Arizona House Bill 2165, which was enacted in April, adds digital books and electronic records to the state’s existing privacy law, stipulating that anyone who releases information about a user’s library activities will be charged with a misdemeanor. “Over the years we’ve dealt with internet privacy for many different reasons, including identity theft,” Arizona Rep. … Continue reading Expanding Privacy Legislation to Include Ebooks
At the beginning of every online business reference workshop that I teach, I ask students to submit a stumper: a business reference question that has them shaking their heads. (Or shaking in their boots!) This is a sampling of some of those tricky questions as experienced by real librarians and researchers. STUMPERS: Companies Q: I … Continue reading Making Sense of Business Reference
Timothy Egan received the 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction for Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher. Richard Ford received the Medal for Excellence in Fiction, for Canada. The following excerpts are from interviews with Egan and Ford conducted by Booklist editors Brad Hooper and Donna Seaman, respectively. TIMOTHY EGAN, SHORT NIGHTS OF … Continue reading A Q&A with Winners of the 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction
The act of reading is evolving. Today’s readers can experience the same story as they toggle between audiobooks in the car, ebooks on the iPad, and paperbacks at home, and young people in particular are naturals in this transmedia world. Introducing these digital natives to literature as audiobooks can be as easy as maintaining a … Continue reading Sound Literature
Linda Eschen began her first day as a library volunteer at Livermore Valley (Calif.) Charter School when the school itself opened in 2004, unpacking boxes and cataloging books. The newly formed school already had a library collection of sorts, says Eschen—an assortment of donated books in a teacher’s garage. Since then, she’s become the full-time librarian for 1,085 … Continue reading The Void in Charter Schools
Technology, as always, was on display at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. Consistent with the strong attendance figures, activity in the exhibit hall seemed especially brisk this year. As the largest exhibition of library-oriented technology and content products worldwide, ALA Annual offers librarians a unique opportunity to review the latest offerings from nearly every … Continue reading Enabling Access, Engagement, and Efficiency
Librarians are looking at the possibility of reviewing apps for developers and putting our expert imprimatur on their content and value, just as we already do for books and other formats. Regardless of what you think are the best ways to incorporate apps into services and programs for children, librarians agree that they are important … Continue reading Apps and Autism
The activists behind Libraries Without Borders (Bibliothèques Sans Frontières) understand that priority must be given to food, water, shelter, and medicine. They also recognize that little attention is paid to another basic human necessity: the knowledge resources needed to cope with catastrophe. Founded in Paris in 2007, Libraries Without Borders (LWB) provides targeted books and … Continue reading Disaster Relief … with Books
“You don’t even have to bring the author to your town anymore,” says Johannes Neuer, associate director of marketing for NYPL. “Google Hangouts are the perfect places to create brand engagement.” When Neuer talks about social media tools, libraries should listen. Hangouts is just one of many public-facing platforms NYPL has taken into the fold … Continue reading How Libraries Are Using Social Media
During the Save Ohio Libraries movement in 2009, some libraries in Ohio jumped into Twitter. Undoubtedly, they saw it as another avenue for getting the word out about the imminent and catastrophic budget cuts being proposed by Ohio’s governor. However, two major factors prevented them from really using Twitter as an effective rallying tool. The … Continue reading Understanding Social Capital
The only certainty in the library community is that we live in uncertain times. Buffeted by technological turbulence, the very roles and functions of libraries are up for reexamination and reinvention, as evidenced by the articles in American Libraries’ June 2013 E-Content Digital Supplement. But the truly fundamental change is a shift in foundational relationships—as … Continue reading Librarians Working Together
Snow Fall. After several years of hypothetical discussion about the possibilities of transmedia, it took a sportswriter working for a newspaper to demonstrate the power of internet-based publishing. In a single blow, the New York Times reset the bar for interactive online narratives. Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek is a gripping story of … Continue reading The Unpackaged Book
