- Why Public Libraries Close? A report on a nationwide study done in the United States on the impact of public library closures. What was interesting in the study was the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map out the impacts on library users. We don’t see GIS used much in Singapore in analysing any kind of information. (via LISNews)
- China national library is the world’s third most spacious library With the opening a new building, China’s national library is now the third biggest national library in terms of floor space in the world, behind France and the United States. With this new building, the total floor space has reached 250,000 square metres. As a comparison, the National Library building at Victoria Street is about 58,783 square metres. (via LISNews)
- Discounts with Your Library Card (pdf) A cluster of public libraries in Northern Kentucky in the United States have collaborated with businesses in its community to bring discounts for members of the library. The discounts cover a good range of products and services. (via LISNews)
StoryTubes 2008 is a US-wide competition where children, aged 6 to 12 years old, can submit a video review of 2 minutes or less of their favorite books through YouTube.
StoryTubes is organized by a number of libraries spread across the US and this is the second year that they are holding the competition. The competition is also divided into different genres such as “Hair-Raising Tales”, “From or For the Heart”, “Of Heroes and Heroines” and “Facts, Fads and Phenoms”. You can view some of the already reviewed videos here.
What I found interesting is that the use of social media tools such as YouTube to engage the community in submitting the videos. In addition, they also a simple guide to the children on how they can video themselves.
A positive note from last year’s competition was that the videos generated online book discussions between the children. And this made other children interested in reading the books that were reviewed.
Maybe we can do something similar at MPOW. Think I’ll highlight the StoryTubes site to my children services colleagues.
- Taking Play Seriously at the Public Library with Young Video Gamers The New York Public Library recently organized an event as part of their “Game On @ The Library!” initiative to showcase their latest addition to their collection - video games. Game consoles, such as Nintendo’s Wii, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3 amongst others, were put around the lobby of the library for anyone to try out the different video games on giant TV projector screens. And they hope to expand their range of games to even online PC games such as ever popular World of Warcraft. (via LISNews)
- Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing This is meant more for my personal note as I do a little book reviewing for MPOW. Anyway, some choice words that you should avoid using when doing your book reviews such as poignant, compelling and intriguing. (via LISNews)
- Lookybook An ebook site dedicated to children’s picture books. Definitely worth a look if you’re a children’s librarian. Currently, there are about 200+ titles and the site hopes to expand that to 1000 by the mid of the year. Reading is free and you don’t even need to register. However, registration to the site allows you to create bookshelves, read and write reviews, and email interesting books to your friends, amongst other privileges. (via LibrarianInBlack)
Apparently, someone (most probably a military officer with NATO) left a USB thumb drive in one of the public computers in a Swedish public library. In the USB thumb drive were classified military data on the Swedish deployment with NATO in Afghanistan as well as an intelligence analysis of the attempted assassination of the Lebanon’s prime minister.
Thankfully, someone turned it in to the library staff and it has been safely returned to the Swedish military. However, no one is sure if anyone else had a look at the information or copied it.
To date, I’ve yet to find any such USB thumb drive with sensitive information (and I wouldn’t want to). Then again, our public libraries don’t allow the insertion of any USB devices into our public computers. But there have been cases of stolen laptops left unattended by their owners. So, if you bring laptops and other electronic devices into the public libraries, be sure to take good care of them as there are all sorts of people loitering in the public libraries.
- A hunger for books Unless you have been leaving under a stone or kept away from all news, then you would know that Doris Lessing has been awarded the “Nobel Prize for Literature”. So, here’s her acceptance speech. Very inspiring reading.
- 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners (Flash plugin required) An online tutorial, created by the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County, for their own patrons to teach them about the importance and how-to of lifelong learning and in the process, create a personal learning plan. Hmmm … an interesting way to communicate and engage with library users. (via LibrarianInBlack.net)
- Spell wears off as children ditch books Apparently, children in Scotland are going back to the PCs and consoles after the Harry Potter craze as a survey has shown. I wonder how many children in Singapore are doing the same thing. (via LISNews)
- Bookworm Chengdu Although this is not exactly a public library, it is a library nonetheless. And it’s a very difficult sort of library. Though the collection is quite small (only 5,000 books) at the moment, I found that it has a very interesting concept for a library. Besides being a library, it is also a European restaurant and a coffee/alcohol bar. In addition, the whole library has free wireless Internet access. And from the pictures on the site, they also host meetups, programmes and talks, performances and children’s story times. Hmmm … maybe the new and upcoming library@orchard can think of some similar concepts. I know in some of our libraries, we already have cafes in-built. But we might want to attract a little more upmarket type of restaurant to partner us. Worth a thought! (via Real Public Librarian)
- Librarian … A People Job A profile of Elissa Kinzelman, currently a librarian assistant in a medical library. She has been taking library training classes on a part-time basis and will graduate soon. The part I liked best in the article is in the last paragraph where she states that librarianship is “very much a people job“. (via LISNews)
I previously blogged about On Demand Books‘ Espresso Book Machine. And I think the first non-beta machine has just been installed at the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL).
And from August,
Library users will have the opportunity to print free copies of such public domain classics as “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville, “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens and “Songs of Innocence” by William Blake, as well as appropriately themed in-copyright titles as Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” and Jason Epstein’s own “Book Business.”
- China establishes more than 30,000 rural libraries When I first saw the headlines, I was flabbergasted. 30,000 libraries?!?! And this figure is just what has been established since 2006. I guess the size of China makes is a reason why they need to build so many libraries. But you might need to note that given the huge number of libraries (66,000 in total), the collection size for all the libraries is just 2.2 million. So, it means that, on average, one library has only 33 books. (via LISNews.org)
