Re-Imagine: BECPL

Passing on this press release from the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library System, for any local folks interested. I know I’m not alone in my concern for BECPL’s future in the face of next year’s massive budget cut, so this could be a good way to get all hands on deck, at least.

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Community Meetings Announced To Create New Vision for Libraries & Services

The public is invited to share its ideas for the regional library system of the future through a series of public meetings, web surveys and focus groups; all part of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library System’s newly launched Re-Imagine campaign.

“This is an exciting as well as a challenging time for the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library System,” said Bridget Quinn-Carey, director of the Library System.  “We are beginning a process to re-imagine the library and create a new vision that will meet the needs of the entire community; a library that will not only accommodate the types of  services that are so heavily used currently, but one that will satisfy the needs of our users for innovative services in the years ahead.”

The Re-Imagine campaign, expected to take several months, is soliciting input from the public, business, corporate, services, cultural, senior, teen, urban and suburban sectors to determine how the library of the future in Erie County will look and what services it will offer. The process is being led by volunteer George T. DeTitta, Ph.D., Principal Research Scientist, Hauptman-Woodward Institute, and a citizen’s advisory committee as well as the consulting firm of Architectural Resources.  Participants will learn how libraries in other cities are successfully and creatively meeting the needs of library users in their communities, for today and tomorrow.

Upcoming Re-imagine Community Meeting dates, which are free and open to the public are:

Monday, November 8, 2010
5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Downtown Buffalo Central Library, One Lafayette Square, Bflo, 14203
Mason O. Damon Auditorium

Tuesday, November 9, 2010
7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Erie Community College South, 4041 Southwestern Blvd, Orchard Park, 14127
Bldg. 5, Room 5102

Wednesday, November 10, 2010
7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Erie Community College North, Tech Drive off of Wehrle Drive,  Williamsville,
Bretschger Hall, room B401

For more information, call 716-858-7144 or visit www.buffalolib.org

Lighthouse traveling libraries

I recently stumbled across a web site from the Michigan Lighthouse Conservancy, displaying examples of something I’ d never heard of: lighthouse traveling libraries.

“Lighthouses were often time located in remote areas and as such had no access to city services such as libraries, opera houses, entertainment, etc. that most people enjoyed who lived in a town or city. As light keeping was a lonely profession in most cases supplies were brought to them by lighthouse tender ships. One of the items the tender supplied was a library box on each visit as pictured to the left. Library boxes were filled with books and switched from station to station to supply different reading materials to the families. In 1876 portable libraries were first introduced in the Light-House Establishment and furnished to all light vessels and inaccessible offshore light stations with a selection of reading materials. These libraries were contained in a portable wooden case, each with a printed listing of the contents posted inside the door. Proper arrangements were made for the exchange of these libraries at intervals, and for revision of the contents as books became obsolete in accordance with suggestions obtained from public library authorities.

The books were carefully selected from books of a good standard appropriate to the families who would use them. While largely fiction, other classes of literature were included in reasonable proportions including technical books when requested. The books and periodicals contained in the libraries remained the property of the Light-House Establishment and each was marked in the front with the official Light-House Establishment bookplate. The beautiful 3″ x 4 ½” bookplate label bears a wonderful image of an iron pile lighthouse and Minot’s Ledge Light, and a lightship and bears the words “The Property of the Light House Establishment”.”

Are textbooks a thing of the past? Maybe paper ones are.

Kindles, Nooks and the iPad (perhaps especially the iPad): while e-reading is the hot new thing this year, it’s the textbook industry that most are predicting will see the biggest impact from e-book technology.

Compared with traditional textbooks, the iPad and other devices for reading digital books have the potential to save on textbook costs in the long term, to provide students with more and better information faster, and — no small matter — to lighten the typical college student’s backpack. (USA Today) At the same time, a robust online marketplace of used books and recent inroads by textbook rental programs give students more options than ever. The prospect of digital books and slow-but-steady growth in free online “open” content loom as developments that could upend the textbook landscape and alleviate the perennial problem of rising prices.

Back in August, Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC (a wholly owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, Inc.) announced an expanded textbook rental program; at the same time, the company offers thousands of eTextbooks and the NOOKstudy program.

Some say it’s the iPad that’s making all the difference. A shift to e-books within the textbook industry has been expected for some time, but it’s the arrival of the iPad that seems to have jump-started momentum in that direction. In a recent piece on NPR (The E-Textbook Experiment Turns a Page), Matt MacInnis of Inkling talks about why iPads surpass their paper counterparts: “We give guided tours through complex concepts,” he says. “So rather than seeing a picture of a cell dividing and then having a big, long caption, you can now tap … through all the different phases of cell division and see those things unfurl in front of you.” At Reed College, students tested Kindles last year (the results were lackluster and mostly unsuccessful; students reported understanding the course material less with Kindles than with paper textbooks) and are testing iPads this year. Most express positive feedback with the iPads, though they often cite the cost of purchasing one as prohibitive. Still, as MacInnis points out, when a printed textbook can cost hundreds of dollars alone, students may be swayed to purchase hardware that will allow them to download a chapter from that same textbook for $2.99.

MacInnis says he’ll be aiming straight for the students. He says, “I can absolutely guarantee you that the guy with the book version is looking over the shoulder — with envy — at the guy with the iPad version.” (NPR)

Book review: Chocolat

Review of: Chocolat by Joanne Harris
Penguin (2000), 320 p.

When Vianne — unmarried mother and chocolatier — arrives in the tiny French town of Lansquenet, she brings with her a secret longing, a desire to be still, a hope that she and her daughter, Anouk, have finally found a place they will not have to leave when the wind calls to her again. Soon enough, however, it is the secret desires and stories of the villagers around her that take over both the tale and Vianne’s thoughts and energy, as her little chocolate shop causes a ripple effect throughout the village. From the battered wife to the town crone, the parish priest to the gypsies passing through, it seems as if a great many emotions and passions come together during that Lent ,the year that Vianne comes, building in a frenzy up to the chocolate festival she has planned for Easter Sunday.

In this story of magical realism, several themes weave and waft their way around each other, first and most obvious being the debate between Church and Free Thinking, between dogmatism and independence. Père Reynaud, the local priest, is first troubled and then enraged by Vianne and her shop, but he is obsessed with her too, unable to escape entirely the hold she unwittingly has on Lansequet, resist her though he does. And for her part, Vianne, also, sees something in the priest she cannot run away from, something she feels she must stand and fight.

There is a powerful sense of community in Chocolat‘s Lansquenet, a net of family, friends — and enemies. Harris gives us both the bad and the good of a tightly-knit community, the close bonds of both love and hatred. Lansquenet is show in all its sweetness and charm, but we also see its less-palatable underbelly of interference, prejudice and crime — and as a result her setting is all the more real.

And there is also, in the end, a great deal about love in Harris’s book, though not as a rule love of the romantic sort you would expect from a book about chocolate. There is the love Vianne has for her daughter, and the love that old Armande has for her grandson. The love Guillaume has for his dogs, and the love Josephine learns to have for herself. And threaded through each of these loves there is a certain defiance, and because of that, a certain strength, as well.

eBook piracy on the rise?

From CNET:

Last January a company called Attributor conducted its first e-book piracy study. And back in May, I mentioned that study in piece called “Is Pad supercharging e-book piracy?” Well, Attributor has conducted a second study more recently and come up with some interesting data.

The company says its key findings are:

• 50 percent increase in online searches for pirated downloads throughout the past year
• 1.5-3 million daily Google queries for pirated e-books
• 20 percent increase in demand for pirated downloads since the iPad became widely available in mid-May 2010
• 54 percent increase in pirated e-book demand since August 2009
• Proliferation of smaller sites that host and supply pirated e-books–a shift from larger sites like Rapidshare dominating the syndication market
• “Breaking Dawn” by Stephanie Meyer registered the most pirated copy searches throughout the study
• Widespread international demand, with the largest number of searches during the study originating in the United States (11 percent), India (11 percent) and Mexico (5 percent)

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20018831-1.html#ixzz11ftgWWcT