or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk


A Few Important News Stories

   July 27th, 2010 Brian Herzog

NEWSOne problem with busy days like yesterday is that I am focused just on what's in front of me, and miss out on what's happening elsewhere. After work yesterday I was catching up on news and blogs, and found a few stories I thought were significant and wanted to share (you know, besides that whole leak thing):

An odd conflux of issues yesterday.



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Library Overdue Policies in the News

   April 27th, 2010 Brian Herzog

Library Police signI'm sure most people by now have seen the story about George Washington having overdue books from the New York Society Library.

This got me thinking about overdue books. The ALA's 2010 State of American Libraries Report was just released, but one statistic it did not include was the number of American households with overdue library material. It must be a high percentage, or else this news story (via LISNews) from Solano County, CA, wouldn't be possible:

Someone has been calling residents posing as a collection agency working with the library, and demanding they provide their credit card number over the phone to pay off fines for overdue material. It sounds like an Urban Legend (but it's not), and since it's on the internet, the same scam might start cropping up in other communities.

My library doesn't charge overdue fines (though we do suspend borrowing privileges for gross offenders), but it's never a bad time to review library policies in case patrons (or staff) have questions. If we did charge fines, I would lobby to implement my favorite tactic, overdue amnesty week, with people getting their fines waived if they return library materials with a non-perishable food item. Or, we could try (passive-aggressive) anti-theft signage.



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A Few Notable News Stories

   March 25th, 2010 Brian Herzog

I usually don't like just reposting things unless I have something intelligent to say about it. Regardless, here are a few news stories I noticed recently that seem to be flying under the radar (intelligent commentary optional):

 

Raj PatelThe Life of Raj Patel
Sure you've heard of Raj Patel and his books The Value of Nothing and Stuffed and Starved - but did you know he is the messiah?

Neither did he, but the folks of Share International are treating him like Brian, despite his denials, because they know Only the true Messiah denies His divinity. (via)

 

Overdrive Announcements
Overdrive logoTwo Overdrive stories: one about LEAP, their New Program for Visually Impaired Readers, and another about a program to Offer Honor System eBook Lending for Libraries, so no DRM. Both worth investigating.

 

Free Music, as in Free Lunch, as in No Such Thing
Freegal logoAlso on the DRM theme is a Library Journal article about a new music service called Freegal, from Library Ideas, LLC and Sony. Interesting in that this service will

  • have no DRM, just plain old mp3 files
  • require no content manager software
  • trust people to follow copyright law, instead of just assume they're criminals
  • charge libraries per download, rather than an annual subscription (or rather, a "minimum annual commitment" which can be managed on a weekly basis)

All good news, but I'm curious to see how the pricing model works - it's not like anything else used in libraries, is it? And who out there thinks a website called "freegal" might get blocked by sex filters?

 

What Do You Know About Knowr.com?
Knowr logoNot a news story, but I got a press release about Ooga Labs' new Knowr.com, billed as a "Question and Answer site that ties to the users social graph ... to create a vibrant knowledge network." What I liked about it is their approach:

At first, we had thought that people ... could use our service to share what they know with each other, both within their own particular industries, and in exciting, boundary crossing ways. With a little research, we saw that these groups already have vibrant communities online.

Then we quickly noticed teens and other Facebook super users are using services like this to conduct informal interviews of each other and celebrities.

I'm not entirely sure what it does, or why, or that it isn't already being done, but I did like that they decided to use existing web platforms (in this case, Facebook) to integrate with, instead of building a whole new networking tool. Good approach.

However, since it requires a Facebook account, that leaves me out.



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New York Times x2

   December 11th, 2008 Brian Herzog

New York Times front page from July 29th, 1974Yesterday must have been National New York Times day - I learned two news ways to access articles from the NYT, completely coincidentally.

The first way was the arrival of a book I ordered for our Reference Collection, The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages: 1851-2008. The oversized book itself is 300+ front pages from significant days since 1851, and it also comes with every front page contained on a set of DVDs.

Of course, the first thing we did was look up our birthdays, and so far no one was born on a significant day. But we found them in the very easy-to-use, PDF-based, DVDs. No special programs need to be installed, everything worked first time, etc.

Which makes me more comfortable having this book in the Reference Collection - people don't need to take it home if the DVDs work flawlessly on our computers, and the PDFs are ready-formatted to print on 8.5"x11" paper. Reading them is easier electronically when you can zoom in, but the book also comes complete with magnifying lens.

The second way was through Google News search. Not that I was surprised, but I had just never noticed before that Google News added "Archives" links to the left side of the search results page. Clicking into the 1800's, the matches were for-pay links into the Washington Post, but also free full-text links into the NYT. I knew the NYT had made their archive available, but having their articles show up in a context search like this is very useful. Plus, when you click through into the story, there is a link for a PDF version of the original newsprint, which I think qualifies as a primary source.

So, a good day for historical research using the New York Times.



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Video Everywhere

   November 6th, 2008 Brian Herzog

Too Much Joy's Donna Everywhere videoIn the last few weeks, I've seen a lot of announcements concerning video content being added to online resources. Both InfoTrac and NewsBank have recently made email announcements about content they've each added to their databases.

InfoTrac added many full-text resources to the General and Academic OneFiles, some of which include video segments. NewsBank's announcement was more thorough - here's an excerpt from the email:

In response to the rising demand in libraries, NewsBank is adding video news content to our online news resources-at no additional charge to our customers. The complete package from respected media distributor Voxant includes the following sources: The Associated Press, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, local affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, as well as coverage from Canadian Broadcasting, Agence France Press and more. Your institution will have access to video clips from all or a select group of these sources, depending on your subscription.

Beginning on Monday, October 20, the videos clips will be added to NewsBank resources. Users will be able to:

  • Play news videos within the NewsBank interface, in the same space used to display text articles
  • Select specific videos from a comprehensive results lists that also includes NewsBank articles, or restrict their search to "video only"
  • Access recent and archived news videos at your institution or remotely
  • Email links of specific videos to friends, or embed them in a presentation

I find it curious that they say this is in response to demand from libraries. From the few tests I did, most of this newly added video content is already available free online, so I'm not sure where this demand was coming from (or why the vendors choose to listen to this particular demand instead of other things libraries have been demanding).

If a patron wants to watch a news show online, I can't see myself showing them how to navigate the library website to find the right database, log in with their library card, navigate the database for the right title, and then find the episode. It is just easier for me and the patron to use the station's own website or YouTube as a resource.

And speaking of YouTube, Library Stuff linked to a YouTube announcement on c|net today: "YouTube will begin offering feature films produced by at least one of the biggest Hollywood movie studios possibly as early as next month." Combine that with Hulu.com and other websites, and that's a lot of available video content.

For the database vendors though, I would prefer they concentrating on making their resources more user-friendly and useful by "uniquing" them, instead of providing content that is already available from other sources.



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