“In order to be really good as a librarian, everything counts towards your work, every play you go see, every concert you hear, every trip you take, everything you read, everything you know.” – Allen Smith, PhD
Akito Yoshikane recently wrote the article titled “Public Libraries for Profit” commenting on a developing trend to privatize public libraries around the country. Yoshikane explain that a number of counties around the country have been unsuccessful at finding funding sources to continue keeping public libraries open to the public. When town officials are faced with the option of offering no library services or privatizing them, some are optioned for the latter.
Library Systems & Services (LSSI) is the private company that is usually hired to privatize libraries. The Maryland based company which has been in business since 1981, offers services ranging from taking charge of a particular project to managing both staff and all daily activities. They work in libraries offering services to local communities, schools, colleges, corporations and even the federal government.
LSSI is also involved in helping the library and information science field by creating a couple of scholarships and awards. LSSI has established two scholarships, one aimed at part time students in the information science field at the University of Maryland, College Park, the second scholarship aim to encourage people who are interested in promoting automation in the library field. They have also established an award which recognizes innovative practices in library management in libraries who are par to of the Urban Library Council.
LSSI’s present in libraries has not always been welcome. Libraries tend to reflect the community they serve and private, for-profit, companies which buy material in bulk may not always be able to reflect this diversity. There is also a concern that public libraries which were previously under city government and who’s labor force was unionized, are now loosing this benefit because of privatization. The lost of unionization usually also comes with the loss of state pension benefits, and reductions in medical benefits. Some communities have also seen significant reduction in the hours the library is open to the public.
Some of the formally public libraries that are now under private management by LSSI include libraries in Dallas TX, Riverside CA, Finney County KS, and most recently the libraries in Jackson Country, OR.
In 1960 the Mirabal sisters were brutally murdered after a long struggle against Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The sisters grew up comfortably on the island, but once Trujillo rose to power the family lost everything, and this spurred the Mirabal to form a political group of opposition known as the “Agrupación política 14 de junio”; while working in this group the sisters became known as Las Mariposas (The Butterflies). Over the coming years they would be incarcerated, tortured. On November 15, 1960 the regime murdered three of the four sisters; the aftermath of this event created increase attention world wide for Trujillo’s rule, and in 1961 he too was assassinated.
The Mirabal’s story inspired the modern movement to stop violence against women. In 1981 the first “Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe”, which took place in Bogotá, declared the date of their death as the day to eliminate violence against women. Later, in 1999 through resolution 54/134, the United Nation’s General Assemble declared the day International Day to Stop Violence Against Women.
Amazon.com just launched a new electronic reader called Kindle. This new device is said to hold as many as 200 books and weights only 10.3 onces. Its screen seems to have addressed the common complaint with other e-readers, that of having a back lit screen; Kindle requires outside light to be used. In terms of reading with Kindle, allows the users to access a dictionary while reading and can scan other books for related information. Virtual pages can be marked for later reviewing, and Kindle will automatically save your place in the book.
Kindle is entirely wireless so users do not need the use of a PC to order and download books. Wireless access costs will be included in the tag price, but there are additional fees to access online newspapers and blog, as well as extra charges to access personal documents on the device.
On the positive side an instrument such as Kindle can allow us to carry a large amount of reading material with us at any time, and it gives us the possibility of renewing this collection from anywhere in the USA (The technology -EVDO- used for wireless connectivity is much more common in the USA than in other countries). In libraries we could pre-load these devices to check out several books to patrons at the same time. From an environmental perspective we can help save a few trees by accessing reading material in electronic form.
Still electronic books disconnect us in a way from the culture of books and reading. Many of us choose books by their covers, and are enamored with worn down books which have obviously been read my many people, two aspects that an electronic book reader doesn’t incorporate. Literature purist fear that a device such as Kindle will eventually incorporate a number of Web 2.0 features that will encourage users to “scan” information instead of truly being engaged with the book.
I think books are integral parts of so many people’s lives. I love carrying a book around in my purse, and how I eventually wear them down, and I’m sure that in some way books will always be around (I can’t imagine reproducing the experience of looking through a good coffee table book on an electronic device), but things are changing, and in a way I support whatever facilitates reading. Still at around $400.00 a piece I figure we are still a long way away from seeing everyone on the subway holding Kindles instead of books.
You can read more about Kindle from an article in the BBC. WBUR’s On Point had a show on Kindle this morning, you can access the podcast here.
11.28.07 - Last Thursday the BBC printed an article commenting on how high sales have been for Kindle. The devise sold out on the Amazon.com website soon after being released. The article continues to note that customers who have received their Kindle already, many give it a rating of only 2.5 out of 5. In general people are upset at having to pay for content that is freely available on the web.
02.03.08 - I was just reading a blog entry on Tinfoil Raccoon explaining that technically speaking libraries will be in violation of Kindle’s Terms of Use policy if they lend out the machine to patrons. You can read the full explanation here. The blog has a number of other entries on Kindle.
This weekend I attended the 31st. Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair. I heard about this event after a visit to the John Carter Brown Library and decided to check it out. I saw a number of fascinating book, not all as old as I expected. Some of the exhibitors had material that dated back hundreds and hundreds of years, as well as other book from the 20th century. Newer books were usually first editions and they were usually signed. Among these first editions I saw books by Garcia Marquez, Steven King, and John Steinbeck, among others. Some of the vendors had old maps, prints (including an original Chagall), poster, and I even saw an entire case of glass eyes that was for sale.
I also attended two lectures the first by Anne Bromer, titled Miniature Books: 4,000 of tiny treasures, and the second presentation was titled Japanese Illustrated Books, by Charles Vilnis. During the first presentation I learned about the practical use of miniature books (usually books smaller than 3 inches). We saw a copy of a miniature book version of the Emancipation Proclamation which Lincoln had printed and gave to soldiers to hand out throughout many southern states. I also heard of a collection of classics that were printed in miniature form which people who spend a lot of time on the road could easily take with. In general I was surprised to learn that miniature books were usually created to be read and used, instead of being only for decoration.
During the presentation on prints in Japanese books we saw an amazing selection of images that dated as far back as the 1600s and as recent as the mid 1900. The illustrations ranged from very simple, elegant images, to long scrolls that describes entire journeys.
Not too long ago OCLC rolled out a new OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) of sorts. This new tool known as WorldCat Local offers a three tiered display of cataloged search records, first from the local library, then the local consortia, and finally from the whole WorldCat. Including material continuously added to WorldCat.org, this new tool allows access to books, periodicals, individual articles, government reports, medical scholarship and educational material.
This three tiered approach will greatly increase the material that libraries can make available to their patrons. Now a patron can technically access holdings for the material they want, literally, from all participating libraries in the country. They can then easily request this material through interlibrary lending (ILL), usually for free.
For libraries this new tool will provide a personalized interface, it will allow for integration of WorldCat Local with their circulation records, and will permit inclusion of licensed full-text collections. Three major OPAC vendors (Innovative Interfaces, SirsiDynix and Ex Libris Voyager) are also being worked with to make WorldCat Local interoperable with their systems. Once this merger is achieved, the systems will allow for integration of services like ILL, and accessing certain online resources. In the future WorldCat Local hopes to also integrate a number of social networking services.
In an era where libraries and librarians grapple with new users who are more comfortable seeking information on Google than through an OPAC, and given that the traditional OPAC mainly retrieves books, a system like this one that can present a simple interface and that can aggregate information from so many different sources and in a variety of formats can really begin a trend of seamless and thorough searching.
The initial test runs included four universities, four public, two high school libraries, one state and one museum library. In the future libraries wanting to use WorldCat Local must have their holdings cataloged in WorldCat. The University of Washington was one of the institutions that first pilot-tested WorldCat Local, they have since made it their official OPAC. You can take a look at it through the library’s main page.
On November 13, 1985 Colombia suffered one of the biggest natural disasters in its history. The volcano at el nevado del Ruiz erupted and took with it the entire town of Armero. The aftermath of the eruption totaled about 25,000 deaths, over 20,000 injured and displaced the remaining survivors. To add injury to pain, the prior week, the country had lived through the attack of the palace of justice by the M-19. Sadly the death toll in Armero could have been prevented, as the volcano had started fuming the prior year, and a number of seismologist had predicted that it would erupt.
For those of us that were in Colombia the images of this tragedy, as well as the aftermath, including years of nightly public broadcasts of young children looking for their parents from whom they had been separated in the chaos of the disaster, will forever be engraved in our minds…
You can access Wikipedia’s Spanish language entry for the tragedy at Armero here, and the English entry here (they are different articles) . You can read the original report from the BBC here. The English entry at Wikipedia for the siege at the Palace of Justice is here. The English entry for the M-19 is here.
In a gesture of good faith, the Chilean government has returned close to 4,000 books that were plundered from the Peruvian National library back in 1881 during the War of the Pacific. Some of these books were written in French, Spanish, Greek and Latin, and date as far back as the 16th century. Some of the treasures returned include a hand written copy of “The History of Peru” by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, in 1617.
The return of these books is part of ongoing negotiations between the two countries which have had a number of problems over border disputes.
You can read more about this story from an article in the The International Herald Tribune, and from another article in The Santiago Times.
