Information and collections: NLA presentations

Hello all!

Since it's March, that means......Time to start planning for OCTOBER!!!

If you were thinking of presenting at NLA (which you all should be thinking about!) then the link to get your topic on the list of potential presenters is here. So far, this link cannot be found on the NLA website, so you can thank you lucky stars that it's available from the folks at YART (and every other Round table, but we try to make ourselves sound awesome).

Again, NLA presentation proposal forms are live. We REALLY WANT to be active this year. If you haven't thought about presenting, you really should. Talk to fellow librarians in your building, or library staff, or librarians across town at the school in your community. Sharing is caring: Nobody has to do a presentation alone.

Do well, be brave.

Jake

Information and Collections: The Facebook is eating your life!

In case you haven't noticed, Facebook's email service went live this week. This might be both a blessing and a curse. On the plus side, it makes it much simpler for me the user to consolidate all of my Facebook messages into one place. The downside is that now EVERYONE will have an @facebook.com account.

Where do you think this will put your library? Are you excited to have email capabilites to places outside of the Facebook realm?

Information and Collections: How does your collection fare?

Hello Friends!

On this fine Sunday, I find myself flipping through VOYA and alternately looking in our card catalog to see if we have anything that I would want to read. So far, it's about 50/50 hit to miss. This leads me to the question I've proposed in the subject line: How does your collection fare? If you could have $500 more dollars for books, what subject areas or places would you bulk up your offerings to teens?

I would add more LGBT fiction and nonfiction to our collection. I think that though we have a good representation of GLBT materials, but I know the public high school has more. That's all well and good for them, but we also have a rural high school and a Catholic high school. Can I bet those libraries will have the same offerings? I can't, so I would like the Public Library to be able to provide.

What would you add? Why?

Information and Collections: the END of the the Ebook REVOLUTION!

If you haven't been keeping track of what's big in libraryland this week, I am right there with you. It wasn't until today that I found out about the changes coming to Overdrive in the coming months regarding ebook uses and the power of the publisher to exact dirty capitalist revenge on libraries.

The situation: HarperCollins has decided it is going to renegotiate the terms of its agreement with all ebook lenders (Overdrive and others) so that after so many checkout by patrons, an ebook may no longer be lent out. It will have to be repurchased. Essentially, libraries won't be in control of the conten they purchase.

[Insert angry tirade of your choice]

Now, while this is something is happening in the upcoming, I dont' think anyone can really be sure if it will last. With the ebook market getting bigger every day, it might be smart for some publishers to keep the old agreement, and thus get some business from libraries and econtent lenders.

What do you think YARTigans? where do we stand? Post your thoughts in the comments.

Information and Collections: Robot Jim

If you haven't been lost in the librarian blogs this weeekend you will have missed the news that a new print edition of The Advenutres of Huck Finn is being published. Unlike every other edition thought, the publisher has taken steps to get the book back into the mainstream. In the new edition, every instance of the "N-word" is replaced with the word "slave."

In an effort to remove all of the controvesial moments from the book, there is a fundraising goal on Kickstarter to publish a version where the "N-word" is replaced with "robot."

You can watch the video they made and learn more here

Jake