If you don’t read Kevin Kelly’s blogs you might like them. They are great combinations of gadgetry and sensible living. In the upcoming book A Day in the Life: Career Options in Library & Information Science one of the people who writes about her job is Kevin Kelly’s librarian. The most recent post I’ve enjoyed on the Street Use blog is this one about mules used in Venezuela to bring books into mountain villages. A little more about this program is on the BBC website. [thanks mark!]
Category: books
book reading meme
I broke rule number eight, just now. [walt]
How many Harry Potters do you buy?
This is from a reader’s email. I know if you’re a bookstore you can pretty much order as many Harry Potters as you can, because you know they will sell, but how does a library decide how many Harry Potter books to buy? I do a lot of work in libraries, but I have never been on the book ordering ends of things. I know how librarians choose which books to buy, but not how many. If anyone would like to help out with some simple explanation for my library patron reader, I’d appreciate it. update: Glenn asks a good question in the comments: do libraries want our “old” copies when we’re done with them? I know there are a lot of HPs that are already gathering dust in homes across the US.
toread: bookhunter
Two disparate things to post under one short heading. First, this exposition of the idea of the toread tag is one that pleases me. Second, if you like libraries and comics, you need TOREAD Bookhunter. I’d suggest buying it, but you can read it online in book or scroll format. It’s seriously great.
previews and spoilers in a 2.0 age
This is only loosely library-related. I remember when one of the Harry Potter books came out and I was working in a library. I realized they got the book early and were just in some weird way honor bound not to reveal the ending, to ration the copies out fairly, etc. That seemed decent. Libraries do the same thing with DVDs, waiting to shelve and/or “release” them until a certain date. Now that entire very popular books like Harry Potter can be photographed and released via bittorent sites well in advance of their sale date, what does this mean for the adorable, if outdated, notion of these embargoes? Anyone who wants to read the Harry Potter spoilers and figure out who dies, click this link.
update: actually don’t bother clicking it since I’ve now gotten word that it’s wrong. Testing spoilers is so complicated. Last I checked there was someone posting what seem like real spoilers spamlike across a bunch of livejournal communities. Rocky few days ahead for people who don’t want to know what happens. Last I checked since then, the posts were being removed almost as fast as they were going up. However, the transcription project is already going well, though some people are claiming that the photographs have themselves been photoshopped to include fake “facts” and others claim there are at least two sets of book photos going around that are not at all the same.