If anyone with more of an understanding of the Montana ILL system would like to comment on this very odd post about a small library, the PATRIOT Act and an alleged “watch list” I would appreciate it. Update: story was not exactly true, the result of a misunderstanding, good to know.
who weeds the weeders?
They weeded the library science section at my local library. I took home a few books from the FREE cart and also snappd this picture.
a few things I have been reading
Some of these have been mentioned to death other places, some I haven’t seen a lot of talk on. I’ve been fighting with Gates Computers this week and haven’t been reflecting much but I thought you might like to read them too.
- Rochelle discusses politeness. Heidi offers some ideas from the world of engineering. Steve chimes in, agrees to disagree more on his very own blog. Walt discusses the line between candor and rudeness. Meredith has a well-thought out response with some action in the comments
- Richard Akerman talks about our OPACs and how they (sort of) solve some problems for humans but surprisingly don’t solve a lot of problems for machines talking to other machines. He asks “how can you expose your data for use by other people and machines“
- Eric Schwitzgebel asks “Do ethicists steal more books?” Part one & part two.
but what are people really reading
I’m fascinated by the Public Lending Right scheme wherein authors receive money from the government for the lending of their books in public libraries. Nothing like having a little money involved to get accurate statistics on who is reading what. One author reports on what people are actually reading at the library.
The truth is that public libraries have become a service for the very young – the place where you go to inspire the nippers with a love for literature. For better or worse (and I’d say worse), they are no longer where many adults go in search of information (what’s Google for, after all?).
If adults go at all, it seems that it’s hardback fiction that they are mainly after. Josephine Cox and Danielle Steel came in second and third place in PLR’s top twenty last year (with sales in Steel’s case totalling over 500 million, I’m not quite sure this is the kind of struggling writers that the Brophy’s had in mind). And so far as I can see, there were no authors of non-fiction for adults in the top hundred; though Terry Deary, who wrote the Rotten Romans etc for kids, non-fictin of a kind, does get there.
Unshelved says “read responsibly”
Unshelved, my favorite daily comic strip set in a public library is creating a READ poster for ALA.