Paper Tigers and Look-Alikes

A few headlines stood out this week as food for discussion here at the JPLBB.

First of all, Barnes and Noble unveiled its new entry into the e-book market, hoping to draw some market share from Amazon’s Kindle. Despite the excitement of its new features (free readers for pc, mac, iphone and blackberry), this article in the New York Times illustrates how this new product will likely fizzle due to “beta” level development.

Are you a fan of Melissa Bank’s, The Girls’ Guide to Huntin and Fishing?  If so, have you found yourself duped into a sub-par, ‘chick-lit’ read due to the curse of the ‘look-alike’ cover featuring rubber boots?  Entertainment Weekly columnist Thom Geier, explores the phenomenon of the look alike book cover with clever examples and a call for stop to this reckless act of marketing.   Read the article, here.

Anti-Social-Networking

In an effort to keep up with the latest in social-networking technologies (aka Web2.0), you can find libraries represented in a variety of unexpected places, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and in the blogosphere.  As rapid as these technologies evolve, other technologies fall by the wayside.  I caught this commentary by NPR blogger and commentator John Ridley this morning and thought his point was very interesting when we weigh personal privacy with social networking/broadcasting.   Sure, there are a lot of people out there who love to talk about themselves and beef up their web presence which has lately been proven to be an effective personal marketing strategy in the workforce, yet this commentary left me wondering, “At What expense to our personal privacy?”  Have a listen, I think you’ll be surprised at the suggestions of some extinct social networking tools and may inspire a closer look at how you preserve your personal privacy in this increasingly digital world.   Yes, the Juneau Public Library Blog has a Twitter stream, a Facebook page and offers RSS updates.

Audio(book)phile?

Are you an Audiobook junky?  It’s okay, a library forum is a safe place to admit it.  In case you’re running out of library audiobooks be sure to check out the electronic offerings available through 2 downloadable audiobook services, Netlibrary and ListenAlaska.   Check out Audiobooker, a new blog supported by the American Library Association’s Booklist magazine.  Blogger, “Mary Burkey, a teacher, librarian, and audiobook addict, writes about listening, learning, and the joy of headsets.”  Free audiobook downloads, behind the scenes video clips of audiobook production and more.  

What is Library and Information Science?

As a recent graduate of a Masters of Library and Information Science program, I’m frequently asked what kind of topics are explored in this field aside from the workings of a library. During my senior year I found myself frequently turning to articles published by this international peer-reviewed journal, First Monday, in my research papers. First Monday is published by the University of Illinois which has one of the country’s premier LIS program. Check out some of the fascinating topics and if you’re into podcasts, don’t miss these.

First Monday has just published the May 2009 (volume 14, number 5) issue.

The following papers are included in this month’s issue:

First Monday
Volume 14, number 5 – 4 May 2009

Facebook and academic performance: Reconciling a media sensation with data
by Josh Pasek, eian more, and Eszter Hargittai

A response to reconciling a media sensation with data
by Aryn C. Karpinski

Where is the cloud? Geography, economics, environment, and jurisdiction in
cloud computing
by Paul T. Jaeger, Jimmy Lin, Justin M. Grimes, and Shannon N. Simmons

Survival of the fittest tag: Folksonomies, findability, and the evolution
of information organization
by Alexis Wichowski

Comparing featured article groups and revision patterns correlations in
Wikipedia
by Giacomo Poderi

Navigating the blogosphere: Towards a genre-based typology of weblogs
by Stine Lomborg