Cow Creek Book Festival!

Mark your calendars - the former Prairie Book Festival has returned in a new form, with new features!  Saturday, March 31st from 10:30 am to 6:00 pm, the festival will celebrate the written word with talks given by local and regional authors.

Events kick off with a presentation from 2011 Newbery Award-winning Wichitan Clare Vanderpool!  Mrs. Vanderpool will speak in the library's auditorium at 10:30am.  There will be copies of Moon Over Manifest available for purchase and Mrs. Vanderpool will sign autographs after her presentation.

Throughout the remainder of the day, these great authors will be presenting programs in the big tent at 10th & Main (or in the auditorium if the weather is bad):

• Children's author Beverly Olson Buller, whose works include, From Emporia: The Story of William Allen White and A Prairie Peter Pan: The Story of Mary White 
• Linda A. Born, author of My Mom Has Alzheimer's: Inspiration and Help for Caregivers;
• Hays resident Joanne Emerick, author of Courage Before Every Danger;
• Great Bend resident and Barton Community College instructor Linda McCaffrey, author of "Praying Hard for You" - Love Letters to a Death Camp;
• Lowell May, WWII historian and author of Camp Concordia: German POWs in the Midwest;
• Roy Bird and Gwen Battis author and illustrator of Little Ike: Dwight D. Eisenhower's Abilene Boyhood;
• From Andover, Kansas, Robert Collins, author of 3 science fiction novels and more;
• Hutchinson's Mary Rintoul (author) and Betsie Andrews (publisher) with their book, Prairie Nutcracker;
• McPherson's Steven Farney, author of several Kansas sports books including Title Towns: Class BB Boys Basketball Champions;
• Kim Vogel Sawyer, author of many inspiration fiction titles including the forthcoming A Seeking Heart;
• Hutchinson-area authors Amy Bickel and Jason Probst authors of The Complete Guide to Kansas Fishing;
• Hutchinson writer and photographer Linda Laird, author The American Grain Elevator: Function and Form;
• Writing duo Vickie Britton & Loretta Jackson, co-authors of several mysteries, their latest is The Mayan Mask of Death

More eBook Nonsense!

WARNING:  Long, but extremely IMPORTANT!

[EDITED 2/12/12]
Sometimes I get frustrated with people.  Usually, it is because communication hasn't worked properly and has created a misunderstanding.  Sometimes though, it is because communication has been completely disregarded and subsequent faulty reasoning has led to a poor decision.  Now, whether or not that faulty reasoning has been mine or the other party's...let's just say I'm willing to discuss it.  The same can't be said of the 5 publishers listed at the end of this post.

Sometimes when trying to communicate, I must assume that the other party has completely gone off the rails and is just flat wrong.  Case in point:  Penguin ends eBook sales to libraries.  This news means that 5 out of the 6 "big" publishers have chosen to not sell eBooks to libraries.  Random House is the sole remaining "big" publisher still selling eBooks to libraries (thank you Random House!)

Those other publishers, rather than work out a solution, have chosen to walk away.  They want you, the reader, to only have the option to buy an ebook, never to borrow.  This despite decades of hard work by librarians, promoting authors and books for these big publishers.  Librarians want people to read.  We relish helping to discover new, great authors and sharing them with our patrons.  Librarians want more books to be published and more writers to succeed.  Librarians want publishers and publishing to grow.  These big publishers, apparently, want only our money.  And by "our" money, I mean ours individually.  They don't seem to care about choking off a source of free promotion and business that (although they dismiss it as inconsequential) has benefited them for years.

Here's the harsh truth:  Just as it disadvantages individuals, a lack of access to a popular format, a format that may reign supreme in the coming years, will kill libraries.  It will kill them utterly because while a new format changes habits and usage patterns, complete lack of access to that format will bring us even further along the road to a society of "haves" and "have nots".  Public libraries have always acted as a great leveler - providing resources to those who cannot afford them.  Public libraries work hard to create readers: Life-long readers. Voracious readers.  And we don't especially care if they buy books, borrow them, or both.  HPL's children's outreach brings books and story times to 600+ pre-schoolers per month with this single goal in mind.  That's 600+ potential book buyers WE are creating for you, MacMillan Publishing (and you other ingrate publishers).

Lack of access will also kill one of the other main reasons libraries exist - to accumulate and make available the totality of human knowledge.  Eh, so what, right?

Librarians are not unreasonable people.  We will negotiate terms, conditions, restrictions, whatever.  But we can't negotiate when the other party is acting in a childish fashion and simply takes their toys and goes home.

If this situation makes you mad, here's a list of contacts to which you can express your anger.  I will be contacting them myself and I hope you will too.

Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
646-307-5151

customerservice@mpsvirginia.com

SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
PHONE: 212-698-7000

http://www.simonandschuster.com/about/contact_us

Penguin Group

375 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

Phone: 212-366-2000

ecommerce@us.penguingroup.com

Hatchette Book Group

466 Lexington Avenue #131

New York, NY 10017

Phone: 212-364-1100

http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/customer_contact-us.aspx

Brilliance Audio, Inc., 

1704 Eaton Drive

Grand Haven, Michigan 49417

Phone: 616-846-5256

consumerhelp@brillianceaudio.com 

[EDIT]  Here is a considerably more measured blog post on the Penguin / eBook topic, but one that also points out many of the very real, but bordering on whiny, problems of librarianship these days.

SF Book Discussion

The Apocalypse is upon us!  Well, at least in a fictional fashion.  Our newly formed Science Fiction Book Discussion group met for the first time on Groundhog Day (Feb. 2nd.)  We discussed William Forstchen's book One Second After.  My impression after the discussion was that generally the group liked the book and thought that Forstchen's portrayal of the breakdown of civil society was compelling and realistic.  As I read, I was most surprised by the author's take on the weaknesses in modern food supply for large populations and the potential - the certainty, really - that many, many people who are alive because of the marvel of modern medicine would very rapidly die off in the event of a major disruption in pharmaceutical production.

Our next book is Walter Miller's classic post-apocalyptic book, A Canticle for Leibowitz.  We'll discuss it April 5th at 7pm here in the Hutchinson Public Library.  Where One Second After warned of the dangers of EMPs to modern electronics (and civilization), A Canticle for Leibowitz warns us about the dangers of a more traditional nuclear holocaust.  The following is a description of the book I found at Amazon:

Walter M. Miller's acclaimed SF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz opens with the accidental excavation of a holy artifact: a creased, brittle memo scrawled by the hand of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, that reads: "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma." To the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz, this sacred shopping list penned by an obscure, 20th-century engineer is a symbol of hope from the distant past, from before the Simplification, the fiery atomic holocaust that plunged the earth into darkness and ignorance. As 1984 cautioned against Stalinism, so 1959's A Canticle for Leibowitz warns of the threat and implications of nuclear annihilation. Following a cloister of monks in their Utah abbey over some six or seven hundred years, the funny but bleak Canticle tackles the sociological and religious implications of the cyclical rise and fall of civilization, questioning whether humanity can hope for more than repeating its own history. Divided into three sections--Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man), Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light), and Fiat Voluntas Tua (Thy Will Be Done)--Canticle is steeped in Catholicism and Latin, exploring the fascinating, seemingly capricious process of how and why a person is canonized. --Paul Hughes

Our third title, for discussion June 7th will be Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse.  This is a themed collection of short stories by authors such as George R.R. Martin, Stephen King, and Octavia Butler.  Here is a brief review from Booklist:

With this well-chosen set of postapocalyptic stories, editor Adams provides a bit of everything that is best about the trope, from bleak, empty worlds to beacons of hope in an otherwise awful situation. Only Jerry Oltion’s “Judgment Passed,” about what happens when a space expedition returns to an Earth to which Jesus has returned, and the rapture has come without them, is original to the collection. Stephen King’s bleak “The End of the Whole Mess” opens, John Langan’s much more recent “Episode Seven: Last Stand against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers” closes, and they are wildly different. Highlights in between include Octavia Butler’s “Speech Sounds,” in which civilization has ended because a disease has made most people unable to talk, read, or do any number of once-taken-for-granted things, and Elizabeth Bear’s “And the Deep Blue Sea,” a brilliant take on a world laid waste and a devil’s bargain that treads in Roger Zelazny’s manic footsteps. A well-chosen selection of well-crafted stories, offering something to please nearly every postapocalyptic palate. --Regina Schroeder

While we want our inaugural year - 2012 - of book selections to be based around the theme of the "end of the world", we hope to continue our discussion group into the future (barring and ACTUAL end to the world) and branch out into the many other areas of speculative and fantasy fiction.  If you are interested in joining us, please reply here in the comments with your email address and I will get you signed up!

This is how we CAN have nice things

For all of the "smaller government" and "taxes are too high" talk that we all hear, day-in and day-out, there are actually good reasons for having robust, smart government:  Government that coordinates; government that practices efficiency (yes I went there); government that gets the job done.

Why do I think this?  Because there are lots of things in our daily lives that we take for granted AND that no one else is willing to do.  What things immediately come to mind that everyone wants and that government provides?  Familiar things like fire service, policing, trash removal, running water / sewer, and road repair.  Then there are more esoteric services (if you can call them that) that have made and continue to make modern civilization possible.  Things like a public education system, support for sciences, art, and higher education; and even libraries.  What's an efficient, coordinated way state government can help each and every public library in Kansas?

This is a quote from the State Librarian's budget presentation yesterday:

Last year the State Library asked one of the database vendors – Gale CENGAGE – to compile the cost for individual subscriptions, in short, what would be the cost if every library subscribed on its own.  That figure was $24,767,699 – nearly $25 M.  The statewide contract with this vendor is $632,000 so cost avoidance is over $24M.

The numbers are so wildly disparate, they almost don't make sense, do they?  The State - the STATE GOVERNMENT - can save taxpayers $24,000,000 by spending a mere 3% of that sum instead of pretending to be fiscally responsible by eliminating programs they perceive as being frivolous or unneeded.


Will all libraries in the state subscribe to Gale CENGAGE online resources with individual contracts?  Of course not.  Many simply will never be able to afford such tools.  But it wouldn't take many individual contracts to start bumping up against that $632k.  The State of Kansas can provide every library and by extension, every citizen these tools for a bargain price.  Funding for the State Library has been cut by an appalling 30.6% over the past 5 years.  Funding for the statewide databases will disappear entirely in the next year if a decision is not made.  I hope our legislators understand the tremendous economy of scale that can be achieved in this instance and decide to do the right thing by funding the State Library at a proper level.

The Hunt for New Ideas, part 2: Revenge of the New Idea

Library stacks.  Library shelving.  You can picture in your mind exactly what I'm talking about without me actually going out there and finding an image, right?  It hardly seems like something that would be subject to a "new idea" does it?  The humble book shelf and book stack has remained largely unchanged in public libraries for 150-odd years.  Here's what the stacks look like in the Hutchinson Public Library:

Storage, pure and simple.  What's hard to see here is how they are constructed.  Each section has a rectangular frame in the middle from which the shelves hang.  Like this:

This is not a bad way to do it.  It holds the shelves very securely, allows for long rows to be linked together, and is very sturdy.  However, one is limited in configuration because most of these systems don't work very well with different height frames hooked together - basically you can put together long lines of, for example, 7' high shelf stacks.

So along comes a company called Paragon with a new way of looking at library shelving.  At least it's new to me.  And I've been looking.  The shelving product is called Intuitive-IC and they allow a library to do one thing differently - mix up and combine shelf heights, work surfaces, and seating within the row of shelving.  Here's a picture:

If you look closely, you can see that the cantilever supports that hold up the shelves go from the front and back edges toward the middle of the shelves.  This allows all different heights of shelves to be put together in a row.  They have a short little YouTube video that shows some of the possibilities.

I think this might be a good choice for our art collection on the second floor since we need to replace the shelving there.  We need to be able to stack higher, but want the option of some low tops on which to set heavy books.  It is a collection that lends itself to browsing and sometimes it is easier to look through a few right there in the stacks before deciding which ones to check out.

As I go through the stack of papers and brochures I picked up at ALA Midwinter, I continue to find more and more good ideas and nifty new ways of looking at the same old library things!

The Hunt for New Ideas

Mediasurfer iPad self-check

Laptop self-check

I went to the ALA Midwinter meeting Exhibits Hall in Dallas over the weekend with a long wish list.  Big meetings such as that are great for networking and learning new things, but they are also GREAT for finding out about how to meet patron needs through new products and services.

Are there really any new ideas out there?  Has everything already been done?  Maybe.  But some people are taking ideas and running with them in pretty cool ways.  Take the idea of checking out laptops or other devices to library patrons.  HPL has checked out laptops for 3 years now.  They are used in-house only and circulate from the adult circulation desk.  But what if you could automate this process?  Sort of a Redbox for electronics?  Two companies have done just that - Mediasurfer and LaptopsAnytime.  The Mediasurfer kiosk dispenses tablets (iPads, specifically) only, while the LaptopsAnytime device can be customized to dispense laptops and netbooks.

Imagine being able to just walk up to the machine, scan your card, and go sit down and start computing with a clean, fully-charged device.  When it comes to return time, no waiting in lines, no fuss, just put the device back in whichever empty slot is available.

I'm looking for new ways to serve our patrons as we work to re-imagine the library technology center.  Another HUGE time drain we struggle with here at HPL is assigning public computers and dealing with printing.  I spent a lot of time looking for solutions there and I think I found at least one good option.  Something that will allow us to provide wireless printing, print control and login/registration on public computers.  This will help us to free up key staff members who can then share their expertise and help patrons solve their technology problems.

It is somewhat hard to describe, but the kernel at the core of our re-imagining is not to provide new technology, but to help people interface with the library and its resources.  As I sift through the information I gathered at ALA, I will share more and continue to write about where we're headed with technology and which new/old ideas we are going to implement.

The Revolution is Here!

A colleague who happens also to be a board member here at HPL forwarded this article from the journal American Libraries.  It is definitely worth a read.  Here's why I think it is relevant to us here in lil' ol' Hutchinson:  We are looking inward and examining our mission and role in the community right now.  The gist of the article is that essentially, the revolution in libraries is not just one of adapting to new digital formats, it is one of challenges to the very core of our (the public library world) identity and mission.

According to the article, major shifts in areas libraries once controlled are taking place.  Here are the major challenges:  Shifts in collection development - publishers are wresting this away from librarians by refusing to offer econtent to libraries; Access - license agreements dictate length of checkout and even number of checkouts before an item must be "discarded"; Preservation - this is a scary one because no one really "collects" content that isn't in an analog (paper) format because no one "owns" the items in a digital world; and finally, Privacy - librarians have long been the guardians of patron's privacy and in the digital realm that is simply no longer the case.

So what is a poor, meek librarian to do?  First off, fight to shed the poor, meek stereotype.  I think ALA would do well to hire a Madison Avenue ad agency and change our collective image.  Afterall, image is everything and perception is reality.

The article linked earlier finishes up though with a great suggestion:  That libraries should embrace the core of a report by Roger Levien written in June 2011 for ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy Confronting the Future: Strategic Visions for 21^st-Century Public Libraries (PDF file).  The core idea is this:

 

The Six Ps

• People. Librarians provide unbiased services and advice based on expertise and professional norms.
• Place. Libraries are physical spaces conducive to individual or group contemplative work.
• Price. Library services are generally provided at no charge to the user, and access is available regardless of individual ability to pay.
• Principles. Library services are provided under the rubric of intellectual freedom, privacy, and trust.
• Pride. An excellent library is an indicator of a community with quality public services and high quality of life.
• Package. Libraries provide successful integration of information services across disparate functions.

This seems like a great starting place for a library's statement of core principles, don't you think?  I still believe that libraries can save for everyone our embattled national ideals.  Libraries are unique places offering some of the most cost-effective services a government can fund (hint, hint Kansas Legislature) and librarians, at least here in Hutchinson Kansas, are willing to adapt.  But we can't do it alone, we need the support of our elected leaders and the input of our most precious resource - the communities we serve.  So how about it Hutchinson - what service would be the most helpful / cool / cost-effective for you?