Powell’s Books is the option for many people who want to buy a book online from a union shop, so I’m very happy that they are stocking books from Litwin Books and Library Juice Press. This note is to announce that they have added the latest book, Lara Moore’s Restoring Order: the Ecole des Chartes … Read more Lara Moore’s book now available from Powell’s
I just caught some of this on the radio and want to share it. The new episode of Wisconsin Public Radio’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge” is called Dumbing Down and Smartening Up, and features interviews with Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason (mentioned here March 16th); George Saunders, author of … Read more An Hour of Good Listening
This is worth a mention: Mikita Brottman’s The Solitary Vice: Against Reading. I read about it in Kevin Arthur’s Question Technology blog. The book begins by questioning whether reading is necessarily good for you, and continues as a memoir of reading in different genres. Brottman’s own site links to a number of reviews. Reading is … Read more Against Reading?
From Lara Moore’s Restoring Order: The Ecole des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870 (pages 208-209): It … appears that the late Empire had strong political misgivings about the extension of libraries to the “popular” classes. In April 1864, Interior Minister Paul Boudet dispatched a circular marked “confidential” to department … Read more Napoleon III and public libraries
The March 20th issue of The New York Review of Books has a review of John Broughton‘s book, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, by Nicholson Baker: The Charms of Wikipedia. Nicholson Baker delights in writing about technology, as you may know, but if you’ve read Baker’s writings on card catalogs and microfilmed newspapers you might be … Read more Nicholson Baker on Wikipedia
Book review sent to the RadCat discussion list. RESPONSIBLE LIBRARIANSHIP: LIBRARY POLICIES FOR UNRELIABLE SYSTEMS, by David Bade. Duluth, Minn.: Library Juice Press, 2008. xv, 172 p. $22.00. ISBN 978-0-9778617-6-7. To say that David Bade has a passion for the topic of which he writes would be a gross understatement. In the time since the … Read more Review of David Bade’s Responsible Librarianship
Byron Anderson is the compiler of Alternative Publishers of Books in North America, now in its sixth edition, from Library Juice Press. I asked Byron to talk a bit about this reference work for Library Juice Readers. Byron, why don’t you describe this resource and say how it got started? Byron: Alternative Publishers of Books … Read more Interview with APBNA compiler Byron Anderson
I’m happy to announce that two more books from Library Juice Press are now on sale from Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. The reason this is good is that Powell’s is the only all-union bookstore in the U.S., employing over 400 people, represented by ILWU Local No. 5. The physical bookstore is one of the … Read more Two more LJP books available from Powell’s
New from Litwin Books Author: Lara Jennifer Moore Price: $32.00 Published: March 2008 ISBN: 978-0-9778617-9-8 Printed on acid-free paper Buy from Amazon Buy from Barnes and Noble Between 1789 and 1793, the revolutionary French state nationalized thousands of libraries and archival depositories, thus becoming the proprietor of many millions of books and documents, ranging from … Read more Restoring Order: The Ecole des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870
David Bade is a cataloger at the University of Chicago who has written books and articles on issues in bibliographic control and other topics. Lately, he’s has gained some attention in cataloging circles for his intelligent criticism of the Library of Congress in their recent decisions concerning the future of bibliographic description. Library Juice Press … Read more Interview with David Bade
Privacy in Peril: How We are Sacrificing a Fundamental Right in Exchange for Security and Convenience is an important new book by James B. Rule, who also wrote an influential book on privacy in the 1970s: Private Lives and Public Surveillance: Social Control in the Computer Age. Just noting it as a book of interest. … Read more Privacy in Peril: How We are Sacrificing a Fundamental Right in Exchange for Security and Convenience
The New York Times Book Review published a review last week of Lee Siegel’s Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. The reviewer, John Lanchester, distinguishes two types of critics of the internet, those who think it’s trivial and those who think it is transforming culture in a negative way. … Read more Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob
RAINBOW PROJECT ANNOUNCES FIRST ANNUAL GLBTQ BOOK LIST FOR YOUTH Philadelphia, PA, January 2008 Co-sponsored by the American Library Association‚Äôs Social Responsibility Round Table and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Round Table, the Rainbow Project proudly announces its first annual bibliography for young readers from birth through age 18. These 45 fictional and informational … Read more Rainbow Project – GLBTQ book list for youth
In its seventh year now, the Amelia Bloomer List is a recommended reading list of feminist books for girls, that is, books for girls (ranging from beginning readers to teens) that feature strong, independent female protagonists that girls can identify with. Very useful for school librarians, children’s librarians at YA librarians…
Responsible Librarianship: Library Policies for Unreliable Systems Author: David Bade Price: $22.00 ISBN: 978-0-9778617-6-7 Printed on acid-free paper The three papers in this volume were written in the wake of a single policy decision at the Library of Congress: the decision to cease the practice of distinguishing and collating series through the use of distinctive … Read more David Bade’s Responsible Librarianship
Just a plug for a really fun blog: Not In Worldcat. The tagline is “rare, interesting, unusual books and book-like things.” Pictures of covers of said things, with descriptions, and information about buying copies (not from the same bookseller – it’s not a bookseller’s catalog). Great timewaster for when you’re tired of Freerice.
Jerome Weeks comments on two new articles on the decline in reading: one by Caleb Crain in the New Yorker arguing that we are losing not only the habit of reading but the ability to read, and one in Harper’s (subscription required) by Ursula K. LeGuin that says the apparent decline is partly an illusion … Read more More on the decline in reading
Byron Anderson of the SRRT Alternative Media Task Force (AMTF) and compiler of Alternative Publishers of Books in North America has finished a new version of his helpful bibliography, Bibliographic and Web Tools for the Alternative Press. The download is a PDF on the website of the AMTF. This bibliography is also published in the … Read more New version of Bibliographic and Web Tools for the Alternative Press
The Nation has an interesting review of the new edition of Walter Lippman’s 1920 book, Liberty and the News. This book is about the relation between journalism and democracy, and the crisis he saw in both at the time. Princeton University Press is publishing the new paperback edition based on their perception of the book’s … Read more Walter Lippman’s Liberty and the News (1920)
Madeline Kripke is someone I’ve known since I was a child, because she is my mother’s best friend from college. Only since becoming a librarian have I learned how important she is in the circles of lexicography and book collecting. Madeline has what is possibly the premiere collection of dictionaries in English, and it focuses … Read more Madeline Kripke