As in a lot of places, libraries in Chicago have faced budget problems as the cities have faced budget problems, and based on this article it seems the mayor and the local union have been having difficulty finding any agreement.

After all the recent closures and firings, the mayor now has a plan that will reopen Chicago public libraries on Mondays, reinstate some laid off employees, and return some others to full time from part time. Sounds good, right?

According to the head of the union, that’s not good enough “for the people of Chicago.” It’s nice… Read More

ALA Midwinter is winding down. I didn’t write about it last week because it looked like it would be pretty boring. The what’s happening page had a long list of speakers, most of which I’d never heard of but didn’t think I’d want to see, plus some others I knew enough about to deliberately avoid.

On the other hand, Dallas in January is a lot better than Boston or Philadelphia in January, and as conference cities go it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. The weather was pleasant. Nobody in Dallas walks anywhere, so the… Read More

Here in the United States librarians might be ignoring my advice to convert to the new religion of Kopimism, but I’m a genius in France, at least if we go by a group of French librarians who are encouraging people to visit public libraries and copy the books and DVDs they get there.

Apparently, the French government is as wild as the American government, or at least American publishers, to fight Internet piracy, and at least one librarian is fighting back.
30-year-old blogger Silvae is a librarian and calls on members to copy borrowed material. On his blog… Read More

Perhaps the oddest somewhat library-related event last week was the Occupy Wall Street Library party at the New York City nightclub Works in Progress. The OWS partiers occupiers set up a library, which was supposed to “serve as outreach for the movement to a heretofore untapped demographic, while soliciting book donations for its collection,” according to the account in the Village Voice.

The OWS website promoted the party. “DJ Spooky is throwing a party at W.i.P. (work in progress) and asked the People’s Library to come set up a mobile unit so you can take… Read More

Librarians may have found their new religion, unless they’ve already found one of the myriad old religions, but the old religions didn’t have anything to say about file sharing and this one does.

By now, you probably know I’m talking about the  Church of Kopimism, which the Swedish government has finally and formally recognized as a religion. It’s the best thing to come out of Sweden since Ikea and Stieg Larsson.

The Church of Kopimism believes in the following tenets:

• All knowledge to all
• The search for knowledge is sacred
• The circulation

I have to say I was as surprised and annoyed as other librarians when I read about the Research Works Act, which seems to have shocked and surprised everyone in the academic community except the people who actually produce academic research.

For those who missed the furor last week over a bill that was referred to a House Committee in mid-December, the Research Works Act is intended “To ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector.”

To do that, it would prohibit federal agencies from insisting on open access… Read More

After all the relatively bad news regarding ebooks and libraries, I found some hope for public libraries in this article: As The Age Of The Physical Book Retreats, The Cult Of The Physical Book Advances.

It might be the case, as I’ve predicted, that with the rise of digital media, publishers of the most popular media that has driven public library circulation from time immemorial will gradually stop providing access to their wares. The recent support of major publishers for SOPA shows they’ll go to ridiculous lengths to protect their ebooks from “piracy.”

I feel sorry… Read More

And a Happy New Year! Warning: this post may have been written under the influence of champagne, or perhaps a sparkling wine hangover.

Many of you probably saw the Christmas Day article in the New York Times about publishers and why they hate libraries so much.

That’s not quite the way they put it, but it might as well have been. The “executive vice president and chief digital officer” of Simon & Schuster explained why they hate libraries and don’t allow libraries to lend their ebooks: “We’re concerned that authors and publishers are made whole by library… Read More

For 2011, as one of my helpful commenters pointed out, my predictions weren’t very daring. Despite the gloomy rhetoric coming from the library community about library closings, I was pretty sure most libraries wouldn’t be closing. I was right.

For 2012, I’m less sure. This might be the year when public libraries are forced to change their mission drastically as the “information” they trade in shifts away from physical formats entirely. So let’s try for a few predictions that might be slightly less predictable. Here’s a sampling of what we’ll see in 2012:

1) The Big Six publishers… Read More

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday. I’m suffering from egg nog overdose, but otherwise had a lovely time.

Earlier this year, I made 11 predictions for 2011. Most library seers and pundits don’t revisit their predictions, at least publicly, but darn it I’m going to. Was I right or was I wrong? Let’s see.
1) The vast majority of libraries will remain open.
Right! Definitely so. Not only are the vast majority of libraries still open, but the worst of the library closures seems to have passed, in this country at least.
2) The vast majority currently employed… Read More