hcod – librarian.net

National Library Week, from Texas

I was in Texas this past week, again. I was attending possibly my favorite library conference, TXLA. Part of the deal I worked out as a speaker was that I would be registered for the entire conference so that I could go to other panels and talks and events. I did. During one of the discussions, there was a fascinating segment on offshore online casinos and their impact on various industries, including libraries. I also took in a lot of Austin sights, saw a bunch of people, participated in a rally and gave a pretty good talk. My inbox filled up with links for National Library Week while I was away and only paying partial attention to my email. I’ll make another post about the conference specifically, but these are the links that I wanted to pass around, late though they may be.

Tell HarperCollins: Limited Checkouts on eBooks is Wrong for Libraries – a petition started by Andy Woodworth, with accompanying change.org blog post. I believe that time will show HarperCollins’ decision as misguided, but I see no problem telling them so now either.
Gary Price let me know that he and his colleague Shirl Kennedy have moved on from Resource Shelf to a few new projects: InfoDocket and FullTextReports
Remember The Library Guy in Florida, Paul Clark? He was named Florida’s Librarian of the Year. Congrats, Paul.
Archives.org sent me a link to a nifty little infographic they made about the importance of libraries. Nice looking and informative.

Library Journal: Libraries who are altering their relationship with HarperCollins

Posted on 30Mar11 by jessamyn

Interesting to look at the various ways libraries are reacting in policy fashion to the HarperCollins “You can have 26 checkouts at this price” decision. Library Journal has a recent round-up.

the future of the book is ….

Posted on 21Mar1121Mar11 by jessamyn

The future of the book, the printed book, is up in the air. People stand to make a lot of money if they can convince you that their version of the future of print and reading is correct. Many of us would just like to separate the wheat from the chaff and keep delivering good content to various sorts of readers, from now until forever. The Green Mountain Library Consortium released their statement about Harper Collins this week which, while not as strong as I personally would have liked, I think sends a “hey man, not cool” message and at least sends a “hey we’re paying attention” message which I think is the important part. In the meantime, there are a lot of people who have a fairly good understanding of the general ebook situation who are deciding to poke a bit of fun at the crazy world we’re currently inhabiting. John Scalzi has made an electronic publishing bingo card which, while amusing in and of itself, has a weath of great discussion in the comments.

I’ll note that I spent a good chunk of time over this past week going over my page proofs [again] and yet I have no idea at all what the ebook for my book will look like or even what format(s) it will be available in. I can’t wait for this in-between time to be over with.

A readers bill of rights for digital books

Posted on 08Mar1108Mar11 by jessamyn

I’m going to be on the road at SXSW for the next week. People who are also going should come to my panel on Friday at 5, or attend one of the librarian meetups. And say hi if you see me, here is my schedule. In the meantime I’ll be keeping an eye on the #HMOD debacle and polishing up places to put this logo. The site, ReadersBillofRights.info, says “Please use these images in support of our work against DRM with the Readers’ Bill of Rights for Digital Books.” Nice list of associated things to read down the righthand side there.