Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Hair


Minutes later, when I answered the Information Desk phone, a woman if we owned Hair on DVD.

The stage play? I asked.

In the background I heard a younger woman's voice (daughter) say
no, not the play, the 1979 movie.

Hewlett doesn't own it, but a few other libraries do, including Peninsula. I told her so, and gave her that phone number.

Trigun


A young man called, and asked for Trigun. I have never heard of the word; luckily the OPAC has entries. Its a series of graphic novels, as well as a set of DVDs based thereon (Based on the comic by Yasuhiro Nightow.). The record shows this summary: This DVD contains 26 episodes total. This box set contains English and Japanese dialogue with English subtitles. In the distant future... on a desert planet...there is a legendary gunman. His names is Vash the Stampede. A gunslinger so dangerous, a $60,000,000,000 reward has been placed on his head!.

When I told him that only the Bethpage Library owns the DVD series, he said, oh, okay, and started to say goodbye. I did tell him we could interloan it, and he asked how long that would take. Three to five business days, I responded. Never mind, he said. WOuld you like their phone number? I asked. No, he said, I can get it online.

Left me baffled.

Overdue books: creative leniency

Boxes of food items used to pay fines for overdue books were moved from the library in Conneaut, Ohio, to a food pantry van. 








Since the beginning of the economic downturn, librarians across the country have speculated that fines for overdue items are keeping people from using the library — particularly large families whose children take out (and forget to return) many books at a time. Some libraries learned that the fines, which are often as low as 25 cents an item per day, quickly multiplied for many people and were becoming an added hardship.

“We can’t push the cost to consumers because they’re also struggling,” said Richard Sosa, the finance director of the Denver system, which has $9 million worth of books in circulation through 23 libraries and two bookmobiles. “The library philosophy is: We do not want to restrict access to information. The use of fines or harsh collection tactics — and we could potentially do that — could essentially restrict people’s access to the library.”

And another thing: They need their books back.


 At the Denver Public Library, librarians can negotiate a fee structure that feels fair to them based on individual cases.








The Monterey County Free Library system in Monterey, Calif., has reclaimed more than 1,000 books since offering end-of-the-year amnesty to patrons in November and December.

“We thought, People are suffering, having a hard time, so let’s give them a break and get our books back,” said Jayanti Addleman, the county librarian.



In Pelham, N.H., the public library director, Robert Rice, offered a food-for-fines program during November.

“We will probably continue that policy once the new year starts,” Mr. Rice said. “The loss in terms of money was maybe $20 a day. We well made up for it with the amount of food that came in.”

He continued: “We got our materials back and did something positive for the community. Use is up greatly, and budgets are being cut. But we’re not going anywhere. We’re keeping the doors open.”


That is how libraries should work, as community resources, and not as businesses.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Public Library, Valladolid

Visited afternoon of 3 December 2009, on way back from Cenote Zací. Quite small. So is Valladolid.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Lone Bookstore's Last Chapter


Fourth-graders at C. M. Macdonell Elementary School in Laredo who wrote letters trying to persuade their bookstore, the only one in town, not to close.









Mary Benavides steps from behind the cash register several times a day to embrace the mourners. For more than 30 years, she has managed the mall's B. Dalton outlet -- the only bookstore in Laredo. It will close next month.

slideshow

All B. Daltons nationwide are closing, as corporate parent Barnes & Noble shutters the chain. In this era of mega-bookstores with cafes and cozy couches and 150,000 titles -- and with more than a million books available online -- B. Dalton's cramped outlets no longer make economic sense.

Xavier Garcia and Joe Garcia IV read at the B. Dalton bookstore in Laredo, Texas.


The city council is expected to pass a resolution Monday proclaiming that Laredo needs a bookstore. State lawmakers have promised to write letters. A "Save Laredo's Bookstore" page on Facebook has 530 members and a city committee is circulating petitions. The theme of their campaign: Laredo Reads.

Now (Monday, 1.15pm) up to 6





Jose Angel, 10, stands in front of two boards with English and Spanish words in his bilingual class.




Author Sonia Nazario saw that first-hand when the bookstore manager and several high-school teachers invited her this fall to discuss her book "Enrique's Journey." Over two days, Ms. Nazario spoke to 4,000 people, and some waited hours for her autograph. "It was like the hottest rock star had shown up in town," she said. "I've never had such a reception in my life."

Nearly 2,000 copies of her book sold in Laredo, and there was a waiting list for all 75 copies at the public library.

"Books created a communal bond in what was, to me, an unlikely place," Ms. Nazario said. "The beating heart of that was the bookstore."

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Rarest of Rhinos


Ujung Kulon National Park Authority/WWF Indonesia

A male Javan rhinoceros, photographed by a trap camera in Ujung Kulon National Park in Indonesia. It is described as the rarest large mammal on earth.
A sixth grader came in, along with his grandfather, looking for an article that appeared in the New York Times on 11 July 2006. I showed them how to use the microfilm reader, and, when they found the article, how to print it.

Now that they have left I went onto the Times website, and, as I had told them was doable, found the article itself.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Magazines get ready for tablets

Sports Illustrated developed a demonstration version of how it might translate its print articles on a tablet computer. The tablet version can pull live sports scores and display videos and other interactive content.

Video Video: Sports Illustrated's Tablet Demo (YouTube.com)


After letting the Internet slip away from them and watching electronic readers like the Kindle from Amazon develop without their input, publishers are trying again with Apple iPhones and, especially, tablet computers.

Although publishers have not exactly been on the cutting edge of technology, two magazines — Esquire and GQ — have developed iPhone versions, while Wired and Sports Illustrated have made mockups of tablet versions of their print editions, months before any such tablets come to market. Publishers are using the opportunity to fix their business model, too.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Lewy bodies

A patron came in asking for books on Lewy bodies. Turns out they have to do with dementia and Alzheimer's. She had done research, and the websites directed her to books on the subject. She cam into the library after dropping off her husband at a center (he is the one suffering from them).

A new one to me. This is one of the books I found through FirstSearch (also can be found through Worldcat.org).

Lewy bodies are abnormal aggregates of protein that develop inside nerve cells.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Who owns e-books?

Random House Lays Claim to E-Book Rights

By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg

Random House, moving to stake its claim in one of the few fast-growing areas of book publishing, sent a letter to literary agents saying it owns the digital rights to books it published before the emergence of an active marketplace for electronic books.

In the letter, dated Dec. 11, Markus Dohle, chief executive of the publishing arm of Bertelsmann AG, wrote that the "vast majority of our backlist contracts grant us the exclusive right to publish books in electronic formats." He added that many of Random House's older agreements granted it the exclusive right to publish a work "in book form" or "in any and all editions."

The letter addresses one of the most controversial issues in publishing these days: who owns digital rights to older titles, often referred to as backlist books.

Mr. Dohle argues that, much as the understanding of publishing rights has evolved to include various forms of hardcovers and paperbacks, it now includes digital rights, since "the product is used and experienced in the same manner, serves the same function, and satisfies the same fundamental urge to discover stories, ideas and information through the process of reading."

Nat Sobel, a literary agent whose clients include James Ellroy and Richard Russo, both of whom are published by Random House's Alfred Knopf imprint, disagreed with Mr. Dohle's assertions.

Mr. Sobel said that prior to the September publication of Mr. Ellroy's novel "Blood's a Rover," the third volume in the author's Underworld USA trilogy, he received a letter from Random House asking for the release of electronic rights associated with the trilogy. He said he ignored the request because he has other plans for those rights.

"I don't accept Random House's position, and I don't think anybody else will either," Mr. Sobel said. "You are entitled to the rights stated in your contract. Contracts 20 years ago didn't cover electronic rights. And the courts have already agreed with this position."

Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, said, "We believe Random House has the right to publish our authors' backlist titles as e-books. We think we can do the best job for our authors' e-books."

Several years ago, Random House sued e-book publisher RosettaBooks LLC to prevent it from selling the e-book editions of three authors—William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Robert Parker—whose books had been published by Random House's imprints.

In 2001, in a key ruling, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied a Random House petition for a preliminary injunction against RosettaBooks, ruling that Random House's contracts were limited to print books and didn't cover e-books. A federal court of appeals subsequently affirmed the district court's opinion.

In late 2002 Random House and RosettaBooks settled their litigation. As part of that settlement, Random House dropped its objection to RosettaBooks publishing the titles in question, and granted RosettaBooks the right to publish 51 additional titles. Those rights lasted between three and six years.

"At this point, all our Random House licenses have expired," said Arthur Klebanoff, CEO of RosettaBooks. "I am surprised by Mr. Dohle's letter. The last time Random House advanced the same position, it didn't work out so well for them. And I don't think it will work out so well for them now."

A second literary agent, Richard Curtis, who also owns E-Reads, an e-book publisher, said he would expect Random House to go to court to defend its new claims, as it once did.

"Someone would have to have a lot at stake to be willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to go up against Random House in court," he said. "I don't know whether anybody will feel they want those rights so badly they are willing to spend like that to prosecute a claim right up to what could be the Supreme Court."

Saturday, December 12, 2009

End of an era and a name

End of Kirkus Reviews Brings Anguish and Relief
By Motoko Rich
Published: December 11, 2009 - NY Times


The book industry, beleaguered by a battery of dispiriting news about lackluster sales and online price wars, got another taste of the apocalypse on Thursday with the news that Kirkus Reviews, the venerable prepublication review journal, was closing.

Then again, there were those who were not so quietly relieved that a frequent source of author flaying had been subdued.

“When I was a book publicist, the worst part of my job was having to read a Kirkus review over the phone to an author. 2 cigs before, 2 after,” recalled Laura Zigman, an author and former book publicist for Alfred A. Knopf, in a Twitter post.

The decision by the journal’s owner, the Nielsen Company, to close Kirkus stunned the industry, with a reaction that was a mix of “Oh no!” “Good riddance” and “Ho hum.”

Founded in 1933, Kirkus churned out nearly 5,000 reviews a year. Although typically not seen by the general public — except in blurbs on books or excerpted on barnesandnoble.com — Kirkus reviews were often used by librarians and booksellers when deciding how to stock their shelves.

“None of us can read everything we suggest, so we lean fairly heavily on reviews and reviewers as basically our own advisers,” said David Wright, a fiction librarian and readers’ adviser for the Seattle Public Library.

Mr. Wright, who said he read reviews from Kirkus as well as its rivals Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Library Journal, said the reviewers for these publications “always really seemed like this gathering of friends and family that you could gather to get feedback on what really was in a book to see if a reader might like it.” He added, “Kirkus has always anchored that table.”

Booksellers gave mixed reviews about Kirkus’s influence. Some said they read it along with other journals, as well as talking with publishers’ sales representatives and reading advance galleys, when deciding what to buy. Others said they had long since stopped reading Kirkus.

Vivien Jennings, co-owner of Rainy Day Books, an independent bookstore in Fairway, Kan., said she sometimes consulted Kirkus Reviews when a customer inquired about a book that she had not read.

In one instance recently, a customer asked about “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned,” a collection of short stories by Wells Tower that she wanted to buy as a gift. Ms. Jennings, who had actually read — but had not connected with — the book, looked up the Kirkus review.

“When I read the woman the review from Kirkus, she said, ‘That will exactly work for my husband,’ ” and she bought the book, Ms. Jennings recalled.

In some ways it seemed that the passing of Kirkus was mourned much like the local deli that finally closes after a long battle with a landlord — missed as much in theory as because of its practical effect on the market.

“While I hate to see the closing of another major book review outlet, truth be told, it’s been a long time since a review there actually moved the needle in any meaningful way,” wrote Tim Duggan, executive editor at Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, in an e-mail message. “It has less to do with Kirkus than with the way the rest of the media marketplace has evolved.”

Still, some publishers noted that Kirkus reviews, reliably cantankerous, often differed from the other prepublication reviewers. “It wasn’t just broad, it was rigorous, curmudgeonly, and it was often a dissenting or idiosyncratic voice,” said Nan Graham, editor in chief of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

For small presses, Kirkus might be one of the only places a book would get a write-up, other than Publishers Weekly. Martin Shepard, co-publisher of the Permanent Press, an independent publisher in Sag Harbor, N.Y., said Kirkus had generally reviewed about 10 of the 12 to 14 books that the company publishes each year.

Because small presses rely heavily on sales to libraries, Mr. Shepard said, the loss of Kirkus is a significant blow. Although he said the most important trade journal remained Publishers Weekly, he said: “It’s like Hertz and Avis. To have the No. 2 close down is sad.”

Mr. Shepard said he was starting a campaign to persuade the editors of Kirkus to revive the publication online.

Eric Liebetrau, managing editor of Kirkus, declined to comment on the magazine’s closing.

Authors seemed to have a mixed relationship with Kirkus. Not surprisingly, it had to do with what the reviewers said about their books. Julie Klam, the author of a memoir, “Please Excuse My Daughter,” said her editor had told her that while a good review in Kirkus could help a little, “if you get a bad one, it doesn’t matter, because nobody reads it.”

A good could help, a bad didn't matter as nobody read it: then how could a good one help?

Ms. Klam, who received a good review in Kirkus, recalled seeing fellow writers get starred reviews — the highest honor — and being jealous. “They were so rare,” Ms. Klam said. “So you think, ‘Wow, that’s major.’ ”

Correction: December 12, 2009

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a co-owner of Rainy Day Books. She is Vivien Jennings, not Vivienne.