Wait, What Does a Librarian Really Do?

30Jan09

I am one of those dreaded ranks of library students who came to the program without ever having worked in a library. I love to read, I have spent a lot of time at libraries, and I thought I could get the gist of the job from my coursework and a graduate assistantship at a [...]

Filed under: By: Miss Information, MLIS, change or die   |  4 Comments

Crash Course in Copyright

29Jan09

I’ve tried to read Complete Copyright: An Everyday Guide for Librarians, and you know what? It’s boring, even for someone like me who really likes copyright law. It’s dry, and I just didn’t retain any of it. But, as I’ve said over and over, and more important people concur– it’s good for [...]

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, Copyright, tools of the trade   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Copyright, tests!, University of Texas

Awarded to the writer of the best book about white, two-parent households

26Jan09

That’s how Julia Alvarez said the Newbery committee should describe their award for best children’s book. Harsh, huh? That was in coverage of a new study which showed that in the last few decades, award winning titles have had fewer Black and Latino characters than they did from 1951 to 1970.
This year, there [...]

Filed under: By: Librrrarian, News   |  4 Comments
Tags: Criss-Cross, Good masters! Sweet Ladies!, Higher Power of Lucky, Julia Alvarez, Kira-Kira, Newbery Award

Fun Finds of the Day: I AM the BLUE beRRy

24Jan09

A co-worker found this little ditty in a book which was recently returned.
First off, the book, entitled “What It Is: The Formless Thing Which Gives Things Form,” has been vandalized.  The call number sticker is torn off.  The barcode has been crossed out with purple pen.  The RFID sticker was ripped out of the back page.  Scrawled across [...]

Filed under: A Day in the Life, By: Hip Shhusher, Fun Finds   |  1 Comment
Tags: books, reading

Why You Never Let Your Domain Name Expire

23Jan09

The Bush Administration has never seemed totally keen on preservation and maintaining records, as evidenced by Dick Cheney’s assertion that his records didn’t fall under the Presidential Records Act. Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise to me that the George W. Bush  Library was not on the forefront of the administration’s agenda over the [...]

Filed under: By: Miss Information, barriers to access   |  2 Comments
Tags: Dick Cheney, domain names, expiration, George W. Bush Library, oops

Read and you read alone

22Jan09

The NEA recently came out with the encouraging statistics that Americans are reading more– at least, reading more than expected: “the number of adults who said they had read a novel, short story, poem or play in the past 12 months had gone up, rising from 47% of the population in 2002 to over 50% [...]

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, News   |  7 Comments
Tags: Barnes & Noble, NEA, reading for pleasure, statistics

Online ready-reference

21Jan09

Ever wondered how long the Caldecott Medal has been given out?  How about the exact measurements of an elephant folio sized book?  The Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science is possibly the greatest thing I’ve ever discovered.

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, tools of the trade   |  1 Comment
Tags: dictionaries, Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science, Ready reference

Getting to the root of the problem

20Jan09

The current state of the economy is not good for libraries– public, private, or academic– this is obvious.  To combat this, and deal with the increase in library use that always comes with economic downturn,  libraries are employing a number of methods.  Unfortunately, as we often see, sometimes non-librarians throw in their two cents without [...]

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, barriers to access, libraries   |  1 Comment
Tags: dewey decimal, Florida, Ronda Storms, Seinfeld, State Senators

Do you C-Pod?

19Jan09

C-pod is short for Collaboration Pod, and may be one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while.  The University of Hartford came up with this idea and incorporated it into their Information Commons, where it’s been a huge success.  They started with two C-pods, now have four, and are hoping to get four [...]

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, News, libraries, tools of the trade   |  4 Comments
Tags: C-pod, Collaboration Pod, Mortensen Library, Nicholas Wharton, University of Hartford

Orphaned Works

18Jan09

Orphaned works are works (film, books, anything that falls under copyright law) where the author is unknown.  This may not seem like a big deal, but due to many, many copyright extension acts– most notably the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which extended copyright to the life of the author plus 70 years, these [...]

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, Copyright   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: copyright law, Copyright Term Extension Act, Orphaned Works