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Written on: December 9th, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
At this time every year, Delaware’s public library community comes together for its annual “town meeting”, where we discuss our current needs, initiatives and opportunities, and ways in which the state and county government can help meet the needs of libraries and library users. We met today at the Wilmington University Dover campus, with representatives from libraries throughout the state, along with representatives from friends groups, town managers, and educators.
This year, reflecting the importance that the Markell administration has attached to libraries, we had a number of outstanding keynote speakers. After introductions from the Wilmington University Head Librarian Jim McCloskey, State Librarian Annie Norman introduced Delaware’s First Lady, Carla Markell. In a moving address, Carla discussed the importance of libraries in her own youth- throughout her childhood she frequently used the old Newark Free library for books, music, and educational items not available at home, where family finances were stretched thin. Now an adult, and recognizing her own good fortune, she enjoys taking the children that she mentors to the library and watching their delight in the enjoyment and opportunities presented. She is well aware of the transformational power of libraries in the lives of children. Carla also mentioned that she is currently reading Neither Wolf nor Dog by Kent Nerburn.
Written on: December 8th, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
UPDATE: All of this content was written BEFORE the January launch of the iPad by Apple. Library Journal columnist Roy Tennant had this immediate response, noting Apple’s announcement validated his earlier claims that the Kindle, as a single-function device, was dead but hadn’t yet realized it!
UPDATE (Feb. 22, 2010): here’s another interesting link, a presentation from the O’Relly TOC Conference that compares the e-book buzz from 2000- the last time that ebooks were supposed to take over the publishing world..
UPDATE (March 15, 2010): Lyrasis’ Library Leadership Network is a good source for ongoing Ereader news- for instance, their threads on ‘problems and issues’ and general ‘notes and reviews‘.
There’s a continual buzz about e-reader devices such as Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s new Nook, and other e-reader devices that are supposed to replace the printed book at some point in the not-quite-now but decidedly imminent future. The Kindle was first out of the gate, with it’s “whispernet” wireless book downloading being the killer app that put earlier devices such as the PC-dependent Sony Reader to shame. The recently announced but already out-of-stock Nook raised the bar by emulating one of the most desired features of the physical book- lendability- and implementing a feature by which users can send a copy of a downloaded book to another Nook user. Of course, Amazon didn’t win many supporters by it unknowingly ironic decision to secretly delete unlicensed copies of 1984 from devices over the summer
In library-land, we’re all a little cautious by nature, but especially cautious about legitimizing a device that increases the cost of access, eliminates privacy, and weds access to information to commercially-defined technological dependencies. We’re funny like that. An e-reader may made a great Christmas present (if you can find one!) but there are plenty of nay-sayers both within and without the bibliographic world who think that once you disentangle the commercial hype from the grand pronouncements, e-readers might not only not be the solution (to a problem that probably hasn’t been defined) but also may be obsolete at birth- the buzz may be their vendor’s last ditch effort to make sure they unload units before there’s a realization that it may not be a great decision to commit hundreds of dollars to a bulky device that only does one thing, doesn’t necessarily do that one thing as well as the format it is trying to replace, and in any case, doesn’t really belong to you anyway!
Written on: December 7th, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
This story has been one of many over the last several months that have discussed the possibility that the age of free news from the internet may be drawing to a close. Traditional news publishers have felt increasing pressure over the past few years to protect their content from unauthorized distribution, and under Google’s new arrangement with publishers, searchers may be asked to register and pay for content after accessing a certain number of articles in a day.
This story follows on the recent suggestions by News Corporation that it was interested in removing Google’s access to its publications by adding code to their websites that would prohibit Google’s search engines from indexing content to add to their vast database of the web- and may, in fact, be Google’s attempt to split the difference between Rupert Murdoch’s threats to move News Corporation’s holdings behind a “paywall” and the search engine’s own historical affinity for total freedom. Needless, to say, the debate has been getting heated recently, with controversial speeches by the Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton who railed against “geeks bearing gifts” and the “false promise of the internet”, and the suggestion by Biz Stone, cofounder of Twitter, that Murdoch’s plans would “fail fast”. Meanwhile, behind the soundbites and rhetoric, some technology analysts were noting strange activity in the indexing of News Corporation websites that suggested the company was acting on its threats.
Some analysts have suggested that with the increasing popularity of mobile devices that can access online information, users will once again become comfortable with paying for content “if there’s an app for that”. We’d like to point out for the record- whatever the outcome of this battle for free content, public libraries will seek to continue to offer access to the best in print and online news- through continuing subscriptions to services like EBSCOhost, which give zero-cost access to the best in news, technology, and culture magazine and journals, as well as a tremendous range of daily newspapers including the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer as well as Murdoch-owned titles such as the Wall Street Journal and the Times/Sunday Times
Written on: December 1st, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
The Delaware Center for the Book is very excited to be working with Wilmington University on this December 18th event. David Plouffe will be discussing his new book The Audacity to Win: the Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory.
“Off the Page: An Afternoon with David Plouffe,” is presented by Delaware Center for the Book, Wilmington University Library, and Wilmington University’s College of Arts and Sciences’ Program in Government and Public Policy. The event will begin at 12:30 will feature a 30-minute talk, a 30-minute Q&A session, and book signing.
If you’re planning to attend, and would like to report on the event via Twitter, please let us know in the comments section below- it would be great to stream twitter comments online for people (like me) who won’t be able to attend. Please use the #PlouffeWilmU hashtag!
UPDATE: The event was a great success with several hundred attendees- thanks to @delawareliberal for tweeting the updates!
Written on: November 30th, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
Gorging on turkey shouldn’t slow down one’s reading- all of that time laying groaning on the couch is an idea time to catch up on all of the books you’ve checked out of the library.
Over the break, I took in a couple of galleys and promotional copies that I had received from the publisher Harper Collins. The first- This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians can Save us All by Marilyn Johnson (whose previous book Dead Beat was about the peculiar pleasures of reading and writing obituaries).
This book, due in February 2010, documents in a vivid and witty style how libraries are changing (and struggling to change) to meet the demands and expectations of digital-age consumers. Johnson tours innovative libraries, interviews old-school and new-school information professionals both behind the scenes in technical services departments and behind-the-desk in reference services. It’s amazing to read about what some libraries are doing with technology, although chapter 3, with its description of a catalog integration project gone horribly awry in New York State, gave me a cold sweat, since we are currently in the end-stage of a similar (albeit much smaller) project with new libraries in Delaware.
You can read some other early reviews on the author’s website at this link. Copies are on order for the Delaware Library Catalog, so stay tuned for more details!
The second freebie was the recently released The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford. This is a coming-of-age novel set in 1950’s/60’s Long Island, with an eerie atmosphere that to me was reminiscent of both Ray Bradbury and Stephen King- a sinister tone bordering on fantastical but never quite becoming straight supernatural/horror, because seen through the eyes of a child, regulation human evil appears magical, even surreal, and Ford captures that vision perfectly. There’s a lot of balls in the air here, and the author (mostly) keeps them up, with a family drama, the casual brutality of children at school and at play, a wraithlike stalker- maybe a serial killer?- and the kind of suburban wilderness of woods and gullies where terrible things can happen within earshot of families at play on their decks and lawns. The writing is also superb, with this throwaway description of fall in particular grabbing my attention: “the wind of this in-between time always made me want to curl up inside a memory and sleep with my eyes open.”
My none-promotional reading this week was two books by Vendela Vida, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and Now You Can Go. Quick reads both, and similar in subject, featuring the impact of unsettling, sometime violent acts on unmoored women. In her books, Vida creates short evocative chapters, almost like long poems, in which the characters experience new events and self-realizations. I came across here after watching the movie “Away We Go” and noticing that Vida had collaborated on the screenplay with her husband, the novelist Dave Eggers- after reading the books, it’s easy to see Vida’s stamp on this movie- a nice example for adults of Kate DiCamillo’s point from last week of how movies and books can complement and fulfill each other. If this point needed any further example, after going to see New Moon Lucy asked for a copy of the book on Friday and after a couple of reading until midnight sessions, finished it on Sunday morning- probably after having spent seven hours or more reading solidly over less than two days. Still not sure how I’m going to tell her that she won’t be able to read Breaking Dawn until she’s old enough to bike over to the library and check it out with her own card.
Written on: November 29th, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
All the way back in June, I was Watership Down according to the first version of this book quiz- almost six months later, this is the result:
You’re The Moon is a Harsh Mistress!
by Robert Heinlein
A freethinker, you are willing to go well outside the bounds of societal expectations in expressing what you believe. You yearn for simpler times…This recollection may be idealized and even nonsensical, but it doesn’t keep you from advocating revolution against rules wherever they may exist.
Take the Book Quiz II
at the Blue Pyramid.
Gosh- I wonder what changed in 2009! I still think that I’d rather be a happy rabbit than a lunar revolutionary!
Written on: November 25th, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
These books were featured on the Wired magazine “Geekdad” blog as perfect gifts for geeky readers. However, if you don’t want to brave the stores this weekend (and anyway, a true geek will do most of their shopping online) and/or you hate that feeling you get when you realize that you want to read the book you purchased as a gift for someone else, why not check them out of the library for your own enjoyment? You can place a hold anytime with your library card, whether or not the library is closed.
Written on: November 23rd, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
This will be a busy week for many, so you may want to file away this review until next week- or use the library catalog to place a hold on what is sure to be a very popular item in our public libraries.
Nabokov had a “new” book released recently, and this week the New York Times Sunday Book Review wrote about the newly published title by Michael Crichton, who died last year- the manuscript for Pirate Latitudes was discovered on his home computer, and according to the Times reviewer, may have been “completed but not truly finished,” since there are a variety of continuity errors and a hasty ending that suggests this might have been an early work that was put away and never quite gotten back to- however, it’s also a “straight up pirate story” that will have a lot of appeal to Crichton fans.
Written on: November 23rd, 2009 by: in Q & A's
A: In September, the FDA banned flavored cigarettes, including clove cigarettes. It is now illegal to manufacture, import, distribute, or sell flavored cigarettes.
The FDA is working to ensure illegal imports do not reach consumers and your purchase may in fact be seized. In a recent media briefing, the FDA stated, “We’ve established procedures at the border to watch for products which violate this ban to prevent them from entering the United States.”
The FDA has also created a website devoted to information concerning the ban: http://www.fda.gov/flavoredtobacco
Menthol cigarettes and flavored pipe tobacco are not affected by this ban.
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Written on: November 19th, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
Remember, most libraries will be closed for a few days next week for Thanksgiving, so check the shelves early for these new books and other great selections you can find at your local public library. Remember, you can sign up to receive a weekly reminder of new items via email- visit the “connect with us” section on our catalog homepage and click on “other new item feeds”- enter your email address, look for a verification email, and you’ll receive a reminder when new item links are posted.
Click on the links below to get lists of new items available from the Delaware Library Catalog in various formats:
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