-olds.
The impetus for this project occurred in 1998 after the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library chose not to site a branch in Whitehouse.
A San Jose councilman wants to run with a variation of this idea.
San Jose Councilman Envisions Volunteer-Run Libraries. (San Jose Mercury News, 11/21/2011)
Excerpt: An idea to help out cash-strapped libraries in San Jose is being met with both praise and criticism after a city councilman suggested the libraries replace retiring city workers with volunteers.
Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio suggests that his plan could not only save the libraries money, but possibly allow them to be open more than the current four days each week. He said that using volunteers would not lead to any lay offs.
Here's Oliverio's approach to running a library.
Apparently, he's unaware of the planning and development required in providing self-service @ the library.
Libraries -- The San Jose Way. (Library Journal, 5/15/2009)
Excerpt: San José Public Library has developed an innovative service model that responds to our customers’ needs while keeping staffing costs down. Our model has four guiding principles:
- Customers first.
- Teach customers.
- Reinvent environments.
- Enable staff.
Unfortunately, the City of San Jose has been struggling financially during the past few years.
Related posts.
'Bookless' in San Jose is no cause for celebration. (2/21/2012)
Early look at gloom-and-doom scenario for San Jose's FY12 budget. (9/21/2011)
That was 2000, this is 2011. (7/12/2011)
Related posts.
'Bookless' in San Jose is no cause for celebration. (2/21/2012)
Early look at gloom-and-doom scenario for San Jose's FY12 budget. (9/21/2011)
That was 2000, this is 2011. (7/12/2011)
Library Ebook Circulation Skyrockets @ the Greendale Public Library and Throughout Wisconsin
Many Greendale Library Patrons Trade Pages for Screens. (Greendale Patch, 5/28/2012)
Excerpt: Greendale Public Library Director Gary Niebuhr said the library has featured the state’s program for e-book rentals since 2011. However, users have just started to utilize the virtual library desk, and the program’s popularity has skyrocketed.
Niebuhr said that in all of 2011 the library 1,737 e-books were checked out. In the first 2012 quarter the Greendale library has already circulated 1,006. Niebuhr said more than 4,000 e-books are expected to be checked out by the end of the year.
Now, nearly 60,000 electronic copies of books have been checked out at libraries across the county in less than a year, with an average of 7,500 to 8,000 books checked out monthly.
Across the state, the furious growth of e-book rentals is also evident. Sara Gold, a purchasing librarian with Wisconsin Library Services, oversees the digital borrowing program used by libraries across the 17 regions in the state. She said 2012 will be a record year.
“Already, by July 2012, we will have surpassed our electronic book circulation for the entire year in 2011 — even accounting for the holiday boom,” Gold said. “The problem we have is that the demand is far exceeding what we had anticipated, which is a good problem to have.”
Monday, May 28, 2012
The Budget News is Not Good in an Interview with Long Beach Public Library Director Glenda Williams
Tim Grobaty: Booking a few minutes with Long Beach Public Library's Glenda Williams. (Long Beach Press-Telegram, 5/27/2012)
Excerpt: Q: How is the library looking, financially, for the next fiscal year?
A: Not great. The preliminary budget is still in the City Manager's Office, then it goes to the mayor around July 1 and around August it goes to the City Council. We're looking at two options. If the fire and police departments participate in the budget cuts, we will have to trim about $1million from our budget. If they don't participate, we'll have to cut about $2million.
Q: So, are you looking at closures, reduction of hours, layoffs?
A: I'd guess that everything's on the table. You have to think of certain scenarios. We're still trying to wrap our minds around it. It will be serious but we will do the best we can for the citizens of Long Beach.
As Yogi said, it's deja vu all over again. (From 2008)
Sunday, May 27, 2012
"50 Shades of Grey" @ the Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library
Fifty Shades of Grey flies off Flower Memorial Library shelves, (Watertown Daily Times, 5/27/2012)
Excerpt: The novel “Fifty Shades of Grey” by E.L. James has barely touched the shelves at Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library since it was added to the catalogue in April.
According to library Director Barbara J. Wheeler, the book currently has 19 local holds, and she does not understand the hype behind it.
She said the novel is a part of a trilogy. The third book, which is owned by the library, is the one that has been the most popular — as well as the most criticized.
The North Country Library System owns a total of 18 copies; there are currently 83 holds on them. For fiction books, a library patron can normally check out a book for a month. For books on high demand, like “Fifty Shades of Grey,” patrons have only two weeks to read them.
Mrs. Wheeler has not read the book. If she were to be the 20th person to put it on hold at her library, she would have to wait about eight months to check it out.
Related posts:
No "Shades of Grey" @ Fort Bend County Libraries. (5/26/2012)
Brevard County Public Library reverses its decision on "50 Shades". (5/26/2012)
A Woman's Touch is Riding the "50 Shades" Wave. (5/26/2012)
Is there some wiggle room in your collection development policy? 5/24/2012)
Have you dusted off your policy on erotica? (5/22/2012)
Pulling "Shades" doesn't keep the noise out @ the Brevard County Public Library. (5/15/2012)
"We do not collect erotica @ Gwinnett County Public Library" (5/13/2012)
Will Fond du Lac residents now be clamoring for this books. (4/12/2012)
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