Posts by COASIST Webmaster

Laments for Reference? A polemic, but trenchant view (dictionary words???) on how dictionaries and other print media on our reference shelves are disappearing from John Walsh at the Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/no-we-shouldnrsquot-just-google-it-john-walsh-laments-the-death-of-the-reference-book-2347173.html) “…as early as 2007 some publishers were predicting that paper dictionaries will die out completely, as the word-curious turn wholly online. And if they go…

Books after Amazon It has been very good news for libraries that Amazon has agreed to allow checkouts of e-books on the Kindle at public libraries. At the same time, we should consider the overall practice of this company and how it could impact the book industry over the long term. The author here compares…

Library Closings Still in the News in the UK: “Book Barbarians” Authors continue to weigh in on potential library closures in Britain. Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials Trilogy, e.g. http://www.worldcat.org/title/amber-spyglass/oclc/44627113&referer=brief_results) helps to raise funds protesting library cuts, arguing in the UK there are 9 million people who have still never used the Internet. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8648309/Philip-Pullman-Why-we-must-stand-up-to-the-book-barbarians.html

“Library Data – why Bother?” One of the best and most provocative presentations at ALA this year: http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2011/07/library-data-why-bother.html Eric Hellman, discussing the history of library data and the potential future of library linked data. His blog post now contains a link to the complete PowerPoint, which includes some examples of how easy it is to…

Kindles in the News – in Time for Tonight’s Program! Just in time for tonight’s “Kindles and Kobos and Nooks” (Smith Boardroom, OCLC Conference Center, Dublin, OH 6:30pm), Amazon announces a new program for textbook rental on a variety of readers and other computers: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000702481.

Pope Benedict XVI tweets from an iPad See the Pope himself sending out his first personal tweet; it seems he had 30,000 new followers within 24 hours… http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504943_162-20075473-10391715.html

British Library and Google More news on the e-book front: http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/perpetualbeta/british-library-and-google-make-250000-books-available-all Google will allow a quarter of a million out-of copyright books from the vast collections of the BL freely available on the web. (“Freely,” of course, still meaning that we don’t pay except in search data, and the BL doesn’t pay, except in giving…