• Library refuses donation from atheist “hate group”

    by  • January 10, 2014 • 0 Comments

    Morton Grove Public Library logoBut when Mehta asked his readers to pitch in to make up the difference and they rallied their support, Park District officials flatly refused the check, saying the district “has no intention of becoming embroiled in a First Amendment dispute.” Mehta, now faced with the unusual dilemma of having a few thousand dollars and a recipient who didn’t want it, next went to the Morton Grove Public Library. The library’s rejection was even firmer. During a debate over whether to accept the money, trustee Cathy Peters cited some of the more incendiary commenters on Mehta’s Friendly Atheist Facebook page and said, “They’re a hate group,” and asked, “Would you take money from the Klan?” Mehta argued, “I get 2,000 comments a day and don’t always look through all of them. Anyone who operates a forum understands that. I stand by my own posts, but them being bothered by random comments is a weak argument.” But the library stood firm.

    Read the full story @ Salon.com.

    Friday Video: American Libraries Live – The Future of Libraries

    by  • January 10, 2014 • 0 Comments

    Streamed live on Jan 9, 2014

    The Future of Libraries: What’s Your Vision? We’re thrilled to have Innovative Interfaces as a sponsor for this episode. David Lee King will lead our expert panel in an open discussion on the challenges and changes we’ll see in our libraries in the near and distant future.

    Panelists:
    David Lee King, Digital Services Director at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library
    Bohyun Kim, Digital Access Librarian at Florida International University Medical Library
    Marshall Breeding, Library Technology Consultant, Speaker and Author
    Joe Murphy, Director of Library Futures at Innovative Interfaces

    Mary Shelley letters discovered in Essex archive

    by  • January 10, 2014 • 0 Comments

    Mary ShellyIn the age of e-mail could something like this ever happen in the future?

    It was an idle click on an unpromising website that first directed Nora Crook towards the most exciting and unexpected discovery of her distinguished academic career. Crook, a professor emerita at Anglia Ruskin University and expert on the Romantic period, was researching an obscure 19th-century novelist when her internet search brought up a listing for 13 documents at Essex Record Office, catalogued under the tantalising words: “Letter from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley”.

    “I thought: ‘What is this?’ and clicked on the link,” she said. “I knew right away they had never been published before.”

    Thanks to “pure serendipity”, Crook had chanced upon the largest collection of unpublished letters by the author of Frankenstein to be discovered in decades.

    Read the full article @ TheGuardian.com.

    The Harm of Booklessness

    by  • January 10, 2014 • 1 Comment

    bookless1My primary concern is that this might (or already has?) create false expectations of what “all libraries” should become. It’s setting a precedent. The key issue for me is funding. Why do we need a library anymore? Let’s just build computer labs– that’s what they are doing in Texas.

    Read the full post @ The Ubiquitous Librarian.

    On the Next NCompass Live: Hot Titles for a Cold Month

    by  • January 10, 2014 • 0 Comments

    ncompassLiveMed_thumb.jpgJoin us for the next NCompass Live: “Hot Titles for a Cold Month”, on Wednesday, January 15, 10:00am – 11:00am CT.

    Devra Dragos, Michael Sauers, and Laura Johnson, from the Nebraska Library Commission, will give brief book talks about new titles that could be good additions to your library’s collection. It’s a mixed bag of popular fiction and non-fiction alike.

    Other upcoming NCompass Live events:

    • Jan. 22 – Passive Programming for Tweens and Teens
    • Jan. 29 – Tech Talk with Michael Sauers
    • Feb. 5 – Where in the world…? Nebraska’s Polley Music Library and the World of Music Librarianship

    For more information, to register for NCompass Live, or to listen to recordings of past events, go to: http://nlc.nebraska.gov/NCompassLive/

    NCompass Live is broadcast live from 10am – 11am Central Time. Convert to your time zone on the Official U.S. Time website: http://time.gov/

    Penguin eBooks are now downloadable for Kindle without USB

    by  • January 8, 2014 • 0 Comments

    OverDrive logoWoot!

    …the USB side-loading requirement for Penguin eBooks on Kindle devices has been lifted. Today, we are pleased to inform our partners and end-users that direct downloads of Penguin eBooks in Kindle format for U.S. library accounts are now standard. This means that these titles will have the same ease of use as all other publishers’ eBooks, without the need for USB loading.

    Read the full press release @ Overdrive.com.

    Minnesota librarians push to curb NSA snooping

    by  • January 7, 2014 • 0 Comments

    In an alliance that stretches all the political clichés about “strange bedfellows,” librarians and civil libertarians are on the same side as gun activists and Internet giants Facebook and Google in backing bipartisan legislation in Congress that would roll back the federal government’s authority to snoop on Americans. In the past year, their agenda...

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    Tuesday Tech Tip: Sorting Lists in Word

    by  • January 7, 2014 • 2 Comments

    Let’s say you’ve got a bulleted or numbered list in Word (confirmed in 2010 & 2013, not tested in earlier versions) and the items are currently in this order: Straub King Koontz Lee Ketchum Later you decide that you’d like to have them in a different order and if that order isn’t alphabetical (which...

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