Readings Journal Feb 7

Across the digital divide by Seanan McGuire

This article discusses the importance of print material, especially for people living in poverty.  McGuire explains that not everyone can afford new technologies, such as e-books, and if libraries lose print material, this population will suffer.

It is easy to forget that many people live in poverty and may not have access to things the rest of us take for granted, such as the Internet. McGuire, who grew up in poverty, mentioned that she always bought used books because that was all she could afford.  Today, books that are “born digital” will not have used copies; meaning people without e-book technology won’t be able to read them.  This article made me wonder what libraries are doing about the digital divide.  On the inpublib listserv, the head of adult and teen services at Kokomo-Howard County Public Library discussed the possibility of circulating iPads.  This forward thinking is something every library should be doing to help correct the digital divide.

Examining the Role of Libraries in an E-Book World by Molly Joss

In this article, Joss discusses the growing demand for digital media and what effect this has on public libraries.  She also discusses the relationship between publishers, libraries, and e-books.

In my Collection Development class, we discussed the relationship between librarians, publishers, and jobbers.  It was mentioned that publishers want to make money and librarians want to make their patrons happy.  So, to come to an agreement that makes both happy is very difficult.  Joss’ article made this very clear.  It frustrates me that HarperCollins put a limit on the number of times e-books can be checked out.  As a future librarian, I feel that information should be available for everybody, without limitations.  However, I also understand that HarperCollins wants to make a profit.  Print books wear out eventually and libraries have to buy them again, so why should they only have to buy digital materials once? 

The Next Generation Library Catalog: A Comparative Study of OPACs of Koha, Evergreen, and Voyager by Sharon Yang and Melissa Hofmann

This article describes a study meant to determine which OPAC (Koha, Evergreen, or WebVoyage) offers the most features of a next-generation library catalog.

This article reminded me of Submit or Resist: Librarianship in the age of Google by Steven Bell, one of the articles we read for the second week of class.  Many features of the next-generation catalog matched up with the signs of “Googleization” mentioned in Bell’s article and things we discussed in class that week.  Some of these features are the simple keyword search box, the “Did you mean…?” feature, and the recommendations and related materials feature.  Although Bell seemed to disagree with these features in his article, Yang and Hofmann discuss the innovative qualities and the effectiveness of finding and using data with these features.

Bell, S.J. (2005). Submit or resist: Librarianship in the age of google.  American Libraries, 36(9), 68-71.

 The Koha Saga: A gift that keeps giving by Glyn Moody

This article discusses this history of the open source library management system, Koha, highlighting the purchase by Liblime and then PTFS.

What I got out of this article is that copyrights and trademarks are very important.  Although libraries love sharing and open access, we cannot forget that not everyone feels the same way.  In order to ensure that open access library management systems continue to be a thing of the future, copyrights and trademarks are essential.

RFID in Libraries by Deborah Caldwell-Stone

This article discusses RFID in libraries and the potential privacy concerns it may bring to library patrons.

As soon as this article described what RFID was, I immediately thought “What about people’s privacy?” It was reassuring when a few paragraphs later, the article discussed the privacy problem.  I found it surprising that Caldwell-Stone says in the article that RFID was not expected to be controversial.  Any loss of freedom is always controversial!  I have only encountered RFID in MCPL, and all I knew about it before this article is that it helps sort books when you return them, so I found this article very informative.