I'm a health sciences librarian living and working in the midwest US. I'll try to stay focused on 'matters librarian', but I can't promise anything.
Contact me:
healthscienceslibrarian [at] gmail.com
Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 07:23AM From the Library Copyright Alliance. Click the image for the pdf.
Google, Google Settlement in Books, Library Monday, March 1, 2010 at 09:57PM As Phil Bradley pointed out - Google has added a nearby feature. Search for something like, say, 'eye clinics', click 'Show options' and then 'nearby' partway down the page, and you'll theoretically get a set of localized results. For 'eye clinics', the results are good, mainly UM stuff, but an 'eye clinic' (singular) search offers a much less relevant (and not to mention crazy different) set of first pagers. Using the 'custom location' to isolate results to mon city helps a bit (though, really, I should get local clinics near the top of my search anyway, with or without the uber-modern nearby feature).
Given the uncertain future of Go Local, this is at least one alternative for finding local health services. (Another would be to go all alchemical on Go Local and transform it into a mobile app. 'Til then!)
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 02:23PM Way back in May '09, at MLA '09, in Hawaii, I presented a colleague's health literacy paper. Here it is:
MLA in Library, Presentations Friday, February 5, 2010 at 08:05PM [Cross-posted on Re:Generations]
That, at least, is the suggestion in Mike Shatzkin's recent article, Why are you for killing bookstores? Shatzkin's article doesn't actually address the fate of libraries, but Tim Spalding of LibraryThing fame makes the connection in his (depressing) follow-up, Why are you for killing libraries.*
As a health sciences librarian, I see ebooks as realistic necessities in health care environments, and could thus be lumped under the ebook supporting, library killing umbrella. Of course, that type of literature is not the type of literature that bookstores typically sell and libraries typically lend, so that type of ebook adoption and usage is not, I'm sure, an indicator of book repository death. True. More or less.
But even speaking generally, I'm not sure we're talking about an either/or proposition here, that ebook adoption kills book repositories. Yes - the library-as-book-repository is probably dying and the ebook probably has a part in its demise. But, by no means does that mean that the library in general is dying. On the contrary, you could flip the argument around and say that "the proliferation of ebooks makes libraries more relevant 'cause it provides 'em with the flexibility to do modern stuff with their space."
To me, it's not so much the proliferation of ebooks that kills libraries, but the inability to adapt to the times that does.
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* For some discussion, take a look at the chat forum on LibraryThing as well.
Future, Re:Generations, eBooks in Library, Re:Generations Friday, January 29, 2010 at 07:16PM And if Chekov were alive he'd be 150. The Guardian's nice write up.
Chekov, Library Day in the Life in Library 