Attention librarians, please do not buy any compilations of overpriced public domain titles from the likes of e-reader unless you really, serioously, want someone to charge you four dollars to copy a free text onto a CD for you.
Month: August 2004
rad ref, for all your radical reference needs
An idea whose time has come: Radical Reference. Originally planned for the RNC protests, it has already expanded to fill other pressing radical informationneeds. Here’s a recent article from the NY Sun about it. A little more information at the NYC Indymedia site. Now that’s more in the MYbrarian model, don’t you think?
history vs accesibility, one town’s problem
Is removing a stacks wing to make a public library more accessible the same as turning a church into condos? A storm is brewing over the Amesbury Public Library in Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners has kept a list of libraries around the state that have destroyed or altered their stack wings to improve their buildings. The commission has endorsed these demolitions because they have allowed libraries to provide access to the disabled, meet earthquake codes, eliminate fire liabilities, and use limited sites more effectively. [linkoday]
nudes!
The American Nudist Research Library turns 25 this year. See also the Toni Egbert Naturist Law Library.
Live nudes would seem to provide more reliably strong effects than photographs of nudes. The American Nudist Research Library has nudes of both varieties, a bounty that should be of interest to scientists. And it may be instructive to librarians elsewhere who lament that people don’t visit libraries the way they used to.
thank you, nancy pearl
Nancy Pearl retires from Seattle Public Library this week to spend more time reading, and other things.