- They are community centers, says chief who bans hushing at libraries
A new approach to how public libraries are run. The new executive director of Brooklyn Public Library, Dionne Mack-Harvin, has directed that staff do not ‘shush’ the library patrons. Honestly speaking, I don’t think it’s the librarians who need training, but the patrons will need to have a total re-think of what a library should be. I’m quite sure some library patrons will not be too happy with a library becoming too noisy.
(via LISNews)
- OK, Sony Here’s What You Can Do to Make It Up to Us
If you didn’t know, Sony recently launched a portable e-book reader called the Sony Reader. And their tagline for the Sony Reader is “Sexier than a librarian. The Reader. From Sony.” You can see a photo of the advert banner on Flickr. How can an electronic device be sexier than a librarian?!
(via Library Stuff)
- How judging a book by it’s ‘girlie’ cover is putting boys off reading
Apparently, the number of boys reading have fallen because of the increasing number of book covers featuring ‘girlie’ covers as boys wouldn’t want to be caught dead holding and reading a pink book by their peers. From the article, some publishers have focused on gender-specified marketing for children’s books with a higher degree towards marketing to girls. The publishers are just assuming that the books they published would not be read by boys. And the end result is that they found the lesser and lesser boys are picking up reading and inadvertently, the boys’ reading levels have fallen.
(via LISNews)
- What are people doing on Facebook?
Facebook seems to be the ‘in’ social networking site at the moment. I know of quite a big group of librarians - both local and overseas - who are on Facebook. And I’m sure that there’s an equal or higher number of our patrons who are on Facebook. So, it would good to know what they are doing on this ‘hot’ social networking site. There’s also a report which you can refer to with regards to what people are doing on Facebook.
- Internet providers show how it’s done
The Chronicle of Higher Education, a US publication, has hosted talks between the University of California librarian Daniel Greenstein and executives from Google and Microsoft this year. The talks aimed to explore the effect of the digital revolution on books and journals and the way university libraries are responding.
(via LISNews)