Superpatron

Ray Bradbury and the HP Wright Library, Ventura County (CA)

via the NY Times:  A Literary Legend Fights for a Local Library

“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

Property tax dollars, which provide most of the financing for libraries in Ventura County, have fallen precipitously, putting the library system roughly $650,000 in the hole. Almost half of that amount is attributed to the H. P. Wright Library, which serves roughly two-thirds of this coastal city about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Here's a video of Bradbury talking at a Los Angeles library in 2007.

Library funding crisis in Ohio

from the Save Ohio Libraries site:

The Governor wants to cut the budget for public libraries by 50%. About 70% of public libraries in Ohio are funded solely by this fund, so cutting the already shrinking budget means library closures, layoffs and cutbacks in hours and materials.

We have until June 30th to get our voices heard.  ACT NOW!

You can get more official information from the Ohio Library Council here.

Thanks to Jenny Levine for the heads up.

Michigan state budget cuts and the impact on MeL interlibrary loan

from the Ann Arbor Chronicle, "State Budget Cuts Affect Library"

If funding is cut, Parker said there might be some discussion among libraries about how to pay for it independently of state and federal aid. That would require hundreds of thousands of dollars, she said. Though AADL pays only a nominal fee to be part of MeLCat, they also pay for 2.5 staff positions dedicated to processing materials for MeLCat, at a cost of about $100,000 annually. She said about three libraries in the state, including AADL, are shouldering the load for MeLCat in terms of providing materials, and they’d need to have a serious discussion about true costs if they were to continue the service, should state and federal funding be cut. “It’s old fashioned, it’s labor intensive, it’s expensive, but it’s loved,” she said.

The article continues that audio-visual materials will no longer be able to be borrowed via MeL by Ann Arbor due to a requirement that borrowing libraries also lend similar materials; there's a concern that the AADL would be overwhelmed by requests for CDs and DVDs, and the high cost of packaging those fragile materials would be prohibitive.

More details on MeL from the Michigan Libraries Consortium wiki.

BYU library puts Kindle lending program on hold

As seen in the Deseret News

BYU's Harold B. Lee Library is suspending a short-lived pilot program using Amazon.com's electronic book, the Kindle, as a substitute for interlibrary loans.

The program, which has been available to faculty members for about a month, created some buzz on library-related blogs for breaking ground in the uncertain area of lending books on the Kindle.

Although BYU had verbal permission to proceed with the program, Roger Layton, communications manager for the library, said the program is on hold until the university has a clearer picture of Amazon's legal concerns.

I found a Kindle blog with a list of other libraries who are doing Kindle lending, plus a handful who are lending Sony readers.  Amazon doesn't appear to have given anyone explicit written permission for lending, but that hasn't stopped about a dozen libraries for going forward.  Those who have reconsidered have looked at the cost, e.g. this note on Tinfoil + Racoon:

Before I heard from White today, I was talking with our IT manager, who wondered if it was time for us to check out some Kindles. I did some math and could not come out with a number that made me think "good value." We're cancelling a bunch of databases for abysmal cost-per-search numbers, and a Kindle, loaded with a small number of titles didn't come out with a good cost-per-circ. When I mentioned this to White, she said that they looked at loaning Kindles as a try-this-tech program. It's not about the content, according to White, but about the experience.

Note the metrics used to evaluate services!

Controversy in Seattle over proposed fine increases

The Stranger, which bills itself as "Seattle's Only Newspaper", writes about a revenue enhancement scheme at the Seattle Public Library to increase money received from fines. 

The librarians are making some noise. Saying "someone in the outside world should know," a Seattle Public Library (SPL) staffer forwarded The Stranger a series of internal documents proposing policy changes designed to decrease services and extract money from the library's most vulnerable patrons: old people, poor people, immigrants, and children. (The staffer requested to remain anonymous, citing a "sort of 1984 atmosphere at the library these days... morale is low.")

This comes after the annoucement that the Seattle library is closing for a week to save money.

that new-book smell

As seen on "now smell this", a perfume blog

Does your Kindle leave you feeling like there’s something missing from your reading experience?

Have you been avoiding e-books because they just don’t smell right?

If you’ve been hesitant to jump on the e-book bandwagon, you’re not alone. Book lovers everywhere have resisted digital books because they still don’t compare to the experience of reading a good old fashioned paper book.

But all of that is changing thanks to Smell of Books™, a revolutionary new aerosol e-book enhancer.

Five scents are offered: Classic Musty, New Book Smell, Crunchy Bacon Scent, Scent of Sensibility and Eau, You Have Cats.  More in The Guardian., including suggestions for other book scents, and a actual perfume inspired by the book Madonna of the Almonds (true!).

WordThink classification system replaces Dewey in Rangeview, Adams County, Colorado

via Library Journal

The six-branch (plus bookmobile) Rangeview Library District, Adams County, CO, will be the first library system in the country to fully drop the Dewey Decimal Classification in favor of a system adapted from that used in the book industry. While Dewey has been dropped in some smaller branches, Rangeview’s biggest building will have 85,000 items.

Rangeview’s WordThink system, like that in the Perry branch of Maricopa County Library District, outside Phoenix, draws on BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications).

Here's how they describe breaking up with Dewey

As part of Rangeview Library District’s “Customers First” philosophy, the district is replacing the 133-year-old Dewey Decimal Classification with its own WordThink system. This new method was generated from a retail-based standard for organizing materials. Similar to what you might see in a bookstore, materials are arranged by simple categories like history and science instead of the old numeric system. Customers are delighted at the ease of use of this new system, which is geared more towards browsing and helps customers find exactly what they need quickly and intuitively.

WordThink is based on BISAC, the book industry's cataloging system for bookstores; it has fewer subdivisions than Dewey, and uses words instead of numbers to classify.  So instead of the book having a number 649.1 ELL on the spine, it simply has PARENT, and all of the parenting books get shelved together alphabetically and not sub-sub-divided by decimal point.  BISAC itself uses this coding

FAM042000    FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / Stepparenting

but it appears that WordThink dispenses with the numeric code as well.

June is crazy at the Ann Arbor District Library

Eli narrates the June events calendar at the AADL - quite a collection, including nerdcore superhero MC Frontalot playing Top Of The Park for Video Game Night.

Auburndale, MA library patrons re-open shuttered branch as a community library

from Wicked Local

Newton (Mass) —

When Newton decided to shut down the Auburndale branch library last year, a group of residents got together and decided to open their own. The new, independently run library will be opening its doors on June 13.

“I’m clearly not a professional librarian,” said Dana Hanson, one of the volunteers working with the Auburndale Community Library. “We are just plain Newton residents who have taken the ball and run with it. It’s a lot of fun and it’s exciting.”

It's being run by the Auburndale Community Association

The Auburndale Community Library, Inc. is a community-based non-profit volunteer organization that will operate as a lending library independent from the Newton Main Library and the Minuteman Library Network.  Our hours will be:

Tuesday 10 am - 3 pm
Thursday 3 pm - 8 pm
Saturday 10 am - 3 pm

The branch was closed in 2008, but not before citizens put up a good fight to keep it open.  Again from Wicked Local

Facing branch library closures next week, branch library advocates are mounting a campaign to keep them open. More than 50 residents gathered at the home of Auburndale resident Dana Hanson last night to begin mapping out a plan to save the Auburndale library. They’ve created an online petition, initiated a letter-writing effort and are beginning to make phone calls.

Branch libraries will officially close on June 6.

Here's to hoping that these volunteer superpatrons can keep their library open.

Seattle Public Library closing for one week, web site and all

from the Seattle P-I's blog "Book Patrol"

THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM TO CLOSE

AUG. 31 THROUGH SEPT. 7

The Seattle Public Library system will close Monday, Aug. 31 through Sunday, Sept. 6 due to citywide budget cuts. Please note Monday, Sept. 7 is the Labor Day holiday and all libraries will be closed. Regular Library operations will resume Tuesday, Sept. 8.

All city departments identified reductions to address a $43 million gap in the 2009 city budget. The Library is funded from the city general fund.

The systemwide closure, along with other cuts, will help the Library meet a 2 percent budget reduction – about $1 million. The closure will save approximately $655,000.

Library Journal notes this has been done before

The Seattle Public Library will close for the last week of August in an effort to save money; previous one-week closures were instituted in 2003 and 2004.

Not only will the library be closed, but the web site will be closed and the post office is holding all of their mail.