Library News Round-Up – 27 February 2009
Are there stories about or concerning libraries that you think are worth sharing? Please leave us a comment and provide a link so we can check it out! Here are a few of the stories I ran across in the past few weeks that I felt were worth noting.
Books and E-Books
As I imagine most folks know by now, the Kindle 2 was announced, and first shipments of the device began this month. While there are other e-readers out there in the world, the Kindle certainly seems to hog the spotlight. Library application of e-readers is not, I think, very widespread. I'm sure there are, however, some intrepid libraries out there using e-readers of various kinds for numerous purposes. Anybody checking them out to patrons yet? For my money, I have to agree with xckd (see image above): a portable e-Hitchhiker's Guide sounds pretty neat.
Perhaps the biggest controversy of late regarding the K2 is it's text-to-speech powers, which the NY Times recently summarized in an op-ed they've dubbed The Kindle Swindle. Mainly it sounds like the piece is bad-mouthing the Author's Guild, but maybe I'm misreading.
In related e-books news, Northwest Missouri State College is moving towards the bookless library or, at least, the text-bookless library. All students get a laptop the first day they arrive on campus, in an attempt to be "in tune with the way students learn in the age of Wikipedia and YouTube." A large part of the effort is also cost-saving, where e-textbooks cost about half as much as their printed counterparts.
The Denver Post has a story about a confirmed book-buyer who goes cold turkey (from buying books) for a year. His solution? The library, of course!
ALA published their 2009 list of notable books. Which means, of course ... I should really start reading more.
Libraries and Librarians
If you missed our post on February 9th about Washington libraries being appreciated in hard times, you owe it to yourself to go check it out. It's not often that libraries get this much positive coverage in the news (though it should be), and it's a nice change of pace.
What will the library of the future look like? The LA Times posits that the future may be in digitization projects, but that these, too, have their issues.
Inside Higher Ed has a similar, if much more scholarly article, called The Library Web Site of the Future. Steven Bell discusses the relationship between faculty and their libraries' electronic resources. Librarians in academic libraries determined that the library web site's role as information gateway was very important, but is that how they are being used?
The Nebraska Library Commission post a video of some staff setting up and playing Rock Band and DDR in preparation for some upcoming gaming workshops. This was over a year, ago, mind. A year later, some Nebraska taxpayer sees the video, gets into a huff, and calls the State Auditor. Now the poor NLC is caught in a firestorm of news coverage, all because they wanted to provide video game programs in their public libraries.
Most public libraries have dabbled in the use of video games in their libraries. They can draw in new users, engage interest in the library, and hey, they're just kinda fun to have around. But are games art? The Washington Post thinks that some of them may be. (Not library-related, per se, but interesting all the same.)
Internet and Technology
Some MIT students developed a wearable computing system that "turns any surface into an interactive display screen." Wired has the story, with neat videos. The NY Times explores the "deep web", the database-driven underworld of internet information that surface-skimming web crawlers have difficulty indexing. Sure, Google has over 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) web sites indexed ... but you might consider some other search engines if you want to get at deeper content. Google now has a Twitter account. PC World posits that this may be the first step in Google's acquisition of the popular micro-blogging service. Their first tweet? "I’m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010." Which means, of course, "I'm feeling lucky."(html)
Secretary of State
Steve Hobbs
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