On Google's Monetization of Libraries

By Rory Litwin

Google's announcement Monday (1) of plans to digitize millions of books in
the collections of the University of Michigan, Harvard, Stanford, NYPL and
Oxford and to make them accessible through that ultra-simple search box is
causing a new outbreak of Google-fever, for which the cure is to remember
some of the principles of librarianship.

Already, Lynn Neary on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" (Dec. 15th) has framed
any potential criticism of this development as "sentimental" attachment to
brick-and-mortar libraries, but it is not sentimentality that sees the
dark side of this development. (2) It is a rational concern for the
preservation of a number of the attributes of libraries that give them
their inestimable value in a society that aspires to democracy and to the
full development of human potential. Google's back-room deal with these
universities (which was not worked out in cooperation with the library
community though it has implications for libraries as an institution)
carries with it a host of problems about which librarians should think
carefully before cheering for this corporate giant in its grand plan to
assimilate the world's cultural heritage.

Monetization

Google co-founder Larry Page is cited in an article that appeared in
Tuesday's Information World Review as being a "firm believer in academic
libraries being able to 'monetise' the information they hold." (3) Paul
Courant, provost at the University of Michigan, is quoted in the Chronicle
of Higher Education as saying the project is worth "hundreds of millions"
of dollars to his University alone. (4) Google obviously considers that
kind of money to be a good investment, which means they expect many
hundreds of millions in revenue from these collections, through
advertising in the near term and probably other means in the longer term.
Already the Google Print (TM) service, of which this deal is to be a part,
provides links to booksellers as well as to libraries. Though they have
not announced plans to offer the full text of copyrighted materials on a
pay-per-view basis, with fees turned over to copyright owners, it is a
technical possibility with the natural force of an economic vacuum in the
corporate context. Logically it would seem to be only a matter of time
before this mode of access becomes a reality, providing a channel for
bypassing both public-interest information policies and the librarian's
professional service. The fact that Google is putting libraries "on page
A1 above the fold" (in the front page NY Times article), as Barbara Fister
put it in an email to COLLIB-L, is not a victory for libraries if the real
meaning of this development is simply the transfer of all of this
information out of our humanistic institution and into the marketplace.
The weighty, loveable, historic notion of "The Library" will doubtless be
prominent in Google's marketing of its great reservoir of text, but we
would be fooled to think it means that the values indicated by that word
(equity of access, collective ownership, privacy, organization,
bibliography, and librarianship as a profession) were somehow in play in
Google's collection. (Note how Google is already attempting to pander to
"sentimental" librarians: "Even before we started Google, we dreamed of
making the incredible breadth of information that librarians so lovingly
organize searchable online," Larry Page is quoted as saying in Google's
Dec. 14 press release. By implication, our "lovingness" only needs their
technology to be made useful, and our "loving organization" of those works
is ultimately unneeded.)

To spell out the obvious, what this development means is the
commercialization of the greatest research libraries in the world with a
handshake, suddenly and epochally (and not because of technological
inevitability - there are other ways that the digitization of these
collections could be handled). The commercialization of libraries has
implications both for the institution's democratic character and for the
quality of people's research. As Mark Rosenzweig wrote in an email
message to multiple lists on Wednesday,

"There is something mind-boggling about the ability of a single,
for-profit company being able to shape the future of a whole sphere
of life. Even more so when it enlists the cooperation of the public
stewards of that sphere in what amounts to a relinquishment of key
elements of responsibility to a unabashedly profit-driven
mega-corporation."

I want to examine a more closely the implications of the Googlization of
research libraries, with just the beginnings of the needed attention to
the loss of privacy, the introduction of commercial bias, questions about
democratization and equity of access, the issues of disintermediation, the
decontextualization of knowledge, and the closing of the information
commons.

Privacy

The privacy of library users in their reading choices has long been held
sacred in the library world. (5) In this world, the privacy of individual
citizens is understood as a precondition for their autonomous development
and their freedom of thought. This is in contrast to the corporate world,
where information about individuals as consumers - demographic
information, interests, identities, choices - is a commodity that is
bought and sold for the purpose of gaining an advantage in the great game
of selling you more stuff (6). Individuals - treated as citizens by
libraries and as consumers by the corporate world - have their privacy at
stake in Google's conquest of the information commons. (7) As Peter
McDonald pointed out in an email to the Progressive Librarians Guild and
Social Responsibilities Round Table listservs on Tuesday, Google collects
a shocking amount of personal information as it tracks users' searches
over time (see Google-watch.org for details (8)). This personal
information can be correlated with individual identities with the
cooperation of ISP's or with commercial sites that share data. At
present, this identifying information isn't shared with Google, but the
potential and the motive are both there, and the public mood is complacent
compliant. Additionally, if Google itself decides to enter the business
of selling access to these works, it will have direct access to users'
identifying information which it would undoubtedly connect to collected
information on search patterns. While libraries and library vendors do a
certain amount of usage-tracking for statistical purposes themselves, the
strong privacy ethic in libraries militates against the misuse of this
information. For example, most public libraries have adopted a policy of
destroying personal information once it is no longer absolutely needed,
making it unavailable to intelligence agencies whose ability to demand it
has been bolstered by the USA PATRIOT Act. (9) If people are using Google
to search or access these millions of works, they may naturally expect
their privacy as readers and citizens to be respected just as it would be
in any library, when in actuality they are being treated as consumers and
data sources for the purpose of marketing and with the possibility of
political repression. When the ultimate of aim of the disposition of
these works shifts from that of enlightenment to that of making money,
privacy is one major value that is lost. The value of our privacy is not
a matter of mere "sentimentality" but is ultimately a protection of our
freedom.

The bias introduced by commercialism

Some say, "What's wrong with advertisements? The business of America is
business, and companies have a right to promote their products. How else
would we find out about them?" We certainly agree, as a society, that
there is a large (apparently ever growing) place for advertisements in our
lives. But the field of research, scholarship and education has mostly
been off-limits to commercialism, for a simple reason. The aim of
research, scholarship and education is truth, and people sense correctly
that commercial interests have the potential to distort the discovery and
the spread of truth. To a large extent they already do, by funding
"friendly" researchers, suppressing research they don't like (10), by
directly spreading disinformation via the public relations industry (11),
by influencing journalism with advertising dollars (12), and by
influencing people directly with dishonest advertising. But however
compromised it may be, in the world of scholarship and education there is
a genuine culture of intellectual honesty that stems from the communal
project of seeking and spreading truth for the common good. You do not
see advertisements for particular historic works of literature in research
libraries, or for particular publishing companies. When a work appears in
a bibliography, it is there because of the independent judgment of a
scholar or a librarian as to the significance and the relevance of that
work; it is not there because somebody is trying to sell it and make money
from it. Libraries are full of "pointers" to information, in the form of
online catalogs, indexes, large and small bibliographies in books and
articles, web-based pathfinders and the personal interactions of
librarians and researchers. These "pointers" have the value that they do
in part because of the independent judgment behind them and the ability of
the professional to match the reader to the right book for them. When a
commercial element is added, the "right book" becomes "the book I want to
sell." The commercial interest is representing only itself while the
unbiased professional is under no pressure to favor any particular vendor
or publisher, and is therefore free to attend to the user's personal quest
for truth and their efforts to contribute to society's shared store of
knowledge. Truth-seekers outside of the context of educational
institutions have an equal interest in unbiased information undistorted by
commercial interests, but in the wider world they tend to be more
vulnerable to that distortion.

Google Print (TM), even in its introductory phase, plays a major role in
introducing advertising into the field of education, scholarship and
research, all the more so the more it attempts to enter the higher
education "market." At the present time Google claims not to allow
commercial interests to distort its search results (though many people,
noting the prominence of commercial clutter in their search results, are
skeptical of this). But Google's status as a private near-monopoly (in
certain respects) means that its reliably "clean" search results cannot be
guaranteed by any public policies and could be transformed into pure
e-commerce at any time. (If we find this alarming, I should point out, it
is not because of "sentimentality" but simply because of our strong
values. We should demand that these values be respected.)

Democratization?

Google is claiming that their digitization project promises to democratize
access to these collections of millions of works. I have to admit that
research libraries do not really represent paragons of democracy and are
not readily accessible to most people, and not only because of geographic
barriers. I also have to admit that to the extent that a person will be
able to freely download an out-of-copyright work that Google has scanned,
access to that particular work has been democratized, and I forgive even
librarians' excitement about this development. However, there is a deeper
sense in which Google's claim to represent the democratization of
information that is presently "locked up" in libraries is a reversal of
the truth, and that reversal is dependent upon what is ultimately an odd
sense of the meaning of democracy.

When these collections are digitized and made available through that simple
search box on the web, something very strange begins to happen. They
begin to take on the character of "stuff" in the same way that everything
else we download and view in web browsers has the character of
"stuff" (similarly to the way that money is "stuff"). There is a bleeding
of contexts; with no physical separation and everything on a flat plane,
there is little contextual separation between our browsing of personals
ads, our online banking, our travel reservations, our eBay, our comics,
our news and our Spinoza. All of these activities and contexts become
"democratized" in a certain sense, but not the sense we mean when we talk
about trying to build a democratic society. Web pages of 7000 words are
called "books" and look identical, or even more impressive, than true
online repositories of literature. The information carried by graphic
design has increasing importance, and may not bear any relation to truth.
The character of everything on the web becomes conditioned by the
character of the web itself, and the character of the web is strongly
determined by its overall consumer orientation and its relation to the
experience of shopping - seeing, choosing, and consuming. As the contents
of research libraries becomes "web content," the mode of the use of these
materials will be transformed according to the mode of use of the web
medium, which sees us skimming, jumping from point to point, impatient.
critical by reflex rather than by reflection, superficial and
narcissistic. In other words, the web medium tends to "dumb down" the use
of what is in it (a phenomenon that may be connected to the relationship
to the medium of television). Consumer society has indeed interpreted
democracy as something we increase as we dumb down mass media
communication and even the educational process in general. So while freer
access to out-of-copyright works is undeniably a democratic thing, we
should also pay attention to the underpinnings of that mode of access and
ask ourselves certain questions: What kind of use of these works is the
web medium itself is likely to encourage, that is, what does the
commercial web do to the nature of research and scholarship? And what
does that do to the character of our democracy? And how will these works
become connected, via a few short hyperlinks, to the distorting influence
of e-commerce?

Here is a less abstract question about how truly democratizing this project
will be: How long will it take before the copyright-protected works in
these collections are available on a pay-per-download basis, turning the
equity-of-access principle of libraries, which is what gives libraries
their essential democratic character, into the principle of access for
those who can afford it? Contrary to free-marketeers, who see the market
as the truest expression of democracy, there is a contradiction inherent
between the needs of democracy and the prerogatives of the market. The
notion of democracy assumes a rational polity, assumes that the
preconditions for an intelligent, thoughtful society exist, while the
market tends to nurture what is most stupid in people, preferring to fool
them rather than to help build independent minds. Transferring these
millions of works from research libraries, even ones at ivory-tower
institutions, into a commercial enterprise such as Google, which will make
money off of them in any way it can, is superficially democratizing but
deeply contrary to democracy's need for information in the public sphere,
as useful as it might be to the more fortunate among us who have the
ability to make use of it.

Disintermediation and decontextualization

Disintermediation, the substitution of "software solutions" for
professional services, has affected most areas of economic activity since
the start of the computer revolution, in librarianship no less than in any
other field. Information seekers often choose the convenience of the
internet over consultation with an information professional, or even the
consultation of a bibliography or an index. The stable exception, up to
this point, has been in the area of serious research of the kind that
requires the use of highly specialized writings, often including those
very old works. To access those materials, and to find them in their
proper context, a researcher needs to use a library and some of the many
research aids that are produced by librarians and scholars. Google's plan
will put those works in a giant bucket (so democratizingly) and enable you
to pull them out with keywords, kind of like catching fish with a net. So
much of this material requires expert knowledge even to comprehend, let
alone situate in its proper context, that disintermediated access can in
some cases be worse than no access at all.

At this point I should distinguish between disintermediation in general and
its specific manifestation in the Google search box. It is possible to
build quite a lot of knowledge into a search interace to an information
resource. Access to a thesaurus of the controlled vocabulary used by an
index can be connected to the search. Reverse-citation information can be
built into the display of search results, with linking provided. Multiple
search fields can take advantage of extensive cataloging. Even when all
of this work is done, the results for the searcher are dependent on her
own knowledge level and skill at searching, and many users go away
frustrated or go away happy with material that they don't realize is of
poor quality or not as relevant as it could be. This is the major problem
librarians face with the tools offered over the web by their own
institutions.

With the Google interface the problems created by disintermediation reach a
new level, because years and years of careful organization of the
materials in question will be dissolved in favor of Google's relevance
ranking system, which treats every web page and every book in Google Print
(TM) outside of its original context, funneling them all through a single
keyword search. (That librarians may have done that organizational work
"lovingly," as Larry Page put it, is irrelevant and a trivializing thing
to say, if it could even be known. More to the point is that this
organizational work was done with the aim of providing access in a
meaningful way.)

There is no accommodation, in the Google world, for the myriad scholarly as
well as popular jargon and dialects even within single subject areas,
which is especially significant when works spanning hundreds of years are
in the mix, a situation that leads to a loss of recall as searches based
on idiosyncratic keywords miss relevant works that use other terms, and a
loss of relevance as works are picked up that use the same keywords in
totally different ways. This is part of the reason that subject
cataloging and indexing is useful and worth the time of professional
catalogers and indexers.

In the Google world, there is no real intelligence determining what
documents (or books) are going to be the most helpful to an information
seeker, according to their intellectual problem and their knowledge
background. Making that determination is not a simple thing; it requires
knowledge of intellectual disciplines, an ability to understand people
well, and a creative mind. Keyword searches can be useful in certain
contexts, but a single keyword search for what is offered as a "whole
universe" is no substitute for a reference librarian, no matter how
sophisticated the search engine. (To say that librarians are "the most
effective search engines yet invented," as John's Hopkins University
President William Brody wrote recently (13) is quite demeaning to
librarians, for whom search engines are only one brainless tool in a large
tool set.) This is one of the reasons libraries employ professional
reference librarians to help people with their information needs.

The organization of information in a library, through its catalogs,
indexes, and numerous bibliographical sources, is not something to be
regarded as having mainly a sentimental value. It is incredibly
practical. The "bucket effect" of dumping millions of texts into a
database searchable only by keywords, no matter how sophisticated the
search engine, represents a major loss of value if access to those works
via Google is compared to access through a library.

I am not forgetting that these research libraries will retain ownership of
the original works, and will also own digital copies of the works that
they will be able to share in any way that they like, which I concede will
be a major benefit of the deal. Realistically, however, as Marc Meola
pointed out on COLLIB-L on Wednesday, information seekers will probably
just "Google it," trusting an algorithm and thinking they are searching
the universe, even more than they do already.

Conclusion

A member of the livejournal community "libraries" posted a link to the New
York Times article Tuesday, commenting, "We're not being taken over, we're
just becoming the greatest information conglomerate of all time." (14)
This illustrates the confusion of so many internet librarians who identify
with "the Web." "The Web" is not us; it is a medium with its own effects.
And Google is not us. Google is not staffed by librarians, and does not
operate according to policies that flow out of long traditions of library
practice guaranteeing privacy, equity of access, collective ownership of
information, information in context, and personal service. This project,
as Larry Page has already put it, is about monetizing the holdings of
research libraries. It is about commercializing library collections that
it has taken centuries to build. It may be the "greatest information
conglomerate of all time," but it is not us. We are nowhere in it; we do
not control it or even influence it. We may be invited to imagine that it
is "us," that it is "a library" or even that it is "Library," and we may
be flattered by the attention, but we should take care to remember what
librarianship means in contradistinction to commercialized information, to
remember the difference between individuals-as-citizens and
individuals-as-consumers and to remember that as librarians we are public
stewards of the information commons and have an obligation to preserve and
protect it. And, to say it one last time, we must not let anyone write
off these concerns as "sentimental." They are not; what they are is
simply values-driven.

Now, I suspect that there is no stopping this (though the project is likely
to be a great deal more difficult than Google anticipates), and I know that
there is no hope of nationalizing Google as a public monopoly, and no hope
of raising comparable public funds for a similarly massive public
digitization project, at least not the way things are going right now.
I also know that in ten years time I will most likely be making good use
of some of the material in Google Print (TM); I don't think I will boycott
it. But I hope that by articulating these problems (most of which relate
more to general trends than to Google specifically) I can help to advance a
critical perspective that will allow us to at least see clearly and to be
of use when crucial questions arise where the public interest is at stake.

References

*

Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:35:57 -0500
From: Paul Bramscher
Subject: Re: [A-librarians] Google digitization
To: Anarchist and Radical Librarians

Message-ID: <469cc5bd.8070702@comcast.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

I work at the University of Minnesota Libraries, which was one of the
CIC institutions to sign on to the Googlization. I wrote a blog entry
about it here:
http://paulbramscher.blogspot.com/2007/06/google-cic-library-agreement.html

The main points I want to emphasis in the blog entry:

1) The decision was made in a complete vacuum at my institution -- even
the people involved in the decision weren't named. So, given the lack
of professional/intellectual/technical/technological/scholarly input in
the handover to Google, we're left to conclude that this was strictly
top-down autocratic deal-making. And since the process was autocratic,
we might expect the results to produce more of the same. The lack of
transparency is pretty creepy -- it was totally black-box.

2) The Google digitization is little more than another example of the
great sell-off of the public domain to the private sector, and the sell
off of public service/occupations as well. You'll note that many of the
currently scanned Google books have fingers, even whole fists, etc. in
some of the images. It appears to be a highly manual process, they even
tried to white-out some of the thumbs. I've calculated that they must
have ~100-200 employees working around the clock.

3) The contract has a double indemnification clause in it, and the
libraries don't even know the details of how the scanning works.

4) Also, Google gets to keep books on the near-horizon of public domain
in escrow indefinitely.

So, for all we know, the scanning of CIC materials is done in an Asian
sweatshop.

So it's pretty interesting when you think about it. We've got over a
century of public libraries, and perhaps 2 centuries of academic
libraries in public or at least scholarly curatorial domain. Instead of
hiring a team of student workers, clerical workers, etc. they've
outsourced the job to god-knows-where, and transferred the
role/history/soul of libraries to the private sector.

I'm sure glad my degree was in CSci and not library science -- at the
rate top library managers are selling out the institution as even a
concept, I doubt there will be much left in 10 years.

Paul Bramscher
Web Applications Developer
Digital Library Development Lab
University of Minnesota Libraries

A Long Look @ Service Oriented Library Systems

In my three (1 2 3) SOLS posts I have provided a basic introduction to SOA and how it can be applied to the development of the next generation of library systems.

Historically, library information systems solutions have been built (almost) exclusively by vendors. While some libraries do build their own systems or use open source solutions, the large majority still rely upon vendors. Most of our challenges in implementing SOA are the direct result of this decision.

Commercial software developers rarely develop new products until they find a critical mass of users since they need to recoup development costs and make a profit at the same time in order to survive. The relatively limited size of the library system market makes it a difficult one for new vendors to enter. This means libraries have few choices when choosing software solutions and few libraries will switch once a significant investment in licensing, maintaining, and training support. When a library becomes so dependent on a vendor for products and services and cannot move to another vendor without substantial costs, whether real or perceived.

The first challenge to adopting SOA is that library systems vendors have created an effective paradigm that many libraries cannot afford to break away from. The vendors of key library systems understand the lock in phenomenon and libraries let them get away with it.

Many library vendors, if not most, build their solutions upon proprietary architectures. Some vendors are beginning to build their systems around some of the principles of SOA. Still, the core of what makes SOA work - the API - remains one of their their most tightly guarded core intellectual properties and revenue streams. The vendors place a death grip on those very APIs which would allow libraries to create SOLS using services provided by disparate systems.

The lack of compatibility between different library systems intentionally or unintentionally forces a customer to continue to use products and services from a particular vendor. Developers may design their products so that replacement parts or add-on enhancements must be purchased from the same manufacturer, rather than from a third party. Developers may also build in incompatibility between versions of their systems to force customers to upgrade.

The second challenge to adopting SOA is that the lack of compatibility and the API licensing fees charged to developers to create compatible products - required in SOA - creates a barrier for new vendors trying to enter the market for a particular library system. If the costs of entry or compatibility are great enough an effective monopoly can be maintained.

Libraries have built entire resource sharing networks around single vendor solutions. This results in a de facto standards. De facto library system standards are those which have been accepted for practical purposes by a significant proportion of the marketplace. What comes to mind is a significant library Internet document delivery network based on a product who's name is now a verb.

The third challenge to adopting SOA is that for work flow or legacy reasons we continue to support single vendor supplier solutions. In doing so, we create an environment where library products do not have to keep up with current technology needs, service support that does not meet expectations, and systems that will not allow for the adoption of SOA.

When one steps back and looks at it, we have nobody to blame for outdated library information systems or our inability to more readily adopt SOA except for ourselves. We keep licensing these products at a time when the number alternative approaches available to libraries has never been greater.

In the last posting in these services (no. 5) I will provide some closing remarks and observations.

CONTENTS:

Part One: Introduction

Part Two: What We Have Today

Part Three: Where Are We Heading?

Birth of a Colbert Nation

...
"Actually, I'd buy it first. And then I'd read it. No libraries, okay? Libraries are for cowards. No free rides. The book is for heroes, and the heroes are the people who buy the book. Don't lend the book."
....

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers

By KARA JESELLA

ON a Sunday night last month at Daddy’s, a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, more than a dozen people in their 20s and 30s gathered at a professional soiree, drinking frozen margaritas and nibbling store-bought cookies. With their thrift-store inspired clothes and abundant tattoos, they looked as if they could be filmmakers, Web designers, coffee shop purveyors or artists.

When talk turned to a dance party the group had recently given at a nearby restaurant, their profession became clearer.

“Did you try the special drinks?” Sarah Gentile, 29, asked Jennifer Yao, 31, referring to the colorfully named cocktails.

“I got the Joy of Sex,” Ms. Yao replied. “I thought for sure it was French Women Don’t Get Fat.”

Ms. Yao could be forgiven for being confused: the drink was numbered and the guests had to guess the name. “613.96 C,” said Ms. Yao, cryptically, then apologized: “Sorry if I talk in Dewey.”

That would be the Dewey Decimal System. The groups’ members were librarians. Or, in some cases, guybrarians.

“He hates being called that,” said Sarah Murphy, one of the evening’s organizers and a founder of the Desk Set, a social group for librarians and library students.

Ms. Murphy was speaking of Jeff Buckley, a reference librarian at a law firm, who had a tattoo of the logo from the Federal Depository Library Program peeking out of his black T-shirt sleeve.

Librarians? Aren’t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons — the ultimate humorless shushers?

Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging — the kind that, according to the Web site Librarian Avengers, is “looking to put the ‘hep cat’ in cataloguing.”

When the cult film “Party Girl” appeared in 1995, with Parker Posey as a night life impresario who finds happiness in the stacks, the idea that a librarian could be cool was a joke.

Now, there is a public librarian who writes dispatches for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, a favored magazine of the young literati. “Unshelved,” a comic about librarians — yes, there is a comic about librarians — features a hipster librarian character. And, in real life, there are an increasing number of librarians who are notable not just for their pink-streaked hair but also for their passion for pop culture, activism and technology.

“We’re not the typical librarians anymore,” said Rick Block, an adjunct professor at the Long Island University Palmer School and at the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science, both graduate schools for librarians, in New York City.

“When I was in library school in the early ’80s, the students weren’t as interesting,” Mr. Block said.

Since then, however, library organizations have been trying to recruit a more diverse group of students and to mentor younger members of the profession.

“I think we’re getting more progressive and hipper,” said Carrie Ansell, a 28-year-old law librarian in Washington.

In the last few years, articles have decried the graying of the profession, noting a large percentage of librarians that would soon be retiring and a seemingly insurmountable demand for replacements. But worries about a mass exodus appear to have been unfounded.

Michele Besant, the librarian at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the Association of Library and Information Science statistics show a steady increase in library information science enrollments over the last 10 years. Further, at hers and other schools there is a trend for students to be entering masters programs at a younger age.

The myth prevails that librarians are becoming obsolete. “There’s Google, no one needs us,” Ms. Gentile said, mockingly, over a drink at Daddy’s.

Still, these are high-tech times. Why are people getting into this profession when libraries seem as retro as the granny glasses so many of the members of the Desk Set wear?

“Because it’s cool,” said Ms. Gentile, who works at the Brooklyn Museum.

Ms. Murphy, 29, thinks so, too. An actress who had long considered library school, Ms. Murphy finally decided to sign up after meeting several librarians — in bars.

“People I, going in, would never have expected were from the library field,” she said. “Smart, well-read, interesting, funny people, who seemed to be happy with their jobs.”

Maria Falgoust, 31, is also a founder of Desk Set, which took its name from the 1957 Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy romantic comedy. A student who works part time at the library at Saint Ann’s School, she was inspired to become a librarian by a friend, a public librarian who works with teenagers and goes to rock shows regularly.

Since matriculating to Palmer, Ms. Falgoust has met plenty of other like-minded librarians at places such as Brooklyn Label, a restaurant, and at Punk Rope, an exercise class. “They’re everywhere you go,” she said.

Especially in Greenpoint, where Ms. Murphy and Ms. Falgoust live about 10 blocks from each other and where there are, Ms. Falgoust said, about 13 other librarians in the neighborhood.

How did such a nerdy profession become cool — aside from the fact that a certain amount of nerdiness is now cool? Many young librarians and library professors said that the work is no longer just about books but also about organizing and connecting people with information, including music and movies.

And though many librarians say that they, like nurses or priests, are called to the profession, they also say the job is stable, intellectually stimulating and can have reasonable hours — perfect for creative types who want to pursue their passions outside of work and don’t want to finance their pursuits by waiting tables. (The median salary for librarians was about $51,000 in 2006, according to the American Library Association-Allied Professional Organization.)

“I wanted to do something different, something maybe more meaningful,” said Carrie Klein, 36, who used to be a publicist for a record label and for bands such as Radiohead and the Foo Fighters, but is now starting a new job in the library at Entertainment Weekly.

Michelle Campbell, 26, a librarian in Washington, said that librarianship is a haven for left-wing social engagement, which is particularly appealing to the young librarians she knows. “Especially those of us who graduated around the same time as the Patriot Act,” Ms. Campbell said. “We see what happens when information is restricted.”

Ms. Campbell added that she became a librarian because it “combined a geeky intellectualism” with information technology skills and social activism.

Jessamyn West, 38, an editor of “Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out” a book that promotes social responsibility in librarianship, and the librarian behind the Web site librarian.net (its tagline is “putting the rarin’ back in librarian since 1999”) agreed that many new librarians are attracted to what they call the “Library 2.0” phenomenon. “It’s become a techie profession,” she said.

In a typical day, Ms. West might send instant and e-mail messages to patrons, many of who do their research online rather than in the library. She might also check Twitter, MySpace and other social networking sites, post to her various blogs and keep current through MetaFilter and RSS feeds. Some librarians also create Wikis or podcasts.

At the American Librarian Association’s annual conference last month in Washington, there were display tables of graphic novels, manga and comic books. In addition to a panel called “No Shushing Required,” there were sessions on social networking and zines and one called “Future Friends: Marketing Reference and User Services to Generation X.”

On a Saturday, after a day of panels, a group of librarians relaxed and danced at Selam Restaurant. Sarah Mercure nursed a blueberry vodka and cranberry juice and talked about deciding on her career after hearing a librarian who curated a zine collection speak. Pete Welsch, a D.J., spun records and talked about how his interest in social activism, film and music led him to library school.

But some librarians have found the job can be at odds with their outside cultural interests.

“I went to see a band a few weeks ago with old co-workers and turned to one and said ‘Is it just me or is this really, really loud?’ ” said Ms. Klein, the former publicist. Her friend, she said, “laughed and said, ‘You have librarian ears now.’ ”

Rosseau Library accepts books and beer bottle returns

ROSSEAU

Area residents can now take empty beer, wine and liquor bottles to the Rosseau Library.

The project gives Rosseau-area residents a place this summer to take their empties – not currently available in the village – and helps the library raise money by returning the bottles for deposit.

Although taking a liquor bottle to the neighbourhood library seems contradictory, library board and Friends of the Library member Fred Neal said it's another service the library can perform for the community.

Also, the initiative acts as a fundraiser and a conduit to showcase the library and its services to area residents, said library officials.

"Some people might find out there's a whole world to explore and (just) hadn't stopped in before," said library board member Jack Hepworth.

Library access

He said that those dropping off the beer, wine and liquor bottles could make suggestions of resources they'd like to have access to at the library.

Library staff member Kelly Collard came up with the idea recently and the library board approved it last week.

"You know why I thought it would be great, because we're kitty-corner to the liquor store," said Ms Collard.

The first bottle collection day was slated for June 30, during the village garage sale, with subsequent collections on Fridays between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. during the Uptown Market, while the library sells used books on the front yard of the Memorial Hall.

Also, Ms Collard said, representatives may go out and pick up bottles from residents, even from island homes.

With a case of 24 beer fetching a $2.40 return, Ms Collard said she expects to raise at least $24 each Friday this summer.

"That's a couple hundred dollars and I think that's a really low estimate," she said.

Libraries go digital to serve patrons at home

By Kaitlin Dirrig | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Card-holders at thousands of libraries nationwide are borrowing books, movies, audio books and music for free 24-7 without leaving home. And they never pay late fees.

The secret is that their libraries subscribe to new digital-media collections from which patrons download materials to their home computers. All they need to access the material is free software that their library provides.

What's available varies from hundreds to thousands of titles, depending on how many a library has purchased from its digital media-collection company. The two leaders, which are wooing librarians nationwide for their business, are OverDrive, based in Cleveland, and MyLibraryDV, based in Prince Frederick, Md.

The systems enable libraries to expand their offerings - and their timeliness - without having to store the titles physically or hire more staff. In addition, librarians hope that digital home borrowing will attract young computer-savvy patrons who rarely come through their doors.

"Our customer-service model is changing," said Glenna Rhodes, electronic resource librarian at the Boise (Idaho) Public Library. "We can no longer be a brick building. To support the new technological generation, we have to go where they are."

As Ruth Lednicer, the director of marketing at the Chicago Public Library, put it, "We have 79 physical locations but refer to our Web site as our 80th branch."

OverDrive offers more than 100,000 titles, including Oprah's Book Club selections and books from The New York Times' lists of bestsellers. MyLibraryDV, which is just getting under way, promises 1,500 feature movies - foreign and domestic - plus TV series such as "Antiques Roadshow" and "Rick Steves' Europe."

In most cases, an unlimited number of borrowers can check out titles simultaneously.

Picking titles is as easy as online shopping; patrons click "add to cart" to borrow an item.

A program that piggybacks on downloaded offerings erases them from the borrower's home computer after seven to 14 days, depending on the library's policy.

The cost to libraries depends on the number of digital titles it acquires and the number of potential borrowers.

The State Library of Kansas, an OverDrive subscriber, made 3,463 titles - including 2,442 audio books - available to any resident of the state in 2006, the first year of its program. Giving the state's 1.5 million residents access to the system costs $25,000 a year. Kansas also paid a onetime cost of $10 to $100 per title. That cost the state $160,000 more.

It's been a hit, said Eric Gustafson, the state library's technical consultant.

"We have gotten a lot of positive buzz," he said. "Users really enjoy having access to audio books they can download from anywhere in the state at any time."

Borrower numbers reflect the success. "Most libraries are happy if a book circulates five times," said Patti Butcher, the director of statewide resource-sharing for the Kansas system. "Our digital titles have been checked out an average of 11 times over the past year."

In the month of June, she reported, 1,285 people used the service, including 481 first-timers. Downloads totaled 4,225 titles.

Many of the new borrowers live far from libraries, Butcher suspects. "We believe these services increase library use in rural areas because people can easily borrow from home."

There've also been complaints, however.

Because the files are huge, downloading almost requires broadband access. Only a fifth of U.S. households have it, according to a survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

In addition, current systems are designed for PCs, not Macs. This means that iPods can't play borrowed music or titles. Also, digital borrowing does nothing for the tens of millions of U.S. households without home computers.

For all these reasons, libraries that add digital services continue to maintain physical collections for electronically disadvantaged borrowers.

Asked about his product's incompatibility with Macs, Brian Downing, MyLibraryDV's publisher, said it was a small problem. "We are pleased to be compatible with 93 percent of the market share," he said, referring to the PC's dominance of the home-computer industry.

He added: "Libraries are about being a focal point of the community. If this service helps people realize the value of the library, then we will be pleased with that."

Librarians answer critical health questions

posted by tangognat

Anonymous Patron writes "Skeptical Medical Reference: Helping Patrons Find Critical Resources for Consumer Health Issues. With the popularization of the Internet, there has been a vast proliferation of consumer health material available to the public. Unfortunately, this has only accelerated a pre-existing trend- the fact that much of the material made available is unproven, unreliable, or outright fraud. This requires librarians to make a choice: are they passive and uncritical dispensers of information or are they critical educators who help patrons choose the best information available? In this article we examine the issues facing librarians in this matter and present skeptical materials that may help librarians to answer critical health questions. From Library Philosophy and Practice"

Library Doubles As Rock Venue

By TANVEER ALI

The thumping of the bass could be heard through the main-floor reading rooms Tuesday evening as a three-member band rocked the New Britain Public Library.

The High Strung, a Detroit-based band that sounds like the Beatles with a funkier edge, played a 12-song, one-hour set to about 50 library patrons of all ages. The basement concert kicked off the library's summer programming for teenagers.

New Britain was the second stop on the band's second nationwide library tour. Last year, the band - drummer Derek Berk, guitarist Josh Malerman and bass player Chad Stocker - played 60 shows, including one at Westport's public library, where New Britain teen librarian Ann Marie Naples saw the group.

"I heard they were touring again, and I just had to book them," Naples said.

The band admits that library shows are a little more subdued than their shows at bars, but their tunes resonated with the audience members, many of whom were unfamiliar with the musical genre.

"Why have a rock show at a library?" frontman Josh Malerman asked the audience. "It seems as good a place as any."

Tuesday's show was 12-year-old Jason LaPierre's first rock concert.

"It was better than I thought it would be," LaPierre said. "I liked how we made our own song."

After playing their own music, the band invited the audience to write and play a song of their own by culling random library books for lyrics that sounded "rock" and playing backup on percussion instruments.

Receiving no complaints from patrons using the library for its traditional purposes, Naples said she would invite the group back if it has a third library tour. But fellow librarian Pat Rutkowski pointed out the band's recent success; its music has been featured on National Public Radio and in an upcoming film with Eva Longoria.

"Next time, they might be far too famous to come here."

For more information on the New Britain library program visit nbpl.info.

Librarians urged to play more video games

""[T]here's no doubt that libraries have embraced technology. But speakers said that there was a larger split between students - who are "digital natives," in one popular way of classifying people based on their experience with technology - and librarians, who are more likely to be "digital immigrants." They may have learned the language, but it’s a second language." So says the article at Inside Higher Ed.

"So if this hierarchical model doesn't reach today's students, what will? James Paul Gee, a linguist who is the Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the author of Why Video Games Are Good for Your Soul, argued that librarians need to adapt their techniques to digital natives. A digital native would never read an instruction manual with a new game before simply trying the game out, Gee said. Similarly, students shouldn't be expected to read long explanations of tools they may use before they start experimenting with them.""

FBI recovers Pearl S. Buck manuscript

The FBI has recovered the long-lost manuscript of Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Good Earth," which had been missing for more than 40 years.

The original typed manuscript had gone missing from Buck's family farm in the Philadelphia suburb of Perkasie around 1966. It turned up earlier this month when it was consigned to a Philadelphia auction house, which notified authorities, FBI spokeswoman Jerri Williams said.

Librarians Describe Life Under An FBI Gag Order

By Luke O'Brien
June 24, 2007

Life in an FBI muzzle is no fun. Two Connecticut librarians on Sunday described what it was like to be slapped with an FBI national security letter and accompanying gag order. It sounded like a spy movie or, gulp, something that happens under a repressive foreign government. Peter Chase and Barbara Bailey, librarians in Plainville, Connecticut, received an NSL to turn over computer records in their library on July 13, 2005. Unlike a suspected thousands of other people around the country, Chase, Bailey and two of their colleagues stood up to the Man and refused to comply, convinced that the feds had no right to intrude on anyone's privacy without a court order (NSLs don't require a judge's approval). That's when things turned ugly.

The four librarians under the gag order weren't allowed to talk to each other by phone. So they e-mailed. Later, they weren't allowed to e-mail.

After the ACLU took on the case and it went to court in Bridgeport, the librarians were not allowed to attend their own hearing. Instead, they had to watch it on closed circuit TV from a locked courtroom in Hartford, 60 miles away. "Our presence in the courtroom was declared a threat to national security," Chase said.

Forced to make information public as the case moved forward, the government resorted to one of its favorite tactics: releasing heavily redacted versions of documents while outing anyone who didn't roll over for Uncle Sam. In this case, they named Chase, despite the fact that he was legally compelled to keep his own identity secret.

Then the phone started ringing. Pesky reporters wanted info. One day, the AP called Chase's house and got his son, Sam, on the phone. When Chase got home, he took one look at his son's face. "I could tell something was very wrong," he said. Sam told him the AP had called saying that Chase was being investigated by the FBI. "What's going on?" Sam asked his father. Chase couldn't tell him. For months, he worried about what his son must have been thinking. As the case moved forward, the librarians had to resort to regular duplicity with co-workers and family -- mysteriously disappearing from work without an explanation, secretly convening in subway stations, dancing around the truth for months. The ACLU even advised Chase to move to a safehouse.

After the Bridgeport court ruled that the librarians constitutional rights had been violated, the government appealed the decision to U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Around the same time, the Congressional spin machine kicked into overdrive. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) wrote an op-ed in USA Today that said:

"Zero. That's the number of substantiated USA Patriot Act civil liberties violations. Extensive congressional oversight found no violations. Six reports by the Justice Department's independent inspector general, who is required to solicit and investigate any allegations of abuse, found no violations."

Once President Bush reauthorized the Patriot Act, the FBI lifted the librarians' gag order. "By withdrawing the gag order before the court had made a decision, they withdrew the case from scrutiny," Chase said. This eliminated the possibility that the NSL provisions would be struck down.

Today, the Connecticut librarians are the only ones who can talk about life with an NSL gag, despite the likelihood that there are hundreds if not thousands of other similar stories out there. "Everyone else who would speak about is subject to a five year prison term," Chase said. The prison term for violating the gag order was added to the reauthorized Patriot Act.

Social sites reveal class divide

Fans of MySpace and Facebook are divided by much more than which music they like, suggests a study.

A six-month research project has revealed a sharp division along class lines among the American teenagers flocking to the social network sites.

The research suggests those using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college.

By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education.

Site-seeing

The conclusions are based on interviews with many teenage users of the social networking sites by PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley.

In a preliminary draft of the research, Ms Boyd said defining "class" in the US was difficult because, unlike many other nations, it did not map directly to income.

Instead, she said, class in the US was more about social life and networks - how people define themselves and who they define themselves with.

"Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus 'class'," she wrote.

Broadly, Ms Boyd found Facebook users tend to be white and come from families who are keen for children to get the most out of school and go on to college.

This division is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values Danah Boyd

Characterising Facebook users she said: "They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities."

By contrast, the average MySpace teenager tendeds to come from families where parents did not go to college, she said.

Ms Boyd also found far more teens from immigrant, Latino and Hispanic families on MySpace as well as many others who are not part of the "dominant high school popularity paradigm".

"MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers," she said.

Teenage users of both sites have very strong opinions about the social network they do not use, she noted.

Ms Boyd was wary of drawing too many conclusions from her research and calling Myspace "bad" or Facebook "good" or condemning social networks out of hand.

She wrote: "This division is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values."

In some ways, Ms Boyd wrote, social networking sites are helping teenagers cope with the stresses of 21st Century life.

"Teens are using social network sites to build community and connect with their peers," she said. "And through it, they are showcasing all of the good, bad, and ugly of today's teen life."

The Internet gives birth to an 'official' online library

Sunday, June 24, 2007
by Adrian McCoy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Post-Gazette's Adrian McCoy keeps an eye on the Internet and any online developments in arts and entertainment.

The Internet has been around long enough to have its own attic -- an ever-expanding repository of art, pop culture and information. It's the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, a Web site where surfers can spend hours exploring a universe of archived books, films, music and more.

It's not just any old online attic, though. In May, California officially recognized the Internet Archive, established in 1996, as a library. The designation makes the online archive eligible to apply for several federal grant programs that are administered by the state of California.

But even more importantly, says Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive founder and digital librarian, was the recognition that a digital library is on equal footing with a print material archive -- that the Internet is becoming "more a part of our real civic structure."

The IA Web site explains, "Libraries exist to preserve society's cultural artifacts and to provide access to them. If libraries are to continue to foster education and scholarship in this era of digital technology, it's essential for them to extend those functions into the digital world. Without cultural artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures."

From vintage newsreels to recently uploaded V-logs, there's a good chance they are stored somewhere in the Internet Archive. Grateful Deadheads can follow the band in cyberspace from the '60s through the '90s in a series of live concerts preserved in their entirety. Or fans can download a recording of Allen Ginsberg teaching a poetry class, hear a Groucho Marx radio program or watch a move or classic cartoon.

In terms of pure entertainment, the IA is treasure trove. Much of the material it contains is either in the public domain or posted under a creative commons license, in which copyright holders can grant some distribution rights to the public.

Music fans can listen to live performances by contemporary artists or hear a radio broadcast from decades ago. Audio files can be downloaded or streamed. Many little-known bands, and a few well-known ones, have current shows posted here -- including Hank Williams III and Gomez (including their June 2006 show here at Mr. Small's Theatre).

There's a collection of vintage radio dramas and comedy programs: among them, Bob and Ray, "The Adventures of Superman," "The Inner Sanctum" and Groucho Marx and "You Bet Your Life," along with big band broadcasts and World War II news reports. The famous Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, which touched off a nationwide panic about space invaders, is stored here, along with all the other Mercury Theater radio plays.

There are more than 800 feature films and shorts to watch, including George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" -- one of the most popular movie downloads on the site -- and other classics such as "Rashomon," "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," "Battleship Potemkin" and "His Girl Friday." There are many B horror movies as well, along with instructional and industrial films and classic animation from Warner Bros. and Max Fleischer.

Book lovers can browse through collections of old books, which are stored as PDF files, complete with illustrations. Some are e-books contributed by the Project Gutenberg online library.

The IA has gone a long way with digital preservation, too. In the deepest recesses of this online attic, The Wayback Machine stores snapshots of long-gone Web pages. According to Wikipedia, by 2006 the Wayback Machine occupied two petabytes (that's two quadrillion bytes) of memory storage space, and is growing rapidly.

For those who are nostalgic for their old computer programs, there's The Classic Software Preservation Project (CLASP), an archive of retail software dating back to the 1970s, along with collections of freeware and shareware.

All of this great stuff is accessible at no cost, but users are encouraged to donate to the site.

www.archive.org

Harry Potter Hacked?

June 21, 2007
By Kimberly Maul

A hacker who goes by the name of Gabriel claims he obtained a digital copy of the manuscript for J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and has posted plot details online, Reuters reported. The man claims he was able to hack into the computer system at Bloomsbury, the publisher of the book.

"We make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring," he wrote on the website. But, of course, the publisher is keeping mum about the truth behind the spoilers.

"There is a lot of junk flying around," said Kyle Good, a spokesman for Scholastic, the U.S. distributor of the Harry Potter books, according to Reuters. "Consider this one more theory." Bloomsbury declined to comment.

"We've had hypes like this on the last couple of Harry Potter books," David Perry, a spokesman for computer security company Trend Micro, told Reuters. "There is a very high level of spurious information in the hacker world." But whether or not readers believe Gabriel, there is only one way to find out if he is right. And that won't happen until July 21.

Debut of the Espresso Book Machine

June 22, 2007
By Kimberly Maul

In a matter of minutes, or the time it takes to drink an espresso, the new Espresso Book Machine, from On Demand Books, LLC, can print, bind and trim a book, producing a high-quality paperback book for users. The first Espresso Book Machine (EBM) was installed and is up and running at the New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library.

"The Science, Industry and Business Library is delighted to showcase the Espresso Book Machine," said Kristin McDonough, the Robert and Joyce Menschel director of the SIBL. "The Espresso provides a convenient new approach to book publishing and information dissemination and we are pleased to provide our users with this first opportunity to see this new technology demonstrated at a library whose mission is to support innovation and new business ventures."

The EBM, unlike existing print-on-demand technology, is fully automatic and requires minimal human intervention. It is small enough to fit in a library or retail store.

Through the EBM, users can choose from more than 200,000 titles in the Open Content Alliance database of public domain works, such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, or Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, as well as a selection of in-copyright books including Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. OCA is working with On Demand, and funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to provide this digital content free to libraries across the country.

"Printed books are one of history's greatest and most enduring inventions, and after centuries, their form needs no improvement," said Jason Epstein, co-founder of On Demand Books. "What does need to change is the outdated way that books reach readers."

The machine can be purchased by any library or retailer and several libraries and organizations are set to get the machine this fall: the New Orleans Public Library, the University of Alberta (Canada) campus bookstore, the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vt., and the Open Content Alliance.

The Espresso Book Machine will be at the New York Public Library's SIBL through August.

Boulder librarian disciplined for using foul language

BOULDER

The Jefferson County Library Board disciplined Boulder librarian Cyd Kreizwald at its June 14 meeting for allegedly cursing at three people.

Kreizwald was directed to write a letter of apology to three individuals for speaking to them using inappropriate language, said Jefferson County Commission Chair and library board member Ken Weber.

The incident involved the county’s information technology staff member Carl Purdy and two employees of B & C. Telephone Co., Weber said.

Kreizwald was also suspended without pay for three days and is to refrain from inappropriate language and behavior, he said.
...

Libraries woo patrons on the Web

Plug in to social networking sites

Katie Dean — 6/09/2007 8:39 am

Libraries have long struggled with a stuffy reputation, but on the UW-Madison campus and in some public branches, librarians are taking a decidedly fresh approach to attracting patrons by using social networking sites.

Sites, like Facebook, MySpace and Friendster, are wildly popular among students as a way to connect with friends and socialize online. People can personalize their own Web page with pictures, notes and music, and link to their friends' pages. Fledgling bands have used MySpace to promote their music.

To see libraries plugged in to this trendy social circle is a little surprising, but librarians say it's just the newest way to reach out to their patrons and promote library services.

"People are living their lives online, especially people who are under 30," said Shawn Brommer, youth services and outreach consultant for the South Central Library System, a network of more than 50 libraries in seven counties. "If we want to stay current and provide information in a format people are expecting, we need to be very current, we need to know what social networking is and how to use it. And, we need to be where (the people) are."

Brommer said social networking helps to "keep the library at the forefront of (patrons') minds, even if they're not physically in the library."

About 10 to 15 percent of the libraries she works with are using social networking or blogs to market programs and services, and promote new materials, she said.

In fact, many libraries across the country have set up shop in these online spaces to welcome and recruit patrons. The Wendt Library, which serves the College of Engineering and the departments of computer sciences, statistics and atmospheric and oceanic sciences, is at the forefront of this trend among the University of Wisconsin-Madison's more than 40 libraries.

Amanda Werhane, liaison librarian and marketing coordinator at Wendt, runs the library's blog (wendt-library.blogspot.com), which features a collection of links and notes about useful research tools and journals. She's also set up a Wendt Library page on Facebook, MySpace and Friendster and posted library pictures on Flickr, the photo-sharing Web site.

"Social networking is almost a bridge between a static Web page and human interaction," Werhane said.

The online tools help the library to be proactive, so users "don't have to come to us. We're already there, she said. "It's like being in the neighborhood."

Werhane, the first librarian on campus to have "marketing" in her official title, uses the sites to promote the library and its events and workshops. The sites also advertise some of the library's services, like instant messaging and chat reference, where librarians provide research assistance and answer questions.

While users might not comment directly on the library's blog, Werhane knows that it is being read, as patrons ask about such resources when they visit the library in person. A post about technology and science-related sites in the virtual world "Second Life" was particularly popular.

This array of online tools helps create a more interactive and customized experience for patrons even when students and professors are not on campus. Engineering students, for instance, spend some time off campus with industry internships, and the library wants to stay accessible to them during that time, Werhane said.

Cost-wise, such outreach and promotion is a relative bargain. The Web sites and pages have all been created using free software and services.

Some of the ideas about reaching patrons came from observing the library's student employees and what Web sites they use, like Facebook. Werhane also keeps tabs on what other libraries are doing in cyberspace. The UW Law Library's WisBlawg, one of the early adopters of the blogging trend among libraries, proved to be a helpful model for the Wendt Library Blog.

Bonnie Shucha, head of reference for the UW Law Library, created WisBlawg in 2004, with the aim of conveying "the things that are in a librarian's head" to anyone interested in Wisconsin law.

"We designed the blog originally to be a service," Shucha said. She posts "things that we hear through the grapevine or just know as librarians, research tips and (information on) how to make people into better legal researchers."

But it's also turned into a useful marketing tool. The site gets about 200 visitors a day, and has an active e-mail subscription list.

"It's increased the reputation of the library among our colleagues," said Shucha. "Now there are over 100 law library blogs, and we were one of the first."

She also maintains a Facebook page, and has put up a profile on a social networking site for lawyers, called Lawbby.

Still, not all librarians are enamored of the online strategy.

"The newer librarians are more excited about it, about the possibilities of reaching out to users," Werhane said, noting that there is a generation gap in terms of who is interested.

Yet even as these tech-savvy librarians try and keep pace with students online, they're still hoping to attract them to the actual building. Werhane believes "there's still a role for a physical place in the mix," where students can interact with someone face-to-face and seek research guidance.

Shucha agreed.

"With the proliferation of electronic resources, yeah, it's at your fingertips, but there's so much of it," she said. "That's where we as librarians come in."

Librarians can help identify and navigate the massive amounts of electronic resources, but they need to reach the patrons first.

"It's definitely a different image for a library," Shucha said. "You don't have to be the stodgy librarian with the bun in the hair. If (patrons) are not going to come to you, you have to come to them."

EPA halts library closures

By Courtney Holliday
First Amendment Center Online intern
06.08.07

After releasing a plan in August 2006 that would restructure its library system and eliminate several locations, the Environmental Protection Agency has halted further closures of the libraries in response to heavy criticism from lawmakers and advocacy groups.

“EPA is in the process of reviewing its methods of delivering library services. No changes are being made in the EPA Library Network at this time; no changes will be made until we have completed stakeholder input and review,” the EPA said in a May 8, 2007, report to the American Library Association.

EPA’s controversial library plan was developed after the Bush administration’s budget for the 2007 fiscal year left the EPA library system, which is funded through the Office of Environmental Information, with just $500,000 for operations.

The plan would eventually close 10 regional libraries and the headquarters library in Washington, D.C. (The Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City and D.C. libraries were shut down before the closures were halted.) The EPA said these closures were part of a plan to modernize their collections by converting them to digital formats. EPA spokespeople said this digitization process would allow the agency to reach a broader audience.

“By modernizing our libraries, EPA is bringing our cutting edge science to your fingertips, whether you live across the street or on the other side of the world,” Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock said in a Dec. 6 press release.

However, opponents of the plan have reservations about whether the closures are beneficial and whether the digitizing is being handled well.

In her Feb. 6 testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, ALA President and Princeton Public Library Director Leslie Burger raised two concerns with the EPA’s plan for library closure and digitization of the collections.

“In the course of shutting down these libraries, valuable, unique environmental information will be lost or discarded,” she said in her testimony. Burger added that with fewer libraries and staff, “scientists and the public will (also) have limited access to this information. We have a deep concern with limitations these closings would place on the public’s access to EPA library holdings and the public’s ‘right to know.’”

Burger also noted that because current and future equipment compatibility and copyright information, among other factors, have to be considered when digitizing material, the process is slow. However, she said she was especially concerned with the way in which the EPA was handling this process. Materials from the already closed libraries were “dispersed” for digitizing to Research Triangle Park or the National Environmental Publications Internet Site in Cincinnati, but details about how the information was handled were not released. Burger said librarians were concerned that this dispersion may have done long-term damage to the effectiveness of the EPA.

“Unfortunately, there continues to be a lot that we don’t know: exactly what materials are being shipped around the country, whether there are duplicate materials in other EPA libraries, whether these items have been or will be digitized, and whether a record is being kept of what is being dispersed and what is being discarded. We remain concerned that years of research and studies about the environment may be lost forever,” she said.

She noted that overall, there seemed to be no clear plan for the digitization and that the closure of the libraries was done too quickly to evaluate potential concerns.

Despite the concerns raised, the EPA maintains that greater access will be allowed through the online services, and that materials from closed libraries are still available.

“EPA has been establishing a working group of librarians, which includes EPA employees, to ensure the agency’s online library services accomplish our goal of bringing greater access to a broader audience,” EPA Press Officer Suzanne Ackerman told the First Amendment Center. “At the five libraries that no longer have physical space, library services remain available online or through interlibrary loans.”

The EPA acknowledges that the process is complicated and that assessment is needed. Speaking to the Special Libraries Association, Mike Flynn, EPA deputy director of the Office of Information Analysis and Access, reiterated the EPA’s goal of eventually providing a national unified data system for EPA staff, scientists and the community at large but reminded the audience that the changes will be painful and do not happen overnight.

In his speech Flynn discussed the misperceptions about the EPA’s library network recreation, explaining that the changes will enable more efficient distribution of information, especially in the future as more employees become accustomed to working with electronic forms. While correcting misperceptions, however, he says that the agency’s current review of the library network will allow it to determine whether or not the plan should be altered to completely meet future needs.

The EPA did not have much time to respond to initial criticism of its plan. Shortly after the plan was unveiled last fall, Reps. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), and John Dingell (D-Mich.) requested in a Sept. 19 letter that the Government Accountability Office investigate the cuts. The GAO granted the request and in November began a review, which remains in progress, of the EPA’s actions.

Under pressure from members of Congress and groups such as the ALA, the EPA announced in January that it would not close additional libraries until more public outreach was done, according to the Library Journal.

In a Jan. 12 letter to House Committee Chairmen Gordon (Science and Technology), Dingell (Energy and Commerce), Waxman (Oversight and Government Reform), and James Oberstar (D-Minn.) (Transportation and Infrastructure), EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson agreed to a 90-day moratorium on both the closure of additional EPA libraries and disposal after digitization of EPA library materials.

Shortly after, on Feb. 6, Johnson testified before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and said that the EPA would close no more libraries and would not dispose of any documents.

The library system is home to more than 350,000 reports, books, technical journals, audiotapes and videotapes, along with 50,000 primary-source documents not available anywhere else. A 2004 EPA Library Report, “Business Case for Information Services,” said librarians in the system saved EPA staff more than 214,566 hours of research time that year. In addition to providing the agency’s staff with information, the library system serves the public as an access point to EPA information regarding environmental health hazards, technologies, regulations and litigation. The EPA and other government agencies are required, with few exceptions, to make information and records available for the public under the Freedom of Information Act.

The EPA chief information officer issued an interim library policy on April 16 that explains the library network’s responsibilities and governance. External stakeholders such as scientists, researchers and attorneys who use the library’s resources, will review draft procedures developed by EPA library managers on library usage statistics and dispersion procedures, and an independent third party will review the EPA’s draft digitization procedures. Digitization expert Cathy Hartmann of the University of North Texas, will advise the agency in its procedures and techniques at the suggestion of the ALA. While digitization is occurring, physical materials will not be discarded until the procedures are fully reviewed.

Gordon, Dingell, Waxman and Oberstar, in an April 26 letter to EPA administrator Johnson, requested that “all EPA libraries and library materials be preserved intact until the [GAO] investigation is completed and EPA undertakes an appropriate public process (including consultation with Congress) to decide whether and how to proceed with a library modernization process.” In the letter, they refer to the investigation’s tentative findings as revealing what was originally a “severely flawed library closure planning process.”

The EPA will participate in several external conferences over the summer to exchange information and receive further advice from stakeholders, including exhibiting at the June ALA meeting.

Courtney Holliday is a junior majoring in economics and public policy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

Bookshelves for the Surreal Library

posted by Great Western Dragon
Thursday June 14, @11:16AM

Building one of those new fangled libraries with all the fancy architecture and more glass than a crystal palace? Well then, bucko, you'll need some shelves won't you? And if you're going for the surreal, cantilevered, looks like it'll fall down at any minute look, you'll want some matching shelves.

Gravity shelves to the rescue! Or perhaps you'd be interested in a more mathematical iteration?

Libraries offer more services to homeless

By Carol Motsinger, USA TODAY

Public libraries, long a daytime sanctuary for homeless people, increasingly are offering services targeted to them.

"The broader mission of the library is a very welcoming one," says Jane Salisbury, supervisor of library outreach services at Multnomah County Library in Portland, Ore.

Libraries are shelters from cold and heat, she says, but homeless people also go there because "people are there to serve them."

Services vary:

•In Washington, D.C., the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library has begun seminars about library resources and health care services for the homeless. The library plans to offer music appreciation and arts classes to homeless patrons.

•Jacksonville Public Library teaches Internet use to homeless job-seekers.

•The Free Library of Philadelphia pays homeless people to work as bathroom attendants at the central library.

•The San Francisco Public Library has two part-time staffers who refer the homeless to housing and mental health agencies.

•The Los Angeles Public Library has a five-day summer camp for homeless children. In July, a magician, mime, musician and storyteller will perform and teach.

•Volunteers take children from homeless shelters to New York Public Library branches for monthly story time sessions.

Daniel Kibler, reference librarian at the Jacksonville Public Library, who teaches the computer course, says his part-time role as a social worker is more challenging and emotional than his usual duties.

Four years ago, Kibler helped a homeless man in his 50s complete an online application for a job at a grocery store. The man didn't know how to use a computer mouse, Kibler says. He left the reference desk to help him four or five times.

"We try to do the best we can with the time we have," he says. "When someone is honestly trying to improve themselves and you don't have time, you feel particularly helpless."

Nancy Huntley, director of the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Ill., says services for the homeless are outside the scope of a librarian's job. "Our role is just to provide books and information," she says.

Accommodating homeless patrons without alienating others can be a challenge, librarians say.

Richard Parker of the Tulsa City-County Library, says visitors have complained about people panhandling, staring or saying inappropriate things to children.

Sanford Berman, founder of the American Library Association's Hunger, Homelessness and Poverty Task Force, says others complain about patrons' grooming. Libraries such as the Dallas Public Library have hygiene rules. Berman says they must be administered evenly.

"That kind of rule should be equally applied to a suburban matron doused in perfume," he says.

Two Days Without Dewey

posted by Great Western Dragon

The Perry Branch of the Maricopa County Library District generated tonnes of buzz recently because they're not using the traditional Dewey Decimal System, opting instead to go with a "neighbourhood" set up more in tune with a bookstore. I spent two days working this new and innovative branch. If you got the interest in what's happening in a Deweyless branch, read on. Full disclosure: I work for MCLD.

Opening a new branch library is not a thing to be taken lightly. After all, you're unleashing something onto the community, a time bomb of knowledge paid for by the taxes of a populace. With luck, the populace welcomes you with open arms, otherwise you get to hear people whine about taxes. So when you do this thing, you better be right.

But when you do something different, something no one ever attempted, you better make damn sure you know what you're doing. For instance, if you open a public library and forgo the use of the Dewey Decimal System, your instinct better be razor keen to the will of the patrons.

As to the will of the library community at large, screw that. Librarians, as a whole, are slow to change certain things. We readily adopt new technologies, and then vigourously apply them to centuries old methods of doing things. Whoever said that the more things change the more they stay the same must have done time in a library. We utilize all of our shiny new tech to automate a antiquated system. The DDC is over 130 years old, biased, and confusing to patrons. For those who think it isn't, try getting a patron to care about it. Melvil designed the system for librarians, and the system makes some sense to librarians.

To the patrons, it's anathema.

Or at least this is what the Maricopa County Library District banks on by opening the Perry Branch Library, a combination of a public and school library wholly abandoning the use of Dewey organization. I spent sixteen hours at Perry, working side by side with the staff during their opening days. My expertise covers Polaris ILS, the Class cash management software, public library circulation, and library technologies. I manage the Circ Department at the Southeast Regional Library, also a part of the Marciopa County system. We are library people of the highest order, pushing through day after day at the District's biggest and busiest branch. Because of this, my staff and I trained many of the people now working the Perry Branch. They too are library folk, our siblings.

The last two days marked their “soft opening†with a grand opening to be held later this month. Patron tensions ran high at Southeast Regional over the last few weeks. Many live out in that developing area of Gilbert, Arizona and the Perry Branch sits closer to a great number of our patrons. So it came as no shock to me that, a few minutes before opening the Deweyless library, a small group idled outside the great glass sliding doors, peering in and waiting.

Things remained on the task list even as branch manager Jennifer Miele unlocked the doors and welcomed our first patrons. Some shelves weren't yet fully organized. While all the sections stood completed, they weren't all in alphabetical order. The 3M SmartCheck and five bin sorter were offline due to connectivity problems. We let patrons know of these small issues as they entered. Their response was incredibly casual. Word got out long ago that the District arranged this library in a decidedly non-traditional sense. It's a library for the Chandler School District in the Town of Gilbert operated by Maricopa County. They expected strangeness.

Almost all the shelves in the library are shorter than the average library shelf. You can easily see from one end of the branch to the other. Laser printed signs designated areas of interest from Fiction to Mystery to Science to Art and beyond. The only thing detracting from a true bookstore atmosphere is the lack of a coffee shop. Patrons immediately began doing what MCLD Administrators assumed they would, they browsed. They looked everything over. We assisted them by locating items when they were unsure of a location, but the overall customer attitude was that this works.

A gentleman asked me for a book on dog breeds. When I escorted him over to the section dealing in Pets, he felt embarrassed. Not so because he didn't think to look there, but because he'd missed the sign. We had exactly what he was after. Other patrons mentioned that, despite the as yet un-alphabetized sections, they had no problems finding anything. Books on Astronomy were in the Science section. Patrons located their books about drawing on the Art shelves.

In short, they understood. They knew where things were by the subject signs taped to the shelves. (Better signs are on the way.) They happily made use of the self checkouts. By day two, the self check-in purred along and handled returns. We saw teens return the second day for the computers and the manga in the Teen Room. The main complaint: get the shelves alphabetized.

They're working on it.

Since the library also services the newly constructed Perry High School, they expect an explosion in circulation come the beginning of the school year. Believe it, bucko, they'll give Southeast Regional a run for the money. As it was, for a 28,000 square foot library, an opening day circulation of over 910 wasn't bad. Not bad at all especially when you consider that it was a soft opening without too much hoopla.

Patron response is positive and the staff is upbeat and ready to rock. As it stands, this will work.

Prisons ban books over fear of radicals

"Inmates at the federal prison camp in Otisville, N.Y., were stunned by what they saw at the chapel library on Memorial Day — hundreds of books had disappeared from the shelves. Three inmates at Otisville filed a lawsuit over the policy, saying their Constitutional rights were violated. They say all religions were affected."

Public Libraries Provide Impressive ROI, says study

posted by Jaclyn_McKewan

According to a study conducted in 2006 by the University of North Carolina's School of Information and Library Science, b>Pennsylvania taxpayers receive a return of $5.50 for every $1 they invest in public libraries. You can read the rest of the article here or read the full study here. The article mentioned that this is part of a state-by-state study, but did not say whether any other states were currently being studied.

NARA seeks help in taking archives online Government resourcecenter White papers, case studies, vendor information, webinars Business BPM CXOs Columns Columnists Defense

BY Ben Bain
Published on June 5, 2007

As part of an effort to bolster online access to its documents, the National Archives and Records Administration is looking for a small business to help it improve the digitization and scanning capabilities of its Archives II site in College Park, Md.

NARA wants the contractor to supply and install new computers and the accompanying server and software. It also wants the company to train the staff on the new systems and provide maintenance for at least one year, possibly as long as three years.

The new workstations must meet all industry standards and be integrated with equipment that NARA’s Special Media Preservation Laboratory uses. In addition to supplying computers, the winner will also have to supply digital camera systems that include book cradles and scanners with varying specifications.

The contract is open to all companies that qualify as small businesses under the North American Industry Classification System. NARA said it could hire more than one company to do different parts of the job and that the contract will go to the bidder with the lowest-priced, technically acceptable offer.

All the specifics are available online at the Federal Business Opportunities Web site.

Coeur d'Alene parents look to restrict access to certain books

Checking out a copy of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou may require more than a library card in the Coeur d'Alene School District if some parents have their way. Some parents say the book, along with five others, should require parental permission for students to read them. On Monday night the school board is taking a closer look at the books in question and its policies in checking out certain books.

Inside an outsourced library

posted by Blake

In September 2006, the city of Redding, two hours south of Medford on Interstate 5, decided to outsource the running of the three libraries in Shasta County to Library Systems and Services LLC (known by the acronym LSSI). Shasta County has struggled for decades to try to keep libraries open and has gone through financial downturns similar to what Jackson County faced leading up to the closure of all 15 branches here on April 6.

Librarian Gabe Burke said everyone was offered a job either at the city or at the library. He said that in working with LSSI he doesn't live with the annual fear that he may lose his job. Also, he could transfer within the company if he wanted. "I almost feel more secure with LSSI," he said. Burke said his salary is similar to what he was getting previously and his benefits are comparable. "I'm not losing any money," he said.

Inmate finds transcribing books for blind 'gratifying'

posted by Blake

The Tucson Citizen Has A Look at some inmates doing some good. Eleven inmates in the Winchester Unit, which houses sex offenders, are involved in the program, said correctional officer Eric Douglass, who supervises the program. So far this year, Douglass said, the inmates have transcribed 53 books - 35,107 pages in Braille - and proofread 41 books - 30,643 pages in Braille. Inmates volunteer for the program, but there are few openings because of space limitations and because it's one of the most-coveted jobs for inmates. It's indoors and pays 50 cents an hour - top pay in prison. But it's not easy.

Vote for Video That Best Expresses 'Love of Libraries'

posted by leo
Tuesday June 05

The five best videos have been selected and the public has till June 11 to vote on which video best expresses a "love of libraries" in this contest sponsored by Gale.

Called "I Love My Library", the contest has a prize of $10,000 that will go half to the lucky winner and half to the lucky winner's library. 177 original videos, all under 2 minutes, were submitted to Gale's "Librareo Group" on YouTube.

You can view the five finalists and vote on your favorite by going to Gale's own "Librareo Page". The grand winner will be announced on June 24th at ALA.