1,082 books, the Penguin Classics Library, replaces personal library lost in a forest fire

Posted on by jessamyn

I always wondered what sorts of people bought the entire Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection [$8K at Amazon, with free shipping]. Well one sort is the librarian who has lost her entire personal library in a forest fire. She has no TV, no children, four cats and one very generous and thoughful husband.

Thousands of scorched tree trunks still range up the hillside across the street from Ms. Gursky’s new home here, but inside the house, her library is well on the way to recovery. In September, Ms. Gursky received a birthday gift from her husband that earned her the envy of her book-loving friends: the complete collection of the Penguin Classics Library, 1,082 books sold only by Amazon.com for nearly $8,000.

[thanks kathleen]

two posts on michigan library tech

Posted on by jessamyn

Two worthwhile stories from Ed Vielmetti’s blog Vacuum.

  1. Sony rootkit music off the Ann Arbor District Library’s purchase list – a story about Ed’s librarian telling him of their decision to not buy music from Sony that installs “rootkit like” technology. These music CDs install nefarious software on a user’s system, ostenisbly to prevent illegal copying, and DRM circumvention and is highly controversial.
  2. Interlibrary loan system MiLE in Michigan irrecoverably hacked – hacking is malicious vandalism, granted, but this is a confidence shaking security breach. Electronic ILL service in a good deal of Southeastern Michagan is broken beyond recovery until the roll-out of the next version of the software, at least a month away. This is a large-scale failure that should have been avoidable. Disasters sometimes happen. Are you preapred for yours? Joyhn Blyberg from the Ann Arbor District Library outlines steps libraries should take to secure their system, not later, now.

my talk at UAZ SIRLS

Posted on by jessamyn

I’m back from Tucson/Phoenix. I had a great time getting to spend the day with the students and faculty of the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science. I gave a variant of my digital divide talk The Information Poor & the Information Don’t Care Small Libraries and the Digital Divide (the notes look the same but all the talks are really really different). While I was in Arizona I also got to see the downtown branch of the Phoenix Public Library, the North Valley Regional Library (my first big suburban library!) and the Tucson Pima Public Library. I also did a quick walk around the University of Arizona library but got quickly distracted by the amazing art exhibit Reading Our Remains (waxed and sliced books, fascinating) and didn’t take a lot of other pictures.