By Hannah Johnson (Scroll down to take the poll!) Many libraries in the UK and USA see e-book lending as a possible solution to dwindling visitor numbers because people can access and “borrow” e-books without visiting a physical library location. For those of you who haven’t tested this at your local library, a patron “checks out” an e-book and downloads …
In the Digital World, What is the Future of the Institutional Library?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story looks at life at a prison library. Numerous institutions — prisons, hospitals, law firms, magazines, intelligence agencies — have their own libraries and archives. Increasingly, these are eliminated to save office space and a eliminate what are seen as unnecessary expenses, particularly in an era when seemingly everything can be found via a simple …
Hoods, Hustlers, and Machiavelli: Ex-Prison Librarian Avi Steinberg on Reading Behind Bars
Editorial by Avi Steinberg There are almost as many reasons why an inmate would visit a prison library as there are books on the shelves — and at the prison library where I worked, there were roughly 20,000 books. After nearly two years as a librarian in the joint, I was still discovering new reasons. Some people came to the …
Delft University’s Massive Library Desk Made from Books
By Siobhan O’Leary A library in the Netherlands has given a whole new meaning to the concept of recycling paper. When a fire destroyed part of the library at the Delft University of Technology, the school replaced the library’s entire collection. Unwilling to part with those old volumes that were left behind but undamaged by the flames, the library built …
Advantage India: Delhi’s Campfire Classics Hark Back to Golden Age of Comics
• Indian graphic novel publisher Campfire Books has begun exporting affordable Western classics to the US and other English-speaking nations around the world. • Among the advantages the company has is the ability to keep most of the work in-house. The company employs a bullpen of 20 full-time artists on staff to do with drawing and coloring, thus helping to keep …
Should the EC Legislate Clearances for Digital Book Rights?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story looks at a new report from the European Commission about the status of orphan works — books, films, et al. — and what must be done to streamline rights clearances. The EC is famous for issuing rules and regulations for all manner of minutiae (the noise limit of lawnmowers, for example). Should it have a …
Will Europe’s Three Million Orphan Books Ever Be Digitized?
By Edward Nawotka • The EC has determined there are three million orphan books in Europe and the cost of clearing digital rights is costly, often far higher than digitization itself. • One solution might be Europe-wide collective licensing agreements modeled on those currently in use in Scandinavia. BRUSSELS: The issue of orphan books –- those books with no clear …
Is Spanish Language Publishing in the US an Untapped Market?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead article by Emily Williams describes how even as demand for Spanish language books in the US continues to rise, libraries struggle to meet the demand. Not only are their budgets for book acquisitions being slashed, increasingly they can’t find the types and quality of books they need. We’ve asked before, “Whatever Happened to Spanish Language …
US Librarians Turn to Guadalajara, E-books to Meet Demand for Spanish Language Readers
By Emily Williams In the small boom in Spanish-language publishing over the past decade, even as big publishers and major chain bookstores worked to ramp up their offerings for Spanish readers, libraries have played an irreplaceable role in serving the needs of Spanish-speaking communities around the country and in connecting readers to the right books. As part of our look into …
Is the Serendipity of Book Discovery Dead in the Age of E-books?
by Edward Nawotka In today’s lead story Mark Mills discusses how he found the inspiration for his novel The Information Officer in book about the World War II siege of Malta he uncovered in a junk shop. What is interesting to note is that this might never have happened had we been living in a world entirely populated with e-books. …