Blogging Librarian

• A view of what “Clean Books” are. I see the need to balance between being sensitive to the reading tastes and religious beliefs of the community and the type of books that you can order for your library. I feel that it is rather extreme that books that have boy-girl relationships are considered ‘not clean’. I guess if that’s the selection criteria is that strict, then our public libraries would only have mostly non-fiction titles on our shelves. As for magic, we do get requests from schools (particularly missionary schools) not to bring fantasy books for our outreaches. However, these are the very books that the students would ask us for when we are at the schools. Guess it’s really tough to please both sides.
• A fun way to learn about your library on your own. James Joyce Library, a science library, of the University College Dublin provides a Library Audio Tour, which you can download and listen to at your convenience. The best part is that they have preloaded two MP3 players with the tour, which you can loan, for those who don’t own MP3 players. (via Tame the Web)
• Should libraries carry movie DVDs? Does this help in reading and literacy? This is the topic of a lively discussion on Palo Alto Online. Well, NLB carries movie DVDs at library@esplanade and they are really popular with the public. In order to promote reading and literacy, we also place the movie tie-in books near to the DVD section and those are well-received as well. (via LISNews)

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