librarian.net

Library students Turner Masland, Rebecca Chernay, Amy Frazier and Serenity Ibsen have made a delightful video The Visiting Librarian’s Guide to Portland. Donut and coffee suggestions and a lively soundtrack. And remember: Couch Street is pronounced “cooch.” Aaron Schmidt has also written a Walking Guide to Portland that is useful and the PLA Blog has a list of Portland libraries in case you’re like me and like to visit local libraries while you’re out and about.

So, I may have mentioned earlier that this is the month I’m away giving talks and talking to librarians instead of typing on my blogonet. I’m partway done. I’ve been to Florida and Alaska and Austin Texas and I’ll be stopping by Portland Oregon next week and then I’m pretty much done. I’ve done a few talks you’ve maybe heard before but the biggest news is the panel that NYPL’s Jenny Engstrom and I did at SXSW on Tuesday. It was called How The Other Half Lives: Touring The Digital Divide [link goes to our slides] and it was a look at how libraries are dealing with people on the other side of the digital divide.

Some of this is stuff you’ve heard before but some is newish. We were lucky enough to give our presentation after the FCC released the results of their broadband study but before they actually released their Broadband Plan, so there was a lot to talk about but not too much to fight about. The talk was well-attended, well-tweeted and folks asked a lot of questions and stuck around to talk more. I’ve just gotten back from Texas so I’ll save more links and discussions for a little later. Thanks to everyone who showed up and who supported us in our desire to get this talk on the roaster at SXSW. I think we gave people a lot of food for thought.

Enjoying listening to Jenny Levine talking about gaming in libraries. I’m still not much of a gamer, but I’ve definitely been seeing the value of gaming programs bringing teens into libraries. She pointed me to a document that I hadn’t read and am really enjoying [kill me, I'm multiasking!] called Fiat Lux, Fiat Late­bra: A Cel­e­bra­tion of His­tor­i­cal Library Func­tions [pdf] by D. W. Krum­mel. Not a new article (Jenny posted about it in 2008) but a great read including, especially “The Seven Ages of Librar­i­an­ship” which is a great exposition of how the library has evolved and is evolving.

Congress Extends Library Provision of Patriot Act to 2011. Grar.

“Jean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, was a man with a singular passion. He collected books of which only one copy was known to exist…. [W]hen he died on September 1, 1839 he possessed only fifty-two books, but each of them was absolutely unique. His heir, not sharing the old man’s passion for book collecting, arranged for an auction to sell off the library”

Compelling no? The auction really happened, the rest of it is made up, the creation of a local antiquarian, having a bit of a practical joke. Read more at blacksundae, or see the auction catalog, itself a rarity, on Google Books.

If you’re Tom Corwin you buy it and plan a road trip with authors talking about books that changed their lives. Oh, and make a movie about it. Latest is Daniel Handler (author of the Lemony Snicket series). Read more at BookmobileTravels.com or on Twitter at BookmobileNews.

I am going to Florida on Sunday, so I have Florida on my mind. I found out about the Florida Library History Project and was pleased to know the entire thing is available online as a big PDF. Some enterprising student could, with the permission of Kathleen de la Pena McCook get it online crosslinked and searchable.

The Florida Library History Project (FLHP) began in January 1998. Letters requesting histories were sent to all public libraries in Florida with follow-up letters sent after an initial response was received from the libraries. E-mail messages were sent out to FL-LIB listservs encouraging participation in the project. A poster session was presented by USF research assistant Catherine Jasper at the 1998 Florida Library Association (FLA) Annual Conference, an event that marked FLA’s 75th anniversary. At the end of this funding period, 89 library systems and organizations had provided histories. These have been compiled and are reproduced in this volume as submitted by participating libraries. Highlights include library founding, collections, services, budgets and expenditures, personnel, funding, survey results, technology, and developments.

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I like Valentine’s Day. I always have, whether I’m in a relationship or not. It’s one of those holidays that I try to temper my enthusiasm for because it seems so… dopey or something. My local library just started a “why I love the library” campaign with the paper hearts, just in time for town meeting day which is in a few weeks. Here are a few more library/valentine cross-over links.

• Photo is from NYPL’s selection of Victorian Valentines. There are many more images to look at in their Digital Gallery.
• It is Library Lovers Day in Australia. While the website is terrifically underwhelming [links to pdfs, really? no title in the HTML?] there are some neat things going on: a free sausage sizzle [last weekend, actually], a song from a few years ago, a special morning tea
• The Valentine Public Library is surprisingly not taking advatage of this opportunity.
• Some more promotional tie-ins: How to Love Your Library, Library Lover’s Month in Wisconsin (proclaimed by the governor in 2005), specifics about how to do a valentine-themed fundraiser and more from the Library Support website.
• The Lilly Library at Indiana University lets you send an e-valentine from their Victorian Valentine collection.
• The Peabody Library at Vanderbilt University did a Valentine workshop this week.
• The planned library anti-Valentine’s Day party, however, didn’t go so well.
• Etsy seller simplesongdesigns has a neat valentine for your favorite librarian.
• Wikimedia Commons has many valentines that can be used copyright-free.
• Amusing ephemera from the LoC collection, a valentine bank note form the Bank of True Love.
• And, continuing my search from another LoC item claiming to be from “The Oldest Valentine Manufactory in America“, the I have come across Charles Dickens’ visit to Cupid’s Manufactory available to you in full text via Google Books and truly wonderful.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

UCLA is in the middle of discussions with the Association for Information and Media Equipment over UCLA’s use of streaming videos and video clips in their online course materials. While teachers have shown videos in classes since there have been videos, the embedding of copyrighted videos in online course, even password-protected course areas, is causing new copyright discussions. While UCLA feels that the TEACH Act of 2003 applies in this case, they are nonetheless ceasing to embed videos in online courses while they try to work out a settlement. Inside Higher Ed has a longer discussion of the issues involved in this article. One of the more interesting wrinkles is that copying a DVD in order to stream it online violates the DMCA which is not covered by the TEACH Act.

Unlike most news content online, the comments really add to the discussion happening here and I suggest checking them out. [via molly]

Sarah Glassmeyer has some great advice for people in the profession who are looking for mentoring or considering being a mentor. I find that aside from more official ALA sorts of set-ups, there are a lot of opportunities to help people who are newer to the profession sort of get their sea legs and sometimes it’s incredibly useful to give/get a “reality check” about what is considered normal in the workplace. I know I’ve benefitted greatly from other more expereinced librarians and technology folks giving me their read on a situation and I like to think I can do the same for others.