James Joyce in Ireland: Is for the librarians the same as by the librarians?

Interesting backstory about the timing of the National Library of Ireland’s decision to publish rare James Joyce manuscripts online. Controversial Joyce scholar, Danis Rose is claiming that EU copyright gives one “economic rights” if they are the first to publish public domain materials and is publishing these manuscripts via a US publishing house called House of Breathings. And maybe all libraries with digitized online manuscripts have these sort of warnings, but this collection seems more heavily warned than most, see below.

How do you search for something that’s NOT online, a fun and fascinating homework assignment

“Over the last week in my new first-year undergraduate course, Media Fluency for the Digital Age, my students have been wrestling with a very counterintuitive digital media assignment, and I think it’s worth exploring why these members of the “born digital” generation found this assignment so difficult — and so rewarding.” Professor Greg Downey discusses the results of his “hardest ever” homework assignment. Be sure to read down to the librarian shoutouts, and feel free to leave him a comment. [via @debcha]

National Library Week – you belong @ your library

So National Library Week starts today which is complicated because it’s a Sunday and most libraries are closed on Sunday. It’s also Easter which means some more libraries are closed on Easter. So this is good news if you’re scheming for stuff to do over the week, less good news if you’re a patron wanting to celebrate. This year’s theme is “You belong @ your library” which continues with the @ motif that ALA has been using since 1997. The actual national event has been going since 1958 and the first year’s theme was “Wake up and Read.” ALA has been the sole sponsor since 1974. If you want to get something started today, ALA has made some fairly nifty facebook “cover art” that you might like. Me, I’m waiting for the State of America’s Libraries report that is coming out on Monday because I always use those statistics in my digital divide talks and I’m always curious about trends in connectivity and tech use at libraries. Also who doesn’t like National Bookmobile Day?

This has been a tough year to be a library in many places. A friend sent me the video below where the Troy Library (MI) went all out with a “Okay you want to close the library? Let’s burn the books!” hoax campaign that actually got people thinking about why it’s important to keep the library doors open. While some folks might consider this an epic troll, I also think it does a good job redirecting people’s concerns from the Tea Party message of “money money” to the broader concern of “community community” which I think is a helpful shift and the social media angle is interesting. However not everyone thinks that this sort of stunt is helpful. As much as it was a fun jape, it doesn’t seem like any of the other library workers or supporters were in on the joke which turned into a bit of a PR mess. I’m not sure if the website for the Book Burning Party wasn’t as clear about their goals as it is now.

A good old fashioned linkdump


Public domain photograph by: US Navy, National Science Foundation. Link.

I’m back at home after meeting with a lot of terrific librarians in four different states. March is the busy month and after last month my plan is “not getting in a plane more than once a month for work.” I’ll be speaking with my good friend Michael Stephens at the Indiana Library Federation District Six conference next week. I’ll do a wrap-up of the talks I’ve been giving sometime later but news for me is mostly having more free time to actually attend things and not just speak at them. Getting to go to programs at the Tennessee Library Association conference and the National Library of Medicine’s New England Region one-day conference about social justice has really helped me connect with what other people are doing in some of the same areas I’m interested in. It’s sort of important to not just be a lone voice in the wilderness about some of this stuff, so in addition to the SXSW stuff (and talking to a great bunch of library school students in Columbia Missouri) getting to attend library events as an audience member has been a highlight of the past few weeks.

However I’ve been backed up on “stuff I read that I think other people might like to read.” Try as I may Twitter is still for hot potato stuff [i.e. Google’s April Fools Joke specifically, I felt, for librarians] and not for things that I think merit more thoughtful or wordy presentation. So, as I enter the first Thursday in over a month where I get to hang out at home all day, I’m catching up, not on reading because there is tons of time for reading while traveling, but on passing some links around. So, here are some things you might like to read, from the past few months, newest first.