Week 8

So Daylight Savings put be a little behind today, however, there is still a little sunshine outside!

Class

Last week was book club week and I enjoyed it as much as I thought I would.  All of our stories had a mystery/creepy/death theme to them.  I wish I could say that I walked away with more answers than questions; however, I think I had more questions at the end.  That’s the problem with mysteries.  Sometimes you just don’t have an answer.  Two of our works were by Poe so we were able to refer back to him and his stories throughout our meeting.

While our book club was a success in general, I think providing more background information (if available) would be beneficial to this type of book club.  Since we picked different stories and some of us weren’t familiar with the author or work, I think more information would have helped us all understand the material better.  Overall, we had a great time and ate cake!

Readings

HC's official statement on Library Love Fest blog 3/1/2011

I read this blog to get a sense of HarperCollins’ side of the story.  Their official statement tries to justify their reasons for only allowing 26 uses for an e-book seems absurd.  What I don’t understand is why libraries must rebuy e-books when they don’t have to buy the print version again.  I believe HC is being greedy and are complaining how cheap they are selling e-books for—“20% lower than the print version.” It should be! They do not have the printing cost for e-books.

ALA Washington Office, 3/8/11

The ALA responds tastefully and respectively to HarperCollins' new conditions.  If you read between the lines, I think they are saying they disagree with HarperCollins new guidelines. There have created two groups, the Equitable Access to Electronic Content (EQUACC) and the E-book Task Force, to combat and hopefully persuade publishers to change their new positions on e-books.  While ALA must approach issues professionally, I am not sure how much effect these groups will have.

Northeast Kansas Library System

I chose this blog because it’s from my hometown and was curious to read about the reactions there. I actually have never used the Overdrive service because I prefer to read my books in the physical form and just haven’t gotten around to using their music section.  I thought it was interesting that NEKLS advised libraries to temporary boycott Overdrive purchases and place HarperCollins’ works in a separate Overdrive category.  I wonder who else is advising their libraries to do the same.

It’s looking like a lot of people disagree with HC new guidelines and I am one of them.

ALA Code of Ethics

I was surprised how short the ALA Code of Ethics was, however, it seems thorough.  None of the guidelines stuck out more than another because it seems similar to SAA’s Code of Ethics.  I guess each profession needs its own.  Since the MLA’s Code of Ethics isn’t assigned anymore, I may have to read it on my own just to see how it comes to ALA’s.

“Creating a Library Assignment Workshop for University Faculty” by Mosley

This article examines problems with the lack of communication between teachers and librarians in dealing with assignments and describes how to go about fixing these issues with a workshop. The author goes into detail the planning, activities, and executions to make this workshop successful.  All I can say is wow. I could not believe how much work and planning went into this workshop. There are just so many details I didn’t even think about and will be useful when planning my one-shot workshop.