librarian.net

One of the types of questions we get a lot in Ask MetaFilter is “what book should I read on XYZ topic?” It’s one of those questions that the hive mind is actually good at answering because it’s just brainstorming and list generation by a self-selected group of people, not the “do I need to get this wound looked at?” sort in which you really shoudl ask a doctor. So, someone on MetaFilter decided to organize these questions into a wiki page. MetaFilter has our own wiki where a lot of information that may not need its own home on the site can reside, and where users can contribute content directly. The page is called ReadMe and contains a categorized list of over 650 topics on what to read, linking directly to the Ask MetaFilter thread where the topic was discussed. There’s even a section about libraries. It still needs a bit of tweaking, but what an awesome resource and a good concrete example of the nifty aggregating effects of blogs, and the “anyone can build something” effects of wikis.

A few nifty book-oriented and awesome library facades. And for a few more links to fill this out, here’s a great old photo of Fred Bullock, a librarian at the Cardiff Public Library, c. 1900 and a link to the award-winning Kansas City design (from 2005) with some detail about how the project was actually conceived and managed. My favorite part is the jury comment for the competition

This project celebrates books, reading, and the city in a joyfully direct and legible manner. The lovingly rendered level of detail at a massive scale brings the books to life, transforming these modest, familiar objects into monuments infused with hope and possibility. The result may be the world’s most humane and enjoyable parking structure.

[libact]

In wiki format: http://mywiki.ws/The_Most_Unusual_Books_of_the_World. update: there was a gross image on the top of that page for a while which is the way of wikis sometimes. Someone alerted me to it (and here via comments) and said I should remove my link. Instead, I went in and cleaned up the wiki which has better long-term and wide-reaching results. Sorry folks, especially if this was your first goatse (safe link, I swear it!).[slowreading]

Quick quiz: when you read a headline like the one in the New York Times today Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web do you think that the libraries involved are

a) sticking up for free access to information
b) prohibiting free access to information

Now read the article and tell me if you feel the same way. The article was also published in the International Herald Tribune with the title Research libraries close their books to Google and Microsoft which was where I read it at FreeGovInfo yesterday.

I have had a lot of people send me links to excellent things that I think other librarians might want. However, since I’m such a stuffy anti-capitalist, I sometimes shy away from “you might want to buy this” posts. Then my inbox fills up and I get into competitive Inbox Zero mode and I realize that one of the things that I like about my readers is that they’re not all like me and so this is why I am posting these.

• Excellent library love t-shirt from Gluekit’s new PartofIt project (launching any day now) which designs neat looking stuff to help raise funds for non-profits.
• Threadless “check out” double entendre t-shirt for your favorite bibliophile
• If you read the BibliOdyssey blog (and you should) you might be pleased to know that there is a companion book full of delightful images from ancient texts. I had the pleasure of meeting PK when I was in Australia and I had no idea something like this was in the works. However, I got a copy last week and while I’m still poring through the frontmatter, the restof it is the real deal. Nice book and the blog post about it has more information on the convoluted process of getting a blog into print with associated rights-haggling etc.
• Lastly, I was cleaning up my house up north and came across a few copies of Revolting Librarians Redux still in their “prepared for mailing” state. If you want one, KR and I are e-baying them off with the proceeds to go to the EFF (or another deserving charity if you’re so inclined). KR and I are pretty geographically dispersed, so signed copies might be a non-option, but ask us and we’ll do what we can. Want a copy? Click here.

Feel free to add other “perfect for the librarian who has everything” links below.

Lezende Vrouwen in de Kunst (women reading, in artworks). The site is in Dutch but you can just click across the century links up top. From the always excellent BibliOdyssey.

What happens to your library book before it gets to the shelves? This Flickr photoset can walk you through it. I learned bunches of things. Thanks to the Hatcher Library at the University of Michigan and Alexis for putting it all together.

I broke rule number eight, just now. [walt]

This is from a reader’s email. I know if you’re a bookstore you can pretty much order as many Harry Potters as you can, because you know they will sell, but how does a library decide how many Harry Potter books to buy? I do a lot of work in libraries, but I have never been on the book ordering ends of things. I know how librarians choose which books to buy, but not how many. If anyone would like to help out with some simple explanation for my library patron reader, I’d appreciate it. update: Glenn asks a good question in the comments: do libraries want our “old” copies when we’re done with them? I know there are a lot of HPs that are already gathering dust in homes across the US.

I have seen a few things that are only tangentially related to what I normally do here, but I thought you might like them.

• The New York Times does a photo essay on people and their avatars.
• Sethf does the research (yes with GOOGLE) to track down some of the facts behind Michael Gorman’s possible misquote of Jimmy Wales and who was behind it.
• Oh check me out, I’m in the BIGWIG social software showcase. I’m sorry to also be in the program, theoretically on a panel on Saturday. I said okay sometime in 2006, and had to say no sometime in March. That was apparently not enough time to not be in the program. So 1.0!
• LifeHacker does “book hacks” for the library using crowd.
• Alison Bechdel’s library card.