This is in the “still sorting it out” status at the moment, but perhaps other readers have more information. School Library Journal reports that the DC Public Schools Summer Reading list has been amended to remove the GLBT titles that were on it. Apparently this was first reported on the Yahoo Groups LEZBRIAN list and then posted to the ALA-glbrtr list (little tough to navigate, but click “I am not a spammer” then reload that URL) where it got some attention. The “final” lists are supposed to be out on the 26th, it will be interesting to see if there’s any resolution to this in the meantime.
Category: books
can you loan out a kindle?
Library Journal announced last week that Brigham Young University had received a verbal okay from Amazon to start lending Kindles in their library. This week it appears that they’ve suspended the program until they can get written permission. While I totally understand the concerns on both sides here, I’d really like it if libraries sometimes erred on the side of continuing to do whatever it was that they were doing, in good faith, and let the vendors let them know if they’re not doing something correctly. It’s a little weird to me that Amazon has invested all this time and money into an ebook reader and has no policy about what the legal/copyright concerns are with using it in a library. Can someone please force this issue?
update: There is an interesting story making the blog rounds about just how much of the Kindle’s policies and DRM weirdnesses remain mysterious, even to the people who work at Amazon.
some weekend and summer reading
Summer starts this weekend which means some people decide it’s time to read books. The main impetus is kids out of school, but there are also teachers who have summer “free” to read books as well. Many media outlets make their summer reading lists and other bloggers collect them. Here are a few links that I find worthwhile about summer reading, but when I make my list, I’m just going to look at the towering stack of both unfinished and not-yet-started books that always graces the table by my kitchen table.
- Rebecca Blood’s list of Summer Reading Lists
- Possibly the best looking summer reading library website I’ve seen: Summer Reading 2009 (NYPL, Broolyn Public and Queens Borough Public)
- Flickr’s Summer Reading Programs photo pool
I was going to include links to state libraries’ summer reading programs but it looks like a lot of state libraries either don’t have statewide summer reading programs or don’t advertise them well. If you have a library summer reading program you’re fond of, please put it in the comments.
And a special “Hey nice job” to a colleague of longtime reader/contributor Eoin Kelly whose coworker Rosemary Hetherington was awarded the Children’s Books Ireland award which recognizes “outstanding contribution to the world of children’s books.” There’s a nice writeup on the CBI page. Congrats Rosemary!
digital media and accessibility, the kindle 2
I don’t have a Kindle. That said, I accept the inevitability of the idea that more and more of our reading content is going to be delivered digitally. That’s why I think it’s important to understand these tools even if they offer limited utility for us or our patrons at the time. The Kindle has “accessibility” features built into it that allow a book to be read out loud via the Kindle. This is great news — and probably also legally necessary — for people with various reading disabilities ranging from visual disabilities to text-based learning disabilities. However, the Kindle also allows publishers to remotely disable text-to-speech (TTS) options in books that you may already have on your Kindle. And publishers are doing this, a little, at the urging of the Authors Guild.
The Authors Guild, for their part, has issued this statement about the situation which, on first reading, does make a certain amount of sense. As a librarian I’m more concerned about the overarching issues of digital rights management and the notion that even though you’ve nominally purchased a book (perhaps at a loss for Amazon) you still have an item that is, in part, controlled by its creator who can alter the item according to the license terms you agreed to. A little more about this on Slashdot.
happy tenth birthday librarian.net
I forgot, with all the hubub about 4/20 [Hitler’s birthday, the Pirate Bay decision, other stuff] that my blog is now ten years old. Older than most, younger than some. I’ve become a much less frequent updater, and often on Fridays for some reason, but I’m still enjoying writing it, reading it, interacting on it and being immersed in blog culture generally.
Thanks readers, for a decade of sharing library information here. Here’s a link to the first ten days of librarian.net.