Hi. I’ve seen two small libraries that were not in libraries lately. One was in Bryant Park Reading Room originally called the “Open Air Library”, outside of the main NYPL building. In bad weather it is enclosed in a plastic tent. It’s a book and newspaper collection that was intended originally during the Depression Era to be accessible to everyone. No money, no address, no problem. It existed in the 30’s and 40’s [and closed once the wartime job surge put a lot of people back to work] and is re-opening this year. The second was at my local video store. They have a few shelves of books that relate somehow to the movies that they carry like the entire Lemony Snicket series, or the Simpsons episode guide. All the books can be checked out with your movies, for free.
what’s with OPACs lately? an article by Andrew Pace
I have always enjoyed Andrew Pace’s writing and his Technically Speaking column in American Libraries. This month he talks a little bit about the awkward acronym that reflects the awkward systems that are OPACs.
I have not found a patron who is satisfied with any answer as to why a web search engine can return relevant results from four billion full-text websites faster than an OPAC can return a randomly sorted hitlist from one million surrogate records; nor should any patron be satisfied with even a bona fide answer to that question.
patron privacy
While it would be a more cut-and-dried case of patron privacy to deny wholesale snooping in your patron databases, what about when the police come to your library with a patron’s wallet? If you’re in Johnson County, giving the police that patron’s phone number might get you fired. I know the police have shown up at our library more than once looking for patron information supposedly in the interests of returning a wallet or a PDA. I believe our policy is to offer to call the patron, but not give out that patron’s personal information [without a warrant] in accordance with our privacy policy. Of course, any privacy policy is only as strong as the weakest link who has database access, right?
steal this book?
A quickie one-off joke. When I mess with OPACs at other libraries, I often try a search for my name, or my book. NYPL has eight copies, but one is missing.
alternative press center library, a history
There’s a good article in Library Juice this week about the Alternative Press Center Library in Baltimore MD.