Restoring Order: The Ecole des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870 This book is on sale through November and December if purchased through the website (using the link above). Regular price is $32, sale price is $20. We have excess inventory of this title and need to sell some copies.
From “How Technology Changes Society,” by: William Fielding Ogburn. Published in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 249, Social Implications of Modern Science (Jan., 1947), pp. 81-88. Between the patenting of an invention and its use, the old adage is appropriate: there is many a slip betwixt the cup and … Read more An illustration of the difficulty of being a good futurist
Call for Papers *Politics, Libraries and Culture: Historical Perspectives* *Library History Round Table (LHRT) Research Forum, June 2010* * * The Library History Round Table (LHRT) of the American Library Association (ALA) seeks papers for its Research Forum at the 2010 ALA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., June 24-29, 2010. The theme of the Forum … Read more Call for Papers – Politics, Libraries and Culture: Historical Perspectives
From the LHRT site: “The Library History Round Table publishes a bibliography of library history in each semi-annual issue of the LHRT Newsletter. LHRT has consolidated the bibliographies from the 1990s and early 2000s to improve searchability.”
Two recent articles in the mainstream press are telling us that paper books and physical libraries are dead (Boston Globe and CNN.com). One of the easiest things to forget about the death of the book is for how many years it has been declared. A few quotations from past decades, from authors who were responding … Read more Death of a thousand paper cuts
New from Litwin Books Forty Years in the Struggle: The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist Author: Chaim Leib Weinberg Translator: Naomi Cohen Editor: Robert Helms Price: $28.00 Published: May 2009 ISBN: 978-0-9802004-3-0 Printed on acid-free paper This story, told by one colorful figure among the anarchists of Philadelphia, does not tell the entire story of … Read more Forty Years in the Struggle: The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist
From today’s Inside Higher Ed, “Digital Archives That Disappear,” a brief article about Google’s shutdown of the historical newspaper archive Paper of Record, which it secretly purchased in 2006. This is a good example of what many people have feared about Google’s success – that turning over information resources from shared, public control in library-related … Read more The constraining effects of information privatization: Google’s purchase and shutdown of Paper of Record
I found these three items in Arts & Letters Daily…. In the New Yorker, a look back into the distant history of newspapers, “The Day the Newspaper Died,” by Jill Lepore. She puts the present newspaper crisis in perspective. In City Journal, Brendan Boyle reviews A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and … Read more Three from Arts & Letters Daily
The services of electricity to libraries, however, are by no means exhausted by the electric light. It is capable of rendering aid even more important, and the more so in proportion to the extent of the library. The need for rapid communication throughout large buildings has been in some measure met by the telephone, whose … Read more Library Tech, circa 1899
Melvil Dewey died this day in 1931…
ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy had its annual retreat this month. Barbara Fister, frequent poster to the ACRL blog and a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, presented a talk there called “Open Access and Books in a Digital World – What Role Should Libraries Play?” Her talk is an interesting exploration of … Read more Barbara Fister on Google and OA
Here is a link to the March, 1959 issue of Special Libraries, which is Volume 50, Number 3. I’m posting the link because there’s an article in it by my maternal grandpa’s cousin, David R. Wahl, about the then-new Wix Library at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, of which he was the founding … Read more David Wahl of the Wix Library (Special Libraries)
From Lincoln Cushing to the PLG list: The “Archives of Dissent” panel held at U.C. Berkeley 9/18/2008 can now be seen on YouTube: It includes presentations by: • Julie Herrada, Labadie Collection Librarian, University of Michigan, and curator of a “1968” special exhibit. The Labadie Collection is an internationally renowned archive of social protest materials. … Read more Archives of Dissent – video of conference
Media in Transition 6: stone and papyrus, storage and transmission International Conference April 24-26, 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology CALL FOR PAPERS (MIT site) In his seminal essay “The Bias of Communication” Harold Innis distinguishes between time-based and space-based media. Time-based media such as stone or clay, Innis agues, can be seen as durable, while … Read more Call for papers: Media in Transition 6: stone and papyrus, storage and transmission
Canadian Association for Information Science: Call for Papers The Canadian Association for Information Science invites abstract submissions for its 37th Annual Conference, to be held May 28-30, 2009 at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, as part of the 2009 Congress of the Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Deadline for proposals is January … Read more Call for Papers: Mapping the 21st Century Information Landscape: Borders, Bridges and Byways
Marie Benoit is the widow of Gaëtan Benoît, author of the posthumously-published Eugène Morel: Pioneer of Public Libraries in France. She wrote the following paragraphs describing her husband and the process of writing the book, which was originally his thesis for Fellowship in the Library Association (UK), in the 1970’s. —————————– I must confess that … Read more Marie Benoit on Gaetan Benoit and Eugene Morel…
New from Litwin Books: This study is a critical account of the works of Eugène Morel (1869-1934), a French Librarian who, along the lines of such eminent public library pioneers as Edward Edwards and Melvil Dewey, made a remarkable contribution towards the development of public librarianship in France. Morel was genuinely interested in all facets … Read more Eugene Morel: Pioneer of Public Libraries in France
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO A CELESTE WEST “FESTSCHRIFT” BOOK PROJECT Co-editors Toni Samek and KR Roberto are seeking articles, stories, poems, photographs, letters, thought pieces and other individual and collective memories of Celeste West, lesbian, feminist librarian, publisher, and activist, for a festschrift to be published by Library Juice Press in 2009. Celeste passed away … Read more Call for contributions: Celeste West Festschrift
Dr. Richard J. Cox, head of the archives track at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, has posted a review of Lara Jennifer Moore’s Restoring Order: The Ecole des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France. I find it an intelligent review that gives a clear sense of … Read more Richard Cox reviews Lara Moore’s Restoring Order