Top 100 Library Books, from OCLC, who should know. Sort of a surprising list, in some ways. Chicago Manual of Style appears twice for different editions. I’m not sure why Environmental Tobacco Smoke: Proceedings of the International Symposium At McGill University made the list. They seem to be all either politics, management or reference books, with a few curveballs [no Googdnight Moon? Only three kids books?]
Category: books
RIP – print index medicus
Index Medicus was probably the first really high-end reference source I can remember using in college — for a paper on methemoglobinemia. I remember being so astonished that you could attain that level of access to medical information, and that it was available even to scrubs like me. This was back when online searching was pay-by-the-query Dialog searching and available only to highly skilled library staff. Now it’s 16 years later and the print version of Index Medicus is ceasing publication due to lack of subscribers, only 155 subscribers last year.
Library World Records… you got one?
Library World Records just came out on McFarland a few months back. Great idea… in need of a new URL. The author has also compiled a “best music hits chosen by a librarian” page. And, of course, he’s collecting stats for a second edition.
Daniel Boorstin memorial turns into “book lovefest”
I have been reading The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World which has a lovely foreword by James Billington, current Librarian of Congress. His predecessor, Daniel Boorstin, died recently at the age of 87. A memorial service was held yesterday at the Library of Congress.
“If Boorstin is remembered for nothing else, he will always be known as the one who opened up the Library of Congress to the people. Until he came along, the library existed pretty much to serve Congress. Boorstin saw the world’s largest repository of knowledge as “a multimedia encyclopedia” and insisted that the bounty be shared with everyone.” [see sidebar if you need a login. thanks dsdlc]
six easy steps to cataloging your home book collection
Want to catalog your home book collection? Kendall Clark shows you how in six easy steps, more or less. Part of his Hacking the Library series which is all well worth a read. [catalogablog]