Could children be better readers if we went “back to the future,” even in the era of e-books and calls for massive budget calls? I’ll share thoughts. But first let’s hear from Andy Strong, a children’s librarian at the library in Rockford, Illinois, during the 1990s: “When the library cut its hours, it drastically reduced storytime programming. In fact, service to parents and young children is a shadow of what it once was. “In its heyday, mothers and children would leave the library with armloads and tote bags full of books. Head Start would routinely bring busloads of children to dedicated storytimes weekly, introducing new families...

Not ebook related, but this is so interesting that I just had to post it.  From Open Culture: The great French filmmaker François Truffaut would have turned 80 today, and to celebrate, we’re bringing back a wonderful series of audio recordings — Truffaut’s lengthy interview with another legendary director, Alfred Hitchcock. Back in 1962, François Truffaut, the inspiration behind French New Wave cinema, met with Hitchcock. And, assisted by a helpful translator, the two directors talked through Hitchcock’s life and vast filmography, moving from his early films shot it Britain (Blackmail, The 39 Steps, Secret Agent), to his later Hollywood productions – North by Northwest, Psycho and Vertigo....

The video was recorded during the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Fall 2011 Membership Meeting. Title: “Preservation Status of e-Resources: A Potential Crisis in Electronic Journal Preservation” Direct to Video (59 minutes) Direct to Slides (.ppt) Presenters: Oya Y. Rieger Associate University Librarian Digital Scholarship Services Cornell University Robert Wolven Associate University Librarian Bibliographic Services and Collection Development Columbia University E-journals have replaced the majority of titles formerly produced in paper format. Academic libraries are increasingly dependent on commercially produced, born-digital content that is purchased or licensed. The purpose of this presentation is to share the findings of a 2CUL study that assesses the role of LOCKSS and PORTICO in preserving each institution’s...

Raspberry Pi has announced that its first batch of $35 computers will be finished manufacturing as of February 20th, and they will be airfreighted to the UK immediately after that; they should be available for purchase by the end of the month. It has also gotten Broadcom to make available a datasheet about the ARM peripherals in the Pi’s CPU chip—useful for those who want to port other operating systems to the device, or are just interested in the tech specs. As I’ve said before, this device could be quite useful in education and for Internet access in places...

I missed this report when it was released back in December, 2011 by COSLA, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies.  According to a survey of state libraries from the summer of 2011, 39% of public libraries reported offering no downloadable media service – no ebooks, no audiobooks, and no videos. Here is more from the press release: The Chief Officers of State Library agencies recently surveyed their membership to determine the extent to which U.S. public libraries are offering downloadable ebooks, audiobooks and videos for use on portable devices like e-readers and smartphones. The results of the survey, conducted this summer, showed that 39%...

Public librarians, have you seen Library Journal’s new publication, Patron Profiles?  It’s chock full of data and analysis on public library users.  From the preface: “Patron Profiles focuses on who uses libraries, why they use libraries, and how that use may change. We are interested in their usage of content—especially via the discrete products such as books, videos, and music that libraries buy or lease, lend or distribute.” Here are some nuggets I found from the January issue (28 pages of data and analysis on mobile devices, mobile content, and library apps): Ebook usage continues to increase and patrons who prefer ebooks are,...

From a Publisher’s Weekly Article by Andrew Albanese: Never has a price increase been such good news for libraries. At a meeting with ALA leaders this week in New York, Random House officials said the “terms of sale” for Random House e-books to libraries will change, with a price increase coming. But the publisher reiterated its commitment to library e-book lending, saying they would continue to enable e-book lending of their entire list for both adult and children’s titles, backlist and frontlist, without restriction. “No change,” Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum told PW in a briefing this morning, when asked about...

“Yes, it’s time to put the ‘public’ back in ‘Public Libraries.” So says Thad McIlroy, a prominent publishing consultant, about LibraryCity’s proposal for OverDrive to sell itself to America’s public libraries directly or to a nonprofit serving their interests. McIlroy has worked for clients ranging from Apple and Adobe to Thompson Learning (now Cengage) and knows business and technical details of e-books. "As you make clear," McIlroy writes today in a LibraryCity comment, "Overdrive is a great company that has performed admirably for years and is justifiably much beloved of the library community. But I think that it is caught in an...

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune: More than 100 metro-area libraries serving about 2 million users depend on one provider of digital audiobooks, but there’s a problem: The company’s technology is so plagued with glitches that one county library system temporarily suspended the service and another will be launching a separate service in February. “We hate, we absolutely hate that the customer service we’re providing right now is not working or variable,” said Chris Olson, executive director of the Metropolitan Library Service Agency (MELSA), a consortium of 103 libraries. “We know that’s poor service.” [Clip] Recorded Books LLC, the company that provides the service, has...

OverDrive—the leading supplier of popular e-books for America’s public libraries—should sell itself to its library customers or at least think about it if they are willing and able to buy. In Rockford, Illinois, a much-needed controversy rages about the local library system’s spending almost a quarter of this year’s $1.2 million acquisitions budget on e-content from OverDrive. Will the nonelite suffer in a recession-battered city of 153,000 with high rates of poverty and joblessness? How many low-income people own e-readers, and can 50 or 100 loaner Kindles really do the trick? But what about a related question—whether a private company should lord...

Last week while roaming the exhibit hall at the ALAMW conference in Dallas, Texas, I discovered Mediasurfer.  Mediasurfer offers self-checkout machines for iPads (and other tablet devices in the near future).  Users swipe a library card to borrow the iPad.  Upon return, the devices are returned to original settings. If you’d like to know more about Mediasurfer, listen to the interview with Gary Kirk, President of Mediasurfer, and Jim Nelson, COO of Mediasurfer.  They provide many more details on the software, hardware, and services offered. [Via No Shelf Required] ...

That's the title of an article by Peter in Publishers Weekly.  Here's an excerpt: Any library fighting to preserve access to digital books faces an nearly impossible task when confronted with Author’s new ibooks. There’s no independent platform capable of hosting these books beyond the iBookstore, and no way to drive lending. Readers wishing to take advantage of ibooks must be Apple iPad users, and no library will be maintaining an inventory of iPad bling until iPad pricing drops far lower than it is now. Even then, the tying of the ibooks...