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Major NJ Library Budget Cuts

Nicole — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:12:50 +0000

I am a Pennsylvania librarian – but I do a ton of work in New Jersey and work very closely with NJ librarians and it is for this reason that I feel a need to spread the word of some very bad news NJ received yesterday. First, the announcement (links added by me):

TO: Library Directors
FROM: Norma E. Blake, State Librarian
SUBJECT: 2011 Budget
DATE: March 17, 2010

Yesterday we became aware through Treasury budget documents that it is proposed that Thomas Edison State College and the New Jersey State Library will be merged with the New Jersey State Museum and governed by Rutgers University starting July 1, 2010.

In addition:

Libraries lost $1.449 million (all) of NJKI (databases including RefUSA, Business Source Premiere, and Academic Search Premiere).

$4.299 million (all) in Network Aid (including Regions and Statewide Services, such as delivery, databases, interlibrary loan and continuing education.)
$1.170 million (all) in virtual aid (databases and the public library JerseyConnect Technology System).
$3.5 million in Per Capita State Aid (leaving $3.676 million)
Libraries have lost 74% in library program funding from the FY 2010 appropriation which is unprecedented and disproportionate to other Departments’ losses.

If these cuts remain once the budget is passed in June, an unintended consequence would be the loss of $4.5 million in federal funds. Also, if the cut to JerseyConnect is maintained, the State Library cannot accept the $7.5 million Broadband funds if awarded by NJIA.

The State Library is talking to the New Jersey Library Association about our concerns regarding the loss of federal money and services to libraries like delivery, databases, interlibrary loan, Per Capita State Aid and JerseyConnect.

We will communicate again with you as soon as we know what action is needed.

There are so many areas of this I can focus on, but I want to bring one thing to everyone’s attention that may not be clear. In the announcement there is a mention to the cuts in ‘Regions.’ What does this mean? NJ has these awesome cooperatives for the four regions in the state. Each of these groups offers services to libraries like cooperative buying benefits and professional development. This is something we don’t have in PA, and something I always talk about when mentioning continuing education for librarians.

One of the complaints I have about librarianship is that it’s a profession without required continuing ed. For a lawyer to stay licensed he has to attend classes and stay up to things, the same with accountants, insurance salespeople, etc – why not librarians. That said, NJ was offering free and low cost continuing ed to their librarians and that made me so proud – both of the state and of the librarians who attended these classes even though they weren’t required.

Now, the state is looking at cutting all of these programs. So not only are they hurting their community by limiting the resources libraries can offer they are also stunting the education available to their librarians … seems like a lose lose situation for NJ citizens and librarians alike.

This is a story I’ll be keeping an eye on and one that I hope resolves itself in a way that doesn’t hurt so many New Jersey residents.

Libraries featured on the Today Show

Nicole — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:02:22 +0000

This morning while I was training librarians on how to use Koha, libraries were featured on the Today Show. If you missed it too – you can view it here:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Open Access Library News

Nicole — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:14:32 +0000

I’m still catching up on emails from being away so I missed my invite to In the Library with the Lead Pipe until just now.

We are six librarians working in academic, public, and school libraries across the United States. In addition to essays by its founders, In the Library with the Lead Pipe will feature articles by guests representing special libraries and archives, as well as educators, administrators, library support staff, and community members. If you want to submit a guest post, see our submission guidelines.

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is intended to help improve our communities, our libraries, and our professional organizations. Our goal is to explore new ideas and start conversations; to document our concerns and argue for solutions. Each article is peer-reviewed by at least one external and one internal reviewer.

What a neat idea. I’ll be poking around as I have time.

Information wants to be expensive

Nicole — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:55:36 +0000

One of the common concerns I heard earlier this week at the NFAIS conference was costs. The digital natives want free information – but the publishers have to worry about their bottom line. Of course, being who I am, I’m all about reworking your business model to make open source, open content, and open access work! But someone pointed out this article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Information Wants to Expensive.

With newspapers in cities across the country on the brink, an old idea is being resurrected in the hope of saving them: They should charge for access to their journalism on the Internet. This is a great idea, but about 10 years late.

Time magazine published a cover story earlier this month headlined “How to Save Your Newspaper.” In it, former Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson noted how odd it is to charge for subscriptions in print but not online. “Even an old print junkie like me has quit subscribing to the New York Times, because if it doesn’t see fit to charge me for its content, I’d feel like a fool paying for it. This is not a business model that makes sense.”

I agree – and that’s why I don’t buy newspapers or magazines anymore – but I do see the main point of the article – which is newspapers are losing money because no one is paying for content anymore. So, how do we solve it? I don’t know – I would probably pay for an online newspaper subscription if that was the only way to read the news … but how do you make it so that’s the only way?

I don’t really have answers – only more questions. I do know that I understand where publishers are coming from – but if they were to publish online only then maybe it wouldn’t cost them as much and maybe they could charge us less for content online. One audience member argued that if we have our universities paying for subscriptions to online journals then what are we complaining about – while that is the case for the speaker they were asking, it’s not the case for me. I often find that I can’t find articles I want to read online because my public library doesn’t subscribe to as many research journals as a university would.

Anyway, just wanted to point you to the article and see if anyone out there had any great insights or ideas to make both the publishers and the researchers happy.

Libraries Offer Free Relief in Tough Times

Nicole — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:05:42 +0000

I just finished watching this short news clip – while I’m happy to see the focus on libraries, I don’t think it remotely touched on how much value you can find in libraries – maybe I’m just biased

Thank you Curtis for pointing this out.

The Tech Static Launches!

Nicole — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:51:31 +0000

A great new site for library techies (and other librarians too) has launched!! This from the press release:

The Tech Static, a new collection development resource for technology titles, published its inaugural issue today.

The need for such a resource became apparent when October 15 marked the last installment of Library Journal’s “Computer Media” review column, which The Tech Static’s creator, Rachel Singer Gordon, had been writing since 2002. This left a large gap in the library literature: no other librarian-targeted publication currently reviews computer books on a regular basis. To fill that gap, Singer Gordon created The Tech Static, a new resource for librarians focusing on reviewing technology-related books.

The Tech Static assists librarians with technology-related collection development. To this end, it contains:

Reviews of current computer books

Reviews of technology-related titles targeted at librarians

Collection development articles (weeding, “must-haves,” balancing a computer book collection)

Prepublication alerts

Publisher press releases

DVD and ebook reviews

Announcements

… and more!

“I’m pleased to continue providing — and expanding on! — coverage of technology titles,” said Singer Gordon. “Anyone involved with collection development in this area is invited to subscribe to this new free resource.” The Tech Static is available online at www.thetechstatic.com; readers can also subscribe via RSS or email.

The Tech Static is also currently seeking writers for technology-related collection development articles.

Contact Rachel Singer Gordon with any questions or comments at rachel@thetechstatic.com.

New York Times APIs

Nicole — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:15:00 +0000

I’m catching up on blog reading after ages away from home and found two new APIs from the New York Times.

First the TimesTags API:

Today we’re releasing the TimesTags API, which is the gateway to a lush garden of Times metadata. What’s so great about metadata? Well, you’ve probably heard that “information wants to be free.” But even more than that, information wants to be found. And metadata — data about the data — improves findability.

Second the Movie Reviews API:

Today we’re launching the Movie Reviews API, a new way to access over 22,000 New York Times movie reviews going all the way back to 1924.

Keep ‘em coming!!! This is great stuff. One day soon we’re going to see a ‘super OPAC’ that uses a ton of APIs to enhance content displayed to our patrons!!

Newspaper Research

Nicole — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:22:32 +0000

I spent my weekend researching family history using newspaper databases from my local library. I wanted to go into the library to play with Ancestry.com (which is available onsite for free), but my pup decided he was going to catch a stomach bug Anyway, I was very disappointed in the tools I used. They weren’t able to follow simple search syntax like phrases and booleans. That’s why I’m happy to see this news from Google & ProQuest.

Hoping to do for newspapers what Google Book Search has done for monographs, ProQuest and search giant Google have reached an agreement to digitize millions of pages of content from ProQuest’s vast newspaper microfilm archives. While ProQuest has vowed to continue improving and expanding its Historical Newspapers collection independently, the Google deal aims to create searchable electronic versions of smaller newspapers otherwise unlikely to be digitized, making them available on the open web via Google’s News archive search. “The problem is that, until now, finding a workable economic model for libraries and publishers has been challenging,” said Rod Gauvin, ProQuest senior VP of publishing. “This model overcomes that hurdle, unlocking a wealth of content for libraries and Internet users with unique research needs.”

I’m not sure that this search will be any better – but I at least know that Google can handle my phrase searches.

Learn more about this new partnership.

LISjobs.com Logo Contest

Nicole — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:39:19 +0000

This from Rachel Singer Gordon. I’m no artist … but you may be:

LISjobs.com is seeking submissions for a new logo that reflects its mission of job hunting and career development for librarians and info pros. This logo will be featured on the upcoming redesign of the LISjobs.com website, as well as in additional print and online materials.

Guidelines:

Please keep the design in a landscape (wider than it is tall) format, and use lighter colors to help it stand out against the redesigned site. While creating your design, keep in mind that the new LISjobs.com expands coverage of career development and library education issues, serving all stages of info pros’ career cycle. I’m seeking a logo that best represents that mission.

Please submit your design as a .jpg file to rachel@lisjobs.com by Monday, July 7. If your design is chosen, please be prepared to submit a high-quality Illustrator (.eps) or Photoshop (.psd) graphic (vector preferred).

If your design is chosen, you affirm that you will transfer all rights over to Rachel Singer Gordon/LISjobs.com. By submitting a logo design, you affirm that you are its creator and have not used others’ protected work in its design. You will be credited on the LISjobs.com website as the logo designer, with a link back to your own web presence if desired. You will also receive a free resume posting on LISjobs.com (lifetime, or as long as I still offer this service) as well as an autographed copy of What’s the Alternative: Career Options for Librarians and Info Pros (ITI, 2008).

The winning design will be chosen by Rachel Singer Gordon. If no design is selected, there may be no winner of this contest, and LISjobs.com may stick with its old logo.

Print versus Online

Nicole — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:32:00 +0000

Business Week 6/2/08
Originally uploaded by Michael Casey

The other day, Michael Casey posted this photo. Like the others who commented on the photo, I wanted to find the article and read it – but I didn’t go to my local library (shame on me) or to my bookstore, I went straight to the BusinessWeek website. I wanted to find the article online – and I did!

I was surprised to find such a new article available without having to buy the print, but it turns out there is a new way for these publishers to make money. Ads! I’m not talking about the kinds of ads that AdBlock protects me from either – I’m talking commercials!! Yep, there was a commercial at the top of the article that I had to keep pausing so I could read the article without interruptions.

I guess it’s time to install a plugin to stop all videos from running without asking me first ….

No more 8apps

Nicole — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:26:09 +0000

Well, I can’t say it’s a surprise, but 8apps has closed down. I was pretty impressed with what I saw when it launched, but every time I checked back, there were still only 4 apps …

Today I visited, only to find a note saying that the site had closed because the creator was not in the mood.

Oh well, I guess we can only have so many successful productivity tools out there.

The Hollywood Librarian’s financial predicament

Nicole — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:10:09 +0000

Via LISNews:

Lynne writes: “Greetings to all librarians. I am Lynne Martin Erickson. I have been the fiscal agent for The Hollywood Librarian documentary film since 2004. I post this in the hope that librarians will respond immediately and repost widely.

As many of you know, this wonderful film is the result of the tireless efforts of one person: Ann Seidl. She single-handedly raised $200,000 to make and distribute this movie, worked on it for over 8 years and she is still working to get it seen by as many members of our public as possible. She is traveling throughout the US and the world to promote the film. Thanks to the librarian network, the film is being seen in dozens of locations by hundreds and even thousands of people.

While Ann has devoted her full-time work to this cause, she has been paid very little. She insists she is not in it for the money. I can guarantee that is the case. She wouldn’t say this to you, but I can assure you that Ann is broke.

During the Banned Book Week release, when tickets sold for $8, we took in about $10,000, but less than $400 was profit. These days, she is asking for a small fee to screen the film but that money is to fund the editing and authoring process for the DVD which she wants to make available this fall. But she must have some financial support to go on working on the film. We can’t let her stop working on the film to take other employment when she is so close to finishing.

If you are a fan of The Hollywood Librarian or of Ann, I am asking you to send her your financial encouragement.

Go here now http://www.hollywoodlibrarian.com/involved.html and click on the Paypal link.”

I never got to see the movie and have been looking for the DVD – I’m happy to hear that it’s in production and hope that we can help this movie make it to the masses!!

New Library Press Site

Nicole — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:23:15 +0000

New from Blake Carver the man behind LISNews & LISHost:

I started a new site, LISWire – The Librarian’s News Wire (http://liswire.com), and I’m doing my best to spread the word. You can probably guess what the site is all about from the name, but there’s also 2 mailing lists, and a bunch of RSS feeds. Robin Blum and I are running the show and are looking for press releases and other news items of interest to librarians to get things going. You can sign up for an account and submit things you’d like to announce to the library world. I’ll be cross posting most announcements to LISNews for a little while until we see how much traffic we get at LISWire.

I wonder if this means LISNews won’t have press releases anymore – or if this is going to be in addition to that? Either way – I’m subscribed – are you?

500 million Firefox downloads

Nicole — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:09:07 +0000

Yesterday Mozilla announced that Firefox has been downloaded 500 million times!!

Firefox just reached 500,000,000 downloads. This is an absolutely phenomenal milestone for Firefox. It is sort of hard to imagine what that number means. For some perspective, that’s roughly the audience size of 10,000 Rome Colosseums combined. It would be the weight, in kilograms, of 8,500 Boeing 747 airplanes. In dollars, for $500 million you and 15 of your friends can fly to the International Space Station.

To celebrate they’re asking that we help people in need:

OR, you can affect change and invite 15 of your friends to play a game and feed 25,000 people. With your help we can break another milestone today with FreeRice.com –500,000,000 grains of donated rice in one day. Imagine helping to feed the hungry while picking up some new vocabulary too!

This is great news! Now if more libraries would just make Firefox their default browser on patron stations – imagine how many more downloads Mozilla would be able to report??

Technorati Tags: firefox

New law makes a step to save students money

Nicole — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:50:07 +0000

Found via The Stingy Scholar:

The College Opportunity and Affordability Act (H.R. 4137) includes three critical provisions to help students deal with textbook prices. First, it requires publishers to tell faculty the price of textbooks when professors are choosing books for their classes. Publishers often withhold prices from professors, hoping that cost won’t factor into their decisions – and students end up paying the price. If publishers put price on the table, professors can consider the cost to students when selecting textbooks.

Second, the bill makes publishers sell the parts of bundled textbooks separately. No more shrink wrapped packaging preventing you from just buying the textbook without the CDs, workbooks and online passcodes – or from buying a supplement without a whole new textbook! Eliminating unnecessary bells and whistles will ensure that students can buy what they need, not what they don’t.

Third, the bill encourages colleges to give students course booklists the semester before the class starts so they can shop around and look for better deals. Students can usually track down lower prices and used textbooks online, but they need to know in advance which books to look for. Otherwise, they’re locked into buying from the bookstore.

I’m not sure exactly how much this will help – but it’s a step in the right direction. Learn more at The Stingy Scholar.

Rabbit-Ear Users Don’t Know The End (of Analog TV) Is Near

Nicole — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:12:19 +0000

This from a post on the NY Times Bits blog:

In less than 14 months, any traditional television set still connected to its antenna will receive nothing but static, as the broadcasting industry cuts over completely to its new digital frequencies.

A recent poll by the marketing arm of the cable industry shows that most people still have no clue this is going to happen.

In a telephone survey in November of 1,017 people, only 48 percent said they had heard about the switch to digital television. And only 17 percent correctly identified 2009 as the year that analog television will be cut off. (The survey had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.)

Did you know this? I didn’t! Not that it really bothers me – I’m all digital at home (DVR included) – but this may be a shock to people like Dan and others I know who don’t have digital cable.

Ads in all the wrong places

Nicole — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:56:45 +0000

I know that money drives the world – and I know that we need money to pay for our web hosts and our programmers and such – but I’ve been pointed to two terrible examples of advertising in the wrong places. The first is PDFs – yep – now PDFs can have ads!

All Publishers have to do is to upload the PDF files to an Adobe/Yahoo portal where it is “ad-enabled” allowing dynamically generated contextual ads to be displayed whenever the PDF is viewed. The service is currently in beta and it’s free! It is limited now to text, pay-per-click ads, but I am sure it will be expanded to include graphics and rich media.

I know that publisher could put ads on their PDFs before – but this just seems different and yukky – but even worse is this example!

This is pretty appalling: Not content with exposing kids to junk food on television and on every street corner, McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) has apparently decided that it needs to reach out to kids on their report card envelopes.

An Orlando parent was upset when her 9-year-old daughter brought home her report card. But it wasn’t Ds and “acts obnoxious in class” comments that annoyed this mom: the envelope the child brought home displayed a nice advertisement for McDonald’s — the chain whose food can have such a bad impact on health that it inspired a hit documentary.

Found via Dan who found it on BloggingStocks.

Technorati Tags: advertising

eXtensible Catalog (XC) gets more funding

Nicole — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:25:32 +0000

This sounds very promising. The eXtensible Catalog project has received more funding. I love seeing open source library apps moving forward:

A $749,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the University’s River Campus Libraries will be used toward building and deploying the eXtensible Catalog (XC), a set of open-source software applications libraries can use to share their collections. The grant money will also be used to support broad adoption of the software by the library community. The grant and additional funding from the University and partner institutions makes up the $2.8 million needed for the project. The resulting system will allow libraries to simplify user access to all library resources, both digital and non-digital.

Via University of Rochester Press Release.

New Mark Twain Digital Collection

Nicole — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:22:20 +0000

I just got this via a few of my mailing lists and thought I should share with you all.

I'm happy to announce that today the University of California launched the beta version of Mark Twain Project Online, a digital critical edition of the writings of Mark Twain, providing access to more than twenty-three hundred letters written between 1853 and 1880, including nearly 100 facsimiles of originals. The site is driven by metadata captured in METS records, the content was encoded in TEI P4, and the search, browse and display functionality was built using the XTF (the eXtensible Text Framework).

Read the full press release here.

Technorati Tags: mark twain, digital libraries

My Times

Nicole — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:04:07 +0000

How many homepages can one person have? There’s My Yahoo!, My Google, My … fill in the blank here. Anyway, now the NY Times wants to give you a homepage – My Times.

My Times is a free service that lets you create a personalized page with what you like best in The New York Times and your favorite sites and blogs from all over the Web. This personalized service makes it easy to read all that you like, from one central place.

So, take your pick – which homepage best fits your needs?

[found via Sites & Soundbytes]

Which is it?

Nicole — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:05:54 +0000

Are we slackers or are we tough cookies? Can we really be both? What am I talking about? I just read this article from Fortune on Attracting the 20-something worker.

One minute I’m happy to be a 20-something (even if I am closer to 30 than 20 now) – and the next I want to bury my head in the sand. This is a great article, even though it made me want to wring the author’s (who turned out to be a 20-something herself) neck sometimes.

The good (as I see it):

They’re ambitious, they’re demanding and they question everything, so if there isn’t a good reason for that long commute or late night, don’t expect them to do it. When it comes to loyalty, the companies they work for are last on their list – behind their families, their friends, their communities, their co-workers and, of course, themselves.
…
“This is the most high-maintenance workforce in the history of the world,” says Bruce Tulgan, the founder of leading generational-research firm RainmakerThinking. “The good news is they’re also going to be the most high-performing workforce in the history of the world. They walk in with more information in their heads, more information at their fingertips – and, sure, they have high expectations, but they have the highest expectations first and foremost for themselves.”
…
To get noticed by Gen Yers, a company also has to have what they call a “vision.” They aren’t impressed by mission statements, but they are looking for attributes that indicate shared values: affinity groups, flat hierarchies, divestment from the more notorious dictatorial regimes.
…
No one joins a company hoping to do the same job forever. But these days even your neighborhood bartender or barista aspires to own the place someday.
…
And twentysomethings can thrive when given real responsibility. Mark Meussner, a former Ford manager, remembers one instance when, faced with a serious manufacturing problem and two young engineers begging for the chance to solve it, he took a chance on them. He gave them one more-experienced person as a counselor, and they made what he estimates was a $25 million impact by solving a problem that had proved intractable for a decade. The success spawned a slate of company-sponsored initiatives led by more-junior staffers. Says Meussner: “We need to use 100 percent of an employee – not just their backs and minds, but their innovation, enthusiasm, energy and fresh perspective.”

The bad (as I see it):

When it comes to Gen Y’s intangible characteristics, the lexicon is less than flattering. Try “needy,” “entitled.” Despite a consensus that they’re not slackers, there is a suspicion that they’ve avoided that moniker only by creating enough commotion to distract from the fact that they’re really not that into “work.”
…
Never mind that they often need an entire team – and a couple of cheerleaders – to do anything. For some of them the concept “work ethic” needs rethinking.
…
“If we don’t like a job, we quit,” says Jason Ryan Dorsey, the 28-year-old author of 2007′s “My Reality Check Bounced!,” “because the worst thing that can happen is that we move back home. There’s no stigma, and many of us grew up with both parents working, so our moms would love nothing more than to cook our favorite meatloaf.”
…
Subha Barry, global head of diversity, recalls running into a colleague having lunch with a potential summer recruit and someone she didn’t know. It turned out to be the boy’s mother.

“If somebody would have said to me, ‘You’re interviewing for a job somewhere, and you’re going to bring your mother to the closing, decision-making lunch,’ I would’ve said, ‘You’ve got to be crazy,’” she says, wagging a finger. “But I tell you, his mother was sold. And that boy will end up at Merrill next summer. I can guarantee that.”

The silly (as I see it):

The kids – self-absorbed, gregarious, multitasking, loud, optimistic, pierced – are exactly what the boomers raised them to be, and now they’re being themselves all over the business world.
…
Gen Yers always seem to be at the gym. More than a third of 18- to 25-year-olds surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press have a tattoo, and 30 percent have a piercing somewhere besides their earlobe. But those are considered stylish, not rebellious.

And speaking of fashion, this isn’t a group you’ll catch in flannel. They’re all about quiet kitsch – a funky T-shirt under a blazer, artsy jewelry, silly socks – small statements that won’t cause trouble.

The fact is – that through the generalizations (I have no tattoos, no piercings other than ears, I do own and wear flannel, my mother did not come on any interviews with me, and quitting my job and moving home is not an option) a pretty good picture comes out of this article. We’re ambitious, we’ll work if you let us, we’ll speak our minds and we have our priorities straight (family always come before work – no matter what!).

It’s a good read – and I’ve only given you a tiny piece of it here – so, feel free to read it for yourself.

No related posts.

Tune Your News

Nicole — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:32:48 +0000

David Weinberger makes an interesting point (and teaches me something new).

I’ ve been showing a screen capture of USA Today’s redesigned site. It includes a button you can click on to give a Digg-like thumbs up to an article. Great, except, um, where’s the thumb down? We want to be able to say to the Britney or Justin or We-Should-Teach-Our-Students-Judo article “No no no no no no no no.” We want to tune our news.

That’s very cool – I’ll have to go play with USA Today a bit. I love that everyone is trying to accommodate the user more with their web designs!

New York TimesSelect Free for .edu

Nicole — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:29:49 +0000

I found this via the Web4Lib Mailing List. The New York Times is offering it’s TimesSelect service free for students and faculty who register with a .edu domain. This from the site:

We are pleased to offer a complimentary subscription to TimesSelect. You must be a student or faculty member with a valid college or university e-mail address to be eligible for this offer.

Like I need more discussion