I'm just catching up with my (probably far too many) blogs -reminded of a David Weinberger post from 2005, "No, I'm not keeping up with your blog" (if he thought that then...) - but I have just read - nearly missed it - a posting on Kindle News: Why not Rent-A-Book for Kindle, and it struck me that libraries (public, university, whatever) could be missing a chance here. It's what we do. We lend books.Now Kindle is clearly a lost cause for us as it's linked - without question - to buying books on Amazon and doesn't seem likely to reach the UK for a decade or so, but what about the iRex iLiad (of which I have spoken before, and which is gradually getting more press over here - it even has its own blog now: i to i blog and a wikipedia entry). I often say that I can see a time when students might arrive for their library induction and ask to have their year's reading downloaded onto their reader, and that this would require some careful licensing - lending e-books on readers' readers (i
Following on from Bob's most recent blog about the other Bob's book, which he linked to CILIP and professionalism in public libraries (he did get a bit carried away in the middle with Che Guevara and James Bond(!), but the essential message that in 2008 CILIP will make professionalism a major issue is very clear)...I wanted to point to a Panlibus post which highlights MLA Chief Executive Roy Clare, who spoke so well at Talis Insight, appeared on yesterday's edition of the Radio 4 You and Yours programme (podcast). I missed this, but the BBC had had early sight of the CIPFA annual report of the audit of UK public libraries, which mentioned the 10% reduction in income and the (much publicised in recent newspapers, e.g. The Independent, The Telegraph) 40 libraries which closed during 2007. Roy Clare was also bullish about the importance and value of public libraries, and noted that comparisons with Amazon were a "simplistic way of looking at it".>>Technorati tags: CILIP; MLA; public libr
Some of these people interested in applying Topic Maps in libraries created a mailing list to discuss and inform about new applications and advances in this issues.
Sorry, not boat related at all, but they were so pretty, and I had never seen them, I just had to pass them on. Most boat people appreciate a good book :-)
One of the books I'm currently reading is Social software in libraries : building collaboration, communication, and community Online by Meredith G Farkas (Amazon). It is a very readable, and seems to me reasonable treatment of the topic. Finding a mention of Catalogablog was a nice surprise.
Roy Tennant's ONIX Records for Libraries has a new home. The site contains over 100,000 records from:Cambridge University PressHarvest House PublishersIngramMcGraw-HillPenguinRandom HouseUniversity of California PressIf you know of any other publishers offering free ONIX records please let him know.
I have publicly supported three petitions on the Prime Minister's epetitions web site... and none of them have succeeded. That is, all of them have been rejected with a formal response - there is no record on the site of successful petitions, I note. (Can we draw some sort of conclusion from that, do you think?)The last petition - "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make the provision of professionally staffed libraries within all schools, both secondary and primary, statutory."- received a disappointingly low level of support (1,794 signatures) so it is unsurprising that it failed. However, the level of misleading verbiage in the response is disappointing (I assume that it doesn't actually demonstrate ignorance), and I reproduce the response in full below:The provision of a school library is not a statutory requirement and there are no current plans to alter this situation and change the legislation. It is the Government's policy to put as much money as possible dire
I think that I last read a copy of Reader's Digest as a child - probably when I was given a subscription in an attempt to widen my reading - or in a dentist's waiting room of about the same period... but it has suddenly popped up again, and with a most unexpected message:On a page headed 'That's Outrageous', the article shouts: Our Libraries: Where Has All the Cash Gone? and has a very-RD graphic (still recognisable after all these years!) of book pages transmogrifying into bank notes that fly away, before a tempter to get you reading the meat of the article: "We’re paying more than ever before—£50 a year for every family in Britain—and yet the service is dwindling"Of course, you've guessed it - Tim Coates is responsible for spreading his message still wider. The statistics he quotes are very worrying, and the idea that we are all paying more for less is clearly designed to stimulate action - at least amonst the Reader's Digest readers in my dentist's waiting room.>>Tech
This Spring, Ebrary conducted a survey of 552 individual US libraries, most of which (77%) were academic, in order to "better understand the digital content needs of the library community." The survey results are not yet publicly available but there is a short report in The Library Journal. The survey results show that e-books are now adopted widely (88% of respondents own or subscribe to e-books and nearly half saying they have more than access to more 10,000). Use - as the UK SuperBook Project knows - does not necessarily follow acquisition. The results - as described by Allen McKiel, director of libraries at Northeastern State University (Tahlequah, OK), who reviewed the survey results for eBrary - do not look widely different from what we would expect in the UK: Only six percent of respondents said ebook usage was excellent, compared to 22 percent who said usage was poor. Most students use ebooks via the library catalog, but "low use of the catalog" was not seen as an issue. Instea
Most readers of iNG will be aware of concerns voiced here in the past about what is happening (or not) to public libraries in the UK. Those same readers cannot fail to be aware of the continuing onslaught from Tim Coates in The Good Library Blog on any body which has any responsibility for public libraries: from CILIP to MLA; from Demos to the (now closing) Laser Foundation.Now, we have Richard Wallis of library systems producer, Talis weighing in with a reasoned analysis of the state of play so far on the Talis Panlibus blog. In 'Public Libraries - What Next?', Richard looks briefly at the official reports of the last 15 or so months and at all that Tim Coates has produced, and concludes that: it is clear that all the authors have in common a passionate belief that public libraries deliver massive benefit to our society, and they should be protected and improved. Things, or I should say more correctly priorities, then start to diverge somewhat. Some of the blogging and other co
I constantly visit my local college's library online and access their digital resources. However, yesterday was different because I physically needed to be at the ...
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