Kay Cunningham's List: Libraries and Librarianship

blog on the "intersection of libraries, technology, and the community"

www.theanalogdivide.com - Preview

blogs libraries technology on 2009-12-12

'Yeah, yeah, the Internet is killing the printed page—it was in all the papers. But four-color inks may yet rescue publishing from the gray dawn of Kindle-dom.'

www.villagevoice.com/...best-comics-and-graphic-novels - Preview

lists books graphic_novels 2009 on 2009-12-09 and saved by 2 people

'While a local off-site storage facility may be a viable option, there’s still the question of why so many books need to be removed from a seven-story 1970s building that was built to have a capacity of more than 2 million volumes – half of what the library has today.
The reason, Thorin conceded, is that the library has shifted to become a Learning Commons, a building that houses books, but also has a cafe, study spaces and classrooms. “The library has tripled in use since creating the Learning Commons,” she said. “It is a key place where lots of things happen, but some people see it as a distancing away from the true purpose of a library. I see it as moving closer to that'

www.insidehighered.com/...syracuse - Preview

libraries books storage learning_commons on 2009-11-15 and saved by 2 people

'What started as a debate over whether brick-and-mortar libraries would survive much further into the 21st century turned into an existential discussion on the definition of libraries, as a gathering of technologists here at the 2009 Educause Conference pondered the evolution of one of higher education’s oldest institutions.'

www.insidehighered.com/...library - Preview

lilbraries e-resources Educause on 2009-11-07 and saved by 13 people

"This site is a collection of public library holdings that we find amusing and maybe questionable for public libraries trying to maintain a current and relevant collection. Contained in this site are actual library holdings. No libraries are specifically mentioned to protect our submitters who might disagree with a particular collection policy. (A good librarian would probably be able to track down the holding libraries without too much trouble anyway…)"

awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com - Preview

books libraries weeding on 2009-10-26 and saved by 33 people

'Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. So you might think that typing his name into Virgo, Virginia's online library catalog, would start you off with a book about him.
Jean A. Bauer tried it the other night. At the top of the results list were papers from a physics conference in Brazil.
The problem is that traditional online library catalogs don't tend to order search results by ranked relevance, and they can befuddle users with clunky interfaces. Bauer, a graduate student specializing in early American history, once had such a hard time finding materials that she titled a bibliography "Meager Fruits of an Ongoing Fight With Virgo."'

chronicle.com/...48588 - Preview

catalogs libraries academic_libraries integrated_library_systems ils on 2009-10-06 and saved by 2 people

'The new study examines how libraries can improve the distribution and use of their materials in a technology-centric environment. But "On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control" is worrisome to some in the library community because it suggests that the Library of Congress should scale back its role as the leading organization for cataloging and classifying library materials.'

chronicle.com/...422 - Preview

catalogs cataloging Library_of_Congress on 2009-10-06

'A new Chronicle article on trends in library catalog software has touched off an online reader debate about who's to blame for patrons' search frustrations and how to fix the situation. The article discussed how libraries are trying to out-Google Google with easy-to-use, online catalog-search software, while “pockets of resistance” in library circles feel the new products dumb down the research process.'

chronicle.com/...8300 - Preview

libraries catalogs search ils integrated_library_systems on 2009-10-06

'Libraries' online catalogs are typically one module of an integrated software system that runs library functions like the circulation desk, acquisitions, and cataloging. They are a window into what libraries manage inside their integrated systems, Mr. Breeding said, which tends to be mostly the print collections. But the problem is they lack a good way to include the growing electronic part of the library collection, he said.'

chronicle.com/...48588 - Preview

electronic_resources_management catalogs searching search libraries on 2009-10-01 and saved by 2 people

'Academic librarians may blow off steam ranting about the differences between expensive education and cheap credentialing, but in reality there are many non-traditional students for whom the traditional institution catering to 18- to 22-year-olds holds no special appeal. And even for those traditional students and their parents it will become increasingly difficult to entice them to go $30,000 into debt for the privilege of experiencing book-filled libraries and a host of non-essential amenities like rock climbing walls and luxury dorm rooms—especially when there’s no guarantee of a degree-worthy job at the end of it all.'

www.libraryjournal.com/...CA6698636.html - Preview

online_education higher_education academic_libraries on 2009-09-26

'With less than a day to spare before layoff notices were to be sent to library staff, the Pennsylvania Senate approved a law September 17 that gives Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter the revenue to fund the Free Library of Philadelphia. “This is indeed the legislation that was needed for the City of Philadelphia to avoid the ‘Doomsday’ Plan C budget scenario, which would have resulted in the layoff of 3,000 city employees and forced the closing of all libraries,” exulted an FLP blog post moments after the bill passed.'

www.ala.org/...phillylibssaved091809.cfm - Preview

libraries Philadelphia funding budgets Pennsylvania on 2009-09-24

"We are six librarians working in academic, public, and school libraries across the United States. In addition to essays by its founders, In the Library with the Lead Pipe will feature articles by guests representing special libraries and archives, as well as educators, administrators, library support staff, and community members. If you want to submit a guest post, see our submission guidelines.

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is intended to help improve our communities, our libraries, and our professional organizations. Our goal is to explore new ideas and start conversations; to document our concerns and argue for solutions. Each article is peer-reviewed by at least one external and one internal reviewer."

inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org - Preview

blogs librarians librarianship libraries on 2009-09-17 and saved by 9 people

'Instead of integrating library promotion, advocacy, and community-specific targeted services, we have left “outreach” outside of the inclusive library whole to be an afterthought, a department more likely to get cut, or work function of only a few, such as your subject librarians. If we kill this notion, if we consider the word and the separate entity of outreach as dead, we are more likely to be able to embrace and participate in activities formerly known as outreach and incorporate this essential part of our jobs into our daily work routine.'

inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/...outreach-is-undead - Preview

librarians libraries promotion outreach on 2009-09-17

'As libraries begin data mining in the above areas, librarians can anticipate converging toward sets of key questions and consistent metrics for answering them. For example, if a library is considering beginning a digitization program, it is first necessary to decide which resources to digitize. This will hinge on a variety of factors, such as uniqueness, accessibility, and demand. Analysis of library holdings, ILL borrowing requests, circulation statistics, and other data will help quantify these factors and, ultimately, help librarians make informed decisions. As librarians gain more experience in making their data work harder, both in terms of gathering information and applying it, the process of culling data within particular contexts will likely become systematized and consistent; standard decision-making criteria and performance benchmarks will emerge.'

www.libraryjournal.com/...CA6298444.html - Preview

datamining data change libraries on 2009-08-29 and saved by 6 people

'There is a temptation in library discussions to focus on discovery and end-user issues when thinking of bibliographic data. However, bibliographic data is increasingly important to efficient library operations more generally. Think of the blurring of circulation and resource sharing in consortial arrangements, the issues of managing and tracking print collections in the context of the mass digitization and off site storage initiatives, connections between external discovery environments and library systems, resolution and the management of knowledge bases, and so on. Systemwide data synchronization and data integrity issues are becoming more central. Increasingly we recognize that efficient management of resources imposes data needs.'

orweblog.oclc.org/...001494.html - Preview

digitization data data_management technology libraries change on 2009-08-29

'For a variety of reasons, IM software (and widgets) are more popular than ever among libraries that want to offer synchronous online reference, as new digital reference services are launched using IM (as opposed to using web chat clients from QuestionPoint, Altarama, etc.) and other libraries (like Temple) are moving to drop their longstanding subscriptions to web chat software.'

www.teachinglibrarian.org/...n-at-princeton-university.html - Preview

IM web_2.0 reference_service digital_reference libraries change on 2009-08-29

'It was as if we were talking about the next frontier – even though digital reference is hardly new. But digital reference is emerging as the library service – and technology – that best moves us into the next Web revolution.'

acrlog.org/...the-real-time-library - Preview

digital_reference reference_service libraries academic_libraries web_2.0 technology on 2009-08-29 and saved by 4 people

Information about public libraries and how they are funded

geekthelibrary.org/...index.html - Preview

libraries on 2009-08-23 and saved by 2 people

'Speaking at a panel on the Google settlement at the National Press Club here Tuesday, Band said it is obvious that any library that hopes to remain competitive will be forced to purchase an institutional subscription from Google Book Search.
“[The university’s] faculty will insist upon it,” he said. “Its students will insist upon it.”
“There’s a product they have to have, and in essence there’s one supplier,” Band added. '

www.insidehighered.com/...google - Preview

Google Google_books libraries on 2009-08-12 and saved by 4 people

The Lyrasis Job Bank lists positions available at libraries of all types and sizes.

www.lyrasis.org/Job-Bank.aspx - Preview

librarians jobs employment hiring on 2009-07-01