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Here is my list of books read in 2015. https://www.librarything.com/catalog/waitingtoderail/readin2015

Cool post! More pictures! Sorry to hear that ADA requirements forbid it being used more. The mind reels at the possibilities of a library with a hidden room. The secret lair of a mild-mannered librarian by day and superhero by night would be the most obvious choice I suppose, but other possibilities are easily imagined. Thanks Jess!

That’s pretty remarkable–libraries have lots of delightful “secrets” in the form of fabulous books one can often find nowhere else, but it never occurred to me to look for actual secret rooms, too.

You have no idea how much I want to see all of these… and how much I want to get to explore all that must be inside the depths of the Astor Lenox Tilden building of the NYPL.

If you ever get an invite down there, take me with you? :)

I swear if I look at all those links I will dream I am in the bowels of a very old library tonight…! NOT for bedtime, I will look at it tomorrow though!! thanks.

We have underground fallout shelter tunnels at the Downtown Reno library…old civil defense supplies and all.

I love those chairs!!

Have you ever had a behind-the-scenes tour of the Boston Public Library, Jessamyn? I’m thinking you might have, but if not, give me a holler next time you’re down here! We have tons of nooks and crannies in the Central Library that are really fun to get lost in, provided you bring a cell phone. I *have* had trouble finding my way out of some levels of closed stacks…

Does this qualify? The Morristown, NJ, public library is running out of a store front while the library building gets repaired after a huge explosion wiped out its basement! No one was hurt. I have a picture of a portion of the store front, if anyone is interested.

I’m sure it is not a perfect solution, but I’ve been working on setting up a small library for the charter school my sons attend, and we are using libraryworld.com. It is only $365 a year and seems to have all the basic features that a small library would need (circulation, cataloging with Z39.50, an OPAC, etc. ). Another plus is that it is simple enough for anyone to understand and use. We are still cataloging and have only just begun circulating our collection so we will have to wait and see how it works for us, but so far I am pretty pleased.

What about ResourceMate (http://www.resourcemate.com/)? I work in a small college library and we recently purchased this product. You can purchase it for as little as $195 (one time fee). And what’s nice about it is that as your library grows, you can purchase add-ons as needed.

Hi Jessamyn

There are a couple of open source small library systems out there through Sourceforge.net

OpenBiblio
Senayan

Also Right On has a library automation program for small libraries though it’s gotten pricey.

http://www.rightonlibrarysoftware.com/

Hope this is helpful

Yes, cut all librarians before any cop. Protection from crime is a more essential task of the state — long, long before providing library services.

Of course, if we legalized drugs, we wouldn’t need as many cops, but that’s another issue….

I am in the process of setting up OpenBiblio for my church’s library (about 1,600 items). It has many shortcomings, but in general it provides a good platform for those needing cataloging and circulation functions for a small collection. I would guess that a collection of up to 5,000 items would pose no problems; not sure what the upper end would be.

It can run on a hosted web server, which an organization can obtain for less than $100 per year (and do quite a bit more with it as well – website, blog, wiki, etc.). It is as easy to install as WordPress, and configuring the software is fairly straightforward.

Strengths:
* MARC record importer
* Only need web browser and internet connection (no client software to install)
* Easy to create/edit patron and bibliographic records

Weaknesses:
* OPAC needs work (it is fairly limited – I am hoping to customize ours once we finish record clean-up)
* Report module is too complex for the average user (php/sql scripting required)
* No serials or acquisitions

Jessamyn – if you would like to look around the staff areas of our installation to see it for yourself, let me know and I can arrange for temporary access and a brief description of some of the things I’ve noticed while working with it.

I’m assuming the Cambridge visit is the public library, and if so you’re missing your visit to Houghton. I’ll try not to take it personally.

Actually, Toronto is in ON.

Oh hey, I skipped Houghton. My bad! I was actually talking about Samuel Johnson [and the awesome exhibit] over New Year’s. Thanks John [and David!]

I also forgot McGill!

Hey Daytum looks pretty interesting. Thanks for the tip.

Try the AUTODESK website, they might be available as free downloads there (though you might need to register an email address)-
It may be on the CD that came with Max -otherwise, look on thePirate bay…..

As I said in my blog post about this, I’m really bothered by the attribution of the building open source ILSes as one of the “stupidest strategies ever undertaken” to Cliff Lynch without an actual citation. Abram is a librarian and a Fellow of the Special Libraries Association – he should know the importance of citing sources!

Yeah I found that weird and damning myself. Some of the stuff in that paper could be argued either way but it was clear what the slant is and I thought that appeal to expert and one out of context quote was weird and sketchy. Really, Georgia PINES was stupid?

One of the things it seems to be saying is that open source is good in some contexts (infrastructure like Linux and Apache, or end-user like Firefox), but it’s not suitable for an ILS, because the proprietary ones are already mature. I guess that makes sense if people want to keep using legacy software, but where will the innovation come from if that’s the approach they take?

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by jessamyn west, May Yan. May Yan said: See comments! RT @rmazar @buridan @jessamyn: SirsiDynix lobbying paper against Open Source http://tinyurl.com/wlsirsi http://bit.ly/1YTgu4 [...]

Oh, SirsiDynix. Srsly? there are so many points in the document that made me hiccup with laughter. I like this quote: “Some of the most security-conscious entities, like the United States Department of Defense, restrict the use of open source software for fear that it could pose a terrorist opportunity.” (Oh noes! the terrorists are in ur library management system…doing..something…bad…)

That’ll be the same US DoD that recently released memo encouraging the use of OSS, then?

Clifford Lynch has clarified his position somewhat.

http://www.librarytechnology.org/blog.pl?ThreadID=134&BlogID=1

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Meredith and Scot Colford, sfn. sfn said: wow, librarian.net link to wikileaks document by stephen abram railing against open source ILS (and vendors of) http://tinyurl.com/yj9mryl [...]

I think it’s a pretty fair look at the challenges of software development on a large scale, for the library community, or anyone really. Any middle manager at Microsoft could have written this.

EXCEPT

Except there’s a strong undercurrent of … venom? Maybe it is just Abram’s rhetorical style, which can be grating (ie not citing sources). This is essentially a memo to people that trust Sirsi, and he can say whatever he wants, and that’s fine. Some examples that jumped out at me though were:

“The open source process is too organic and lacks tight priorities and strong management oversight.”

“…the small libraries of Georgia who are captive to suboptimal
open source systems.”

“Testing is the responsibility of the original programmer and their buddies.”

Time has not been kind to Stephen. No sources, lots of logical fallacies, innuendo…this isn’t the kind of work he did when he was working for ProQuest Canada.

There are a lot of things you can ding OSS on. I don’t think he hit one of them. This reads more like propaganda points for salescritters than any kind of logical analysis.

I really miss the Stephen I met years ago. Coming south wasn’t good for him.

[...] This post was Twitted by DrWeb2 [...]

Stephen has posted about this and is responding to comments:
http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2009/10/its_about_a_res.html

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by qadmon_rss: Edublogs: SirsiDynix Corp lobby paper against Open Source technologies: Interesting thing in my inbox .. http://bit.ly/4fbgq0…

[...] has prevented me from actually, you know, posting anything. Yesterday, however, I stumbled upon a post by the awesome Jessamyn West about a document that Stephen Abram, Vice President of Innovation for [...]

Stephen Abram has joined the dark side. What a pity. We currently use Innovative and are exploring open source options. Just to make certain we did a thorough job on our homework, we also obtained a quote from SirsiDynix. Their quote for annual maintenance was even higher than our Innovative annual maintenance fees. Needless to say, I was surprised.

Abram manages to slam a system that serves a heck of a lot of citizens in Georgia as being a stupid development after failing them for years with his own company’s offering, makes numerous hints about unsavoury aspects of OSS, even a terrorist connection no less, purposely mixes up library decisions to join PINES the consortium with Evergreen the system, and then calls for a “respectful” discussion when the cat is let out of the bag. I guess he didn’t link open source to drowning kittens but this seems unworthy of a pundit of such stature. If anything, Lynch comes across even worse than Abram. I can sort of understand flailing around on a sinking ship as is the case for Abram, but someone should tell Lynch that Koha is more than a decade old now and Evergreen has been live for years. Indiana, Michigan and further up north, I think there are a bunch of big Canadian sites, once a sirsidynix stronghold. This firestorm might have made some sense in 1999, it should be embarrassing to everyone in 2009.

Nicely done. (Guest posts? That’s what you get for being MUCH more high-profile than me. I haven’t received such an offer in months. Too bad–I can always use a good laugh.) But, yes, even low-level bloggers like me get “your readers really need to know about this” emails on a fairly regular basis.

Great recommendation. What little content those websites address it is only a facade to their true intentions of obtaining and selling contact information to for-profit universities.

honestly i though the “:chocolate bar in a book” thing was funny… not trying to spam you… oh well.

I too get these emails and ignore them – I’m with you on this. I actually had friends tell me recently I was on some of these lists and I emailed them to tell them not to trust these sites, they’re too suspicious.

I’ve gotten many of these as well and asked them to stop e-mailing me. Thanks for writing this.

I not only get these, I usually get the email 2-3x which is a pretty good tipoff it’s not an individualized email :).

Thanks for the tip! I’m not far off creating my own website and blog and it’s great to know these sort of things.

I’ve been getting a *ton* of requests from these spammers. Looking at my logs, they are driving a significant amount of traffic to my blog, but I feel no obligation to help them out since I feel they’re profiting from my content.

I haven’t gotten any such requests yet; you people make me feel like such a nobody. However, people (bots?) often leave comments of the “Great blog; I’m definitely going to add this to my feed!” variety, with a link to some garbage site. Usually I delete the comments altogether, though if I’m in doubt about its authenticity I’ll just remove the link.

I just left a link to this post in the comments for this Booklist reference blog. Sigh.

Thank you for highlighting this. It seemed as if these popped up everywhere, but no one when out and called it what it is. I get frustrated when librarians do link to it (whether to praise or criticize).

Wait a minute, wait a minute … Aren’t by default blogger links of the “nofollow” type??? Google is not supposed to crawl onto urls posted on blogger sites. I’ve seen some people tweaking their blogger templates to make their urls “nofollow=false” and allow spamdexing. Am I just confused?

Sorry for not jumping on the bandwagon, but I respectfully disagree. I’ve got the librarian = information junkie trait, so if I find good information I recommend it and yes, even link to it, regardless of the junk surrounding it. In fact, I have a link to the Learngasm site (which I think is one of the offenders being cited here) on my blog. Of course, it’s followed by a commentary on how badly written many of the referenced sites are. ;-)

I’m glad you posted this because when I see some of these “best of” links on Twitter, my first thought is, “bullshit.” These are generic lists of the same stuff we already know. But I don’t want to say that because I’m just me, and who listens to me? But since it’s you saying it, maybe everyone will catch on to the scam. FYI, I let someone do a guest post last year on my blog because it’s not much of a blog (in the library world; in the world of awesomeness, it’s, well, awesome, but not so important in the library world). But I’ll try not to make that mistake again. These fly-by-night link whores shouldn’t get help from us because we should know better.

Yes, I’ve been guilty of linking to them. They’ve been around for a long time, I think, but seem to have ramped up this strategy lately and it is becoming annoying. Some people tell me they see value in the listings, and it does indeed bring traffic to my blog, but they are very poorly done having blogs in completely incorrect categories. Maybe we should take the cue and re-do the lists correctly if there is a need. ;-)

There is such a fine line between lists with value and linkbait.

It’s a bind, I admit. I really like chewy lists of good information but I also feel that there’s a blogging community in some sense and that people who just ask other people for incoming links [who don't comment, who don't otherwise have a personal profile] just seem like telemarketers of the internet world. They don’t seem to add any value and the existence of sites like theirs reduces, however infinitesimally, the value of the internet as a resource overall. Every time I see a list like that, I think “I should go make my own list, using good information not a quick Google and then bug people to link to that instead”

And jdoewy I don’t know about Blogger.com but wordpress definitely doesn’t make links nofollow by default.

[...] On not linking to thin-content (spammish) sites : Do everyone a favor, dont be taken in [...]

I saw the video and it made me do a gut-check.

But the more I thought about it, the more got to thinking that 8% has got to be a bogus number. If Firefox has a 22% market share then more than 8% of the general population knows enough about web browsers to download the program and use it instead of Internet Explorer. Right?

The larger point that I believe the video was trying to make was that the web experience is the same as the search engine experience. And now Google Chrome, of which the video is actually about, now makes a lot more sense to me.

Of course, that doesn’t mean they don’t know how to use it, just that they had trouble describing it. And, to tell the truth, if some stranger on the street stuck a microphone in my face & asked me a question like that I might not do so well in answering it either. And I consider myself fairly computer savy. Doing something and talking about it coherently aren’t always the same thing.

My mother uses firefox and she wouldn’t be able to tell you what a browser is - just that firefox is less annoying than IE.

Then you’ve got my coworkers who call firefox ‘motzilla’…

The 8% number strikes me as too low (as Mita said), but having not done something similar myself it is hard to evaluate. I wonder if a similar survey would have the same results with a higher education audience.

[...] West shared this yesterday “A team from Google interviewed dozens of people in Times Square the other day, asking a simple [...]

That sounds right to me. I often ask students if they have a web based email and get blank stares until I start listing off options and hit on the one they use. I especially relate to that “click the e” sentiment. My mom emailed me regularly my first year of undergrad and stopped suddenly one day because my dad had moved the icon on the desktop. Not deleted it, just moved it, but that was all it took. My mom has 2 PhDs (psychology and anthropology) and uses voice recognition software on a daily basis, but she definitely has no concept of what a web browser is, or that you can minimize software without closing it, or have more than one thing running at a time. I really like these reminders that pull me out of my bleeding edge bubble. Thanks!

what ellie says; with the caveat that some do ‘know what a browser is’, and to a large extent even what it does; and just don’t know that it’s *called* a browser. and did the interviewer give any context at all? (can’t view from work. will when at home.)

funny thing, our intertubes. it seems like they reveal a lot of ignorance that we-all as a society used to be, well, ignorant of.

There was a longstanding misunderstanding in my childhood home that a computer had a monitor, a keyboard and a modem. My first computer in college was a Mac Plus, with the monitor integrated with the CPU and the modem external. Later computers I owned had separate monitors but internal modems. But according to the formula, the thing that was not a monitor and not a keyboard must be the modem.

There is plenty in the library literature about people not understanding that computers are not necessarily connected to the internet. The vast majority of people drive their cars every day without worrying about what the road is made of, etcetera.

But this video is absolute crap. They are clear that their survey includes only “people we interviewed on this day” (and which day is that, Scott from Google?), which would be a convenience sample, and the results can’t really be applied to any population at large. The presentation of the results suggests they are trying to ridicule the informants, and that alone makes me think, crap, crap, crap.

Some more interesting questions to me:

First, should people know the difference between a search engine and a browser? I’m all for education and empowering people through how-stuff-works, but requiring technical knowledge can be a barrier to access, and as a librarian, the access matters most.

Second, should libraries include internet search engines in their federated search tools and try to get people to use “The library” as “their browser”?

I don’t think most people think about it, or necessarily should.

It’s almost like asking people about the service that delivers their newspaper. Does it come by truck? By plane? Where is it printed. We only really care if the information gets to us, we only really pay attention if it doesn’t.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this video, and I think it still has a strong message, but it’s really more about culture than knowledge. What’s shocking is how hard the edge and how small the dimensions of our culture where our = our tightly knit but widely diverse internet culture that seems so ubiquitous when we spend so much time soaking in it. I’d imagine you’d get a very similar accuracy rate if you asked “What’s a spanner?” It’s an uncommon, misleading name for something that everybody knows and has used, from a foreign culture. I also think they’d have gotten many more flashes of recognition and less “why is this person trying to stump me, what I think I understand must be wrong” if they had asked “What’s a WEB browser?” It’s kinda unfair and it feels a little like those horrid “dumb people on the street” segments that Leno and such would do.

That said, because there are so many different kinds of people doing so many different kinds of things in our culture, it’s easy to lose sight of the line between cultural knowledge and near-universal knowledge, especially when our geekly cultural knowledge has broken out and left little untouched…. I know I had an almost physical reaction watching this video and seeing that edge snap suddenly into focus. I’m inspired to do more usability testing. =)

[...] This post was Twitted by sk_showers [...]

Isn’t this the library from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast? It sure does look like heaven.

[...] Readers, librarians, bibliophilies, don’t miss this panoramic library view. (Nod librarian.net) [...]

Is it St. Florian Monastery-Library, Austria.
http://www.thegentlemanscholar.com/Famous_Libraries.html
(It’s about halfway down the page)

I think it is the St. Florian Library in Austria.

http://www.library.calligraphy-mvk.ru/content/view/36/63/lang,english/

I don’t know where it is but it is heavenly!

My search has confirmed Mary Danko’s guess:

http://cms.ttg.at/websites/stflorian/intro.htm

If you watch the images on this page, you will recognize the library…

Further into the site:

http://cms.ttg.at/alias/stift-st-florian/kunst/270306/bibliothek.html?&_lang=en

My only comment…”Can I have one?” And, I have no idea where this is except possibly, Library Heaven.

i think, its the “Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen”
http://www.stiftsbibliothek.ch/index.asp

But - anyway - its heaven!!

Thanks for the link to that ‘When Technology Fails’ report - it’s an interesting read. You’d think with all those issues the tech companies would want to provide better support for their customers but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I always got the feeling that the prejudice is the other way around for Evergreen. That it works for large and complicated system but doesn’t “scale down” to small libraries. Not that I believe it, but that seems to be what I overhear.

Reading the tech failure report with interest, thanks. Broken link on requesting donated copies of Content?

Jessamyn I tend to agree with Jon — that people assume it can’t scale down (even though there are some very small libraries using EG). After all, it runs PINES, and that’s a 275-library network. But still, happy to see EG get some Jessamyn-Juice. :)

Nice wrapup… I’ll add Cory Doctorow’s book (funny how we always call him Cory Doctorow, not Cory and not Doctorow) to my reading queue. I chewed through a lot of books recently and it was refreshing to get Back to Print.

Fixed the broken link! Yeah I think of EG as being really flexible personally but I think some people who don’t know the whole Georgia backstory [for some reason people up here don't seem to as often] think of it as being more small-scale? I have no idea why.

They way we have Evergreen set up, it appears to each library’s patrons that they have just a catalog for their library. We’re just sharing bib records, server space, etc. because Michigan already has the Michigan eLibrary, which is used for statewide ILL. Our smallest library has a service population of approx. 100, while the largest, nearly 200,000. It seems to scale really well in both directions!

Out of curiosity, are those folks discussing any other systems like Koha? I’m curious now what conceptions folks have about them. I’m a bit surprised that there’s folks who have heard of Evergreen but don’t know much about PINES….makes me wonder how they are hearing about this and what they think about the other systems…

Yeah, I’m not so comfortable with this…

I don’t know, I kinda like seeing libraries mentioned this way too …not so much for what it meant to the Wasilla Public Library, but what it tells the rest of us about a potential future … as an HR-ish friend of mine always said — “past behaviour is usually a pretty good predictor of future behavior.” Cheers.

[...] a book banner. I hadn’t seen (or to be honest looked for) any evidence of this until Jessamyn posted about it at librarian.net, with a link to a Time magazine article: Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject [...]

Thank you for posting this, I was wondering if anyone would. Librarians go out of our way to be politically neutral, even when we should express outrage or, at the very least, *concern* over such matters.

rcn
San Francisco Bay Area

[...] from http://www.librarian.net/stax/2366/sarah-palin-vp-nominee/   « Librarian fired for book on unsavory patrons | [...]

[...] mayor she talked to the town librarian about banning books she found [...]

We’ve learned that the woman McCain calls a reform-minded Washington outsider supported the construction of Alaska’s infamously wasteful “bridge to nowhere.” In 2006, Palin campaigned for it. She also sought hundreds of millions of federal dollars for other pork barrel projects.

We’ve learned that as mayor, Palin raised sales taxes for pet projects. That’s not uncommon, but it’s not something a conservative reformer does. We’ve learned she recently hired a private attorney to defend herself in an investigation over whether she abused the power of her office to fire a state police official who refused to dismiss her former brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper. We’ve learned she is linked to the Alaska Independence Party, a group that wants Alaskans to be able to vote on whether or not to secede from the United States. We’ve learned that this so-called family values candidate tried to hide the fact that her teenage daughter is five months pregnant, out of wedlock.

Amid all these disturbing facts, it’s easy to forget that she is totally unqualified to for the position that John McCain has given her.

[...] Sarah [does not HEART] Polar Bears and Librarians. [...]

Does anyone have any idea which books, specifically, Palin tried to ban? Not that it matters - book banning is appalling regardless - but I’m curious and thought that perhaps someone here might know or have the contacts to find out.

I wonder what books were banned? I bet someone will turn up the list.

In the school district in Texas where I went to high school in the 1980s, there was an organization called the Committee of Concerned Citizens, who gave the district the list of books to ban every year.

I wonder if Palin was part of such an organization, or if she had a standard list from her church?

The specific book list would be so interesting.

This is the list of books Palin tried to have banned. As many of you will notice it is a hit parade for book burners. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Blubber by Judy Blume Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson Canterbury Tales by Chaucer Carrie by Stephen King Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Christine by Stephen King Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau Cujo by Stephen King Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Decameron by Boccaccio East of Eden by John Steinbeck Fallen Angels by Walter Myers Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes Forever by Judy Blume Grendel by John Champlin Gardner Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling Have to Go by Robert Munsch Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Impressions edited by Jack Booth In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Lord of the Flies by William Golding Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein Lysistrata by Aristophanes More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier My House by Nikki Giovanni My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara Night Chills by Dean Koontz Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Ordinary People by Judith Guest Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz Separate Peace by John Knowles Silas Marner by George Eliot Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain The Bastard by John Jakes The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier The Color Purple by Alice Walker The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks The Living Bible by William C. Bower The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman The Pigman by Paul Zindel The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders The Shining by Stephen King The Witches by Roald Dahl The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

Andrew, can you please tell us what your source is for this list? Thanks in advance!

[...] I came across a disturbing post by an American librarian on her blog librarian.net.  She discusses an incident in the past poliitcal life of the Republican candidate for Vice President, Sarah Palin. I try to keep “who to vote for” politics pretty well off of this blog and prefer to discuss [...]

[...] News, August 1997, which has been making the rounds on the web (for instance, as well as this, and Jessamyn has discussed the library implications): Opal Toomey, Esther West and Ann Meyers don’t seem like politically [...]

You folks have to get the facts first, and from an unbiased source, before you transmit pure fiction on your blogs.

[…] can read the rest of this blog post by going to the original source, here […]

[…] no librarian.net a propaganda do Sony Reader, que está no metro de Boston. Eu achei engraçado, mas acho que vai […]

When did you see that? We had them in San Francisco maybe 4 or 5 months ago, and I think the “Your library may vary” parenthetical wasn’t part of ours. Maybe the took some heat for that and tried to make them nicer, or maybe I’m just remembering it wrong.

In the ad, it looks like a page of text on a gray clipboard. Ooooh! Sexy!

@colin: this was just a few days ago. I’d love to see if I could find a version without the parenthetical. It looks like you’re right according to the discussion happening on the Sony blog about it.

@jessamyn

Yes, i found the photo! taken in San Francisco on 29 September, no parenthetical. If you really want to see it, we can try to figure out how to get it off the phone.

I’m a librarian in Boston. The first version of those signs (at South Station) did not have parentheticals. Now they do. They may have been trying to make them nicer, but they’re just more insulting and annoying now. I don’t really think discouragement of library use is a great marketing strategy.

[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptI’m still holding out hope that my booklist will gain another item or two, but I know I’m not doing any more public speaking in 2007 so I thought I’d do a wrap up and talk a little bit about behind the scenes stuff at librarian.net inc. … […]

Well, damn on all the bad news, and good for you to say thank you even as you’re dealing with things not to be thankful for. I was thinking about you today as I was writing a post about “how to be famous” and I was thinking, I don’t even know why I’m bothering. You wrote the book on being a graceful public presence.

The things you talk about aren’t frippery. 18 months into our move to Florida I’m still adjusting, but the loose ties I have around the world make the move survivable.

[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptWell, damn on all the bad news, and good for you to say thank you even as you’re dealing with things not to be thankful for. I was thinking about you today as I was writing a post about “how to be famous” and I was thinking, … […]

For the holiday sidebar:

I design library and book-themed stuff (t-shirts, etc.) and sell them through CafePress. http://www.girl-ish.com/library

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I want the relativity watch.

And Part of It offers a really sleek Library shirt designed by Ryan Waller, with a portion of the profits designated to the New York Public Library.

Thanks for linking to us earlier, Jessamyn! We appreciate it!

http://www.partofit.org

Woo hoo! Maybe I can even get this counted as “work” time!!