Matthew Mezey looks for hot topics and opinions in the LIS blogosphere and beyond.
Let me know about about any blogs that I should add to the list of LIS and related blogs scanned for this column.
Bloggers demand books – even ‘great literature’
The troubled future of public libraries makes waves: the Guardian’s books blog’s (http://tinyurl.com/2o8zm4) Louise Tucker asks: ‘Do “most people” really need libraries any more?’ – prompted partly by Hampshire libraries chief Yinnon Ezra’s comment ‘We have to ask whether fiction should remain in libraries when most people buy books’.
Comments come alive with posts about the ‘shameful neglect’ of libraries, how new plans ‘throw everything out to make way for computers’. ‘In a world where most of our High Street bookshops are now owned by Waterstones and stocked with blandness, we need libraries more than ever,’ writes one.
A Hampshire resident muses that, with librarians made redundant, fiction no longer necessary, the next logical step will be to drop outdated non-fiction too: ‘Hey presto! You then have lots of floor space for internet terminals, coffee shops, DVD and Playstation game rental, and classes in hip-hop or flower arranging.’
Tim Coates – of The Good Library Blog (www.goodlibraryguide.com/blog/), dubbed ‘an impassioned library blog’ in the Observer – even enters the fray, with advice on the struggle against his current Hampshire ‘enemy’. Council Leader Ken Thornber tries to inject some balance – explaining the fiction decline and predicting great things for the next ‘Discovery Centre’ to open. Coates even gets a thread (http://tinyurl.com/2a23m7) at the CILIP Communities site on ‘Tim Coates – saving libraries?’ (renamed ‘Saving libraries?’; 101 posts already), apparently as he blocked from his blog the topic of librarian staff cuts under his plan for Hillingdon.
Another CILIP Communities thread (http://tinyurl.com/2hj44w) wonders ‘Why [apparently] are so few UK librarians using Facebook?’ Is it a fad, and why do many employers block it (though no longer in Allen & Overy, where ‘the employees won’ – writes Ed Mitchell)? Elsewhere binary law’s Nick Holmes wonders – in ‘Faceless’ (http://tinyurl.com/22r735) – ‘what job will Facebook get done better for me?’
Another buzzing Guardian books blog discussion asks ‘Where’s the great literature in local libraries?’ (http://tinyurl.com/yunhep), lamenting that Lambeth Libraries is a finalist in the Love Libraries awards – but for putting on evening variety shows for young people: ‘Fandabidozi – but what has turning the local library into the Kids from Fame cafeteria got to do with reading or books?’
Bucking the Web 2.0 trend, Annoyed Librarian is fed up with the ‘Cult of Twopointopia’, and their stupid ‘manifestos’ (http://tinyurl.com/2gmtlk).
Wikipedia is always in the news – not least for WikiScanner that reveals who makes anonymous page edits. The BBC was eager to highlight edits by CIA employees, but forgot to mention that its own employees made 7,000 changes. Once Biased BBC (http://tinyurl.com/yvrfpj) pointed out this (‘breathtaking hypocrisy’), BBC head of interactive news Peter Clifton apologised on the BBC’s The Editors blog (http://tinyurl.com/35utjx): ‘Words like glass, house and stones spring to mind…’.
Medical librarian, The Krafty Librarian, helpfully adapts a ‘Top *13* Web 2.0 Tools for Librarians’ list (http://tinyurl.com/2qpfes) for the medical LIS milieu (http://tinyurl.com/29dqaz).
On the research front, Meredith Farkas – organiser of ‘5 Weeks to the Social Library’ (see April Update, p. 2) – publishes in Information Wants To Be Free the results of her LIS blogosphere research (http://tinyurl.com/3d6yl2).
The recent World Library & Information Congress gets coverage too. Singapore librarian Ivan Chew, in Rambling Librarian (http://tinyurl.com/2hfjz7), offers many posts – and describes his ‘goosebumps’ listening to keynote speaker Justice Albie Sachs of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Elsewhere, the British & Irish Associations of Law Librarians Blog (http://tinyurl.com/yw2akd) recommends an article (http://tinyurl.com/2tq8mn) about the ‘challenges faced by Law Librarians in a new “information economy”.’
It’s nice to learn of illustrious lurkers: ‘Jimbo’ Wales (of Wikipedia) pops up on the Special Libraries Association news librarians e-list (http://tinyurl.com/3c57ns) wondering ‘Who buys microfilm newspaper archives?’. ‘It seems an astoundingly inefficient medium for most users’, though better for ‘genuine preservation’ than digitisation.
Freepint Newsletter 235 (http://tinyurl.com/39jebm) includes a valuable article on business information trends, and also advice on setting up a ‘Competitive Intelligence’ process – even as simple as just nominating one person colleagues can tell their significant info to.
Expect ‘excuses for why this can’t be done’, says Vernon, ‘but if you don’t get started, you will continue to blunder along in the dark, not knowing where you are going, what your competitors are doing or what business opportunities are passing you by.’
Updated: 19 September 2007