Wipe yourself with a corporate logo

A Library Journal story:
Toilet paper printed with advertisements will appear in the bathrooms of the Port Chester-Rye Brook, NY, Public Library in October, according to The Journal News. The paper is 100 percent recycled, two-ply, and printed with soy-based ink. Venues that use the paper receive it for free, making it a potentially attractive way for cash-strapped libraries to reduce spending. (Advertisers pay $99 for 20,000 advertisements that appear on approximately 160 rolls.)

I would find it rather creepy to put a corporate logo on my ... myself. In that way. Ugh.

It may sound silly, but little things add up: According to EducationBug, the library must stock enough toilet paper for 180,183 annual visitors (plus a staff of 15). Plugging that figure into Kimberly-Clark’s professional use calculator yields more than 36,000 cases, meaning the library could be saving $70,000 per year or more on the deal. (Library Director Robin Lettieri could not immediately be reached for comment.)

Yeah, a substantial amount of dollars, fer sher, but ...

JSTOR Launches Register and Read

Saw this item back in March, and finally got around to it. Got some help in gaining some understanding of "The man in the high castle" by Philip K. Dick.

Penguin, 3M test eBook pilot

From a Twitter feed, a story

Big Six publisher Penguin Group, the New York Public Library (NYPL), the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), and 3M Library Systems today announced a pilot project to make Penguin ebooks available to patrons of The New York and Brooklyn public libraries six months after initial publication. The program will begin in August and, if successful, could roll out across the country. The move comes four months after Penguin pulled out of its contract with OverDrive.

ex-Libraries now Learning Centers

An article in Library Journal addresses a current in the library world: how will libraries deal with funding cuts?

Trenton’s un-libraries are still steaming ahead. Mayor Tony Mack reopened the former Cadwalader branch on June 4, according to the Times of Trenton. That’s the third of four library branches that had been closed due to budget cuts, leaving Trenton with only its main library operational. As LJ reported, Trenton’s Mayor and Council couldn’t provide the approximately $800,000 the Trenton Free Public Library (TFPL) required to keep the four branches open part time. Instead, the Mayor chose to reopen the buildings as “learning center libraries” not under the control of the library board or administration for a fraction of the cost. They can’t legally be called libraries, since New Jersey state law requires libraries to be governed by the library board and run by librarians.

Rather than leaving the buildings closed, Trenton has reconfigured them, relying on a small paid staff and volunteers.


The New Jersey Library Association has taken a dim view of staffing former library branches with unpaid and part-time workers rather than certified librarians. Under state law, public buildings that offer library services must be controlled by library boards.

Some might call that viewpoint spitting into the wind. What is the alternative, when there is not enough money?

TFPL Director Kimberly Matthews told LJ that the TFPL has proposed a number of alternatives for “providing additional library services throughout the community” in its 2013 draft budget, which was presented to Hutchinson on May 4. “We would love to explore a variety of different options of library service in an economically challenged city such as Trenton,” said Matthews. Options include “an Internet or Internet/bookmobile, and possibly book vending machines like they have in San Francisco.”

Without sufficient funds, of course, the public loses, but, is something better than nothing?

Outdoor library

from a Twitter post: An Outdoor Library in Ghent by Massimo Bartolini.

A young man writes: I personally haven’t visited a library in longer than I care to say, but if I happened upon this public outdoor library installed in the middle of a Belgian vineyard I would be tempted to grab a cork screw and picnic blanket to make a day of it. The outdoor library entitled Bookyard was built by Italian artist Massimo Bartolini for the Belgian art festival TRACK: A Contemporary City Conversation in Ghent. Visitors are invited to peruse the stacks and are free to take any book they find for a small donation at a designated box. Hopefully they empty the shelves before it rains. (via designboom)

Smartphone

In a MarketWatch column, Süreyya Ciliv, the chief executive officer of Turkcell, is quoted: “Turkey has changed. Here, now, my son won’t be held back,” Ciliv added. “By going to school in Turkey, he might even be better off. He gets to experience the dynamism of Turkey without sacrificing the information he has access to.” 

He adds: “Historically, the library was the center of knowledge, which is why in previous generations the Turkish businessman wanted to go abroad. Today, the library, all the knowledge my son might need, is right in here. The truth is, demand for our services in Turkey is increasing so rapidly that the biggest challenge for Turkcell is how to meet it.”

And what is the challenge for libraries? Perhaps twofold: to convince Mr. Ciliv that his smartphone is the conduit for all knowledge, and to convince him and others that, somehow, libraries are relevant.

Banned books library

San Antonio is one of four cities (the others being Houston, Albuquerque, and Tuscon) that will host, what Diaz has dubbed, “underground libraries,” community-minded reference/lending facilities forged with the primary purpose of keeping at least four copies of each book that was taken out of Arizona classrooms when the HB2281 law (sounds like a virus vaccine, no?) effectively killed off Tucson's ethnic studies and sent boxes of Latino literature to a book depository for the interim.

Greg Harman - The shelves at SWU's Underground Library are organized by first edition, signed, fiction, poetry, and banned. Underground Librarian Diana Lopez said that recognized local writers like Sandra Cisneros and Dagoberto Gilb have contributed works to the effort. SA Poet Laureate Carmen Tafolla even donated multiple copies of her book of poetry, Curandera, republished with "Banned in Arizona" on the cover.

 San Antonio's Underground Library erupts into operation this Thursday, May 10, with a reading from Gustavo Arellano, the much-syndicated Ask a Mexican columnist, who has just written a subversively salivating book called Taco USA (see review "Time of Mex-Tex"). On Arizona's recent legislative policies, the author, who is a great fan of Librotraficante, says: "Those idiot politicians thought that Mexicans and their allies would just allow them to strip the libraries and classrooms of such books; instead, it created the opposite effect. Sure, Arizona law has now pushed Latino literature to the back of the burro, but now you have a vibrant movement of people pushing and reading these books, and authors more than willing to engage in such actions to promote literature. To use that terrible but so apropos cliche, the sleeping Mexican has woken up." •

Open Access Spreads to Miami University

From ALA Magazine:

The librarians of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, joined the ranks of the worldwide open-access (OA) movement May 14 by voting to make their scholarly articles freely available in the university’s institutional repository, the Scholarly Commons. Based on Harvard University’s model policy, MU’s open-access principles take effect immediately and make the libraries the first department on Miami’s campus to successfully pass an open access policy.