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Archive for the 'books' Category

Why Shakespeare is the World’s Worst Stolen Treasure

Published by rwatstein July 26th, 2008 in books. 0 Comments

Paul Collins writes: “Aside from a face-melting Ark of the Covenant, a Shakespeare First Folio is the lousiest loot in the world to steal. Here’s why: The 230 surviving First Folios are now the most minutely studied published works in history. The folio is unusual in that two centuries of records trace the path of specific copies. In the case of the one stolen from Durham University, there’s plenty for authorities to work with.”

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The 50 Outstanding Literary Translations From the Last 50 Years

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in books and translation. 0 Comments

The Translators Association of the Society of Authors celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. To mark the occasion they have compiled a list of 50 outstanding translations of the last half century.

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Ultimate Travel Library

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in communities, books and travel. 0 Comments

Collection of annotated booklists based upon selections in which “dozens of travelers (writers, photographers, explorers, editors, and others) … name[d] the books that have most enriched their sense of place and best informed their peregrinations.” These are “not guidebooks, but novels and narrative nonfiction and classic photography books.” Browsable by region of the world. Also includes an “Around the World in 80+ Books” feature. From National Geographic Traveler magazine.

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50 Best Ever Summer Holiday Books

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in books. 0 Comments

This 2008 listing of summer reading suggestions “encompasses ancient and modern, fiction and non-fiction. All they have in common is that we’re confident that if you take any one of these on holiday, you are in for a huge treat.” Includes links to related lists of the best new books (UK publishers) and celebrity book picks. From the British newspaper The Telegraph.

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A Thaw in Franco-Google Relations? Google Books Signs First French Library

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in libraries, books, digital and Google. 0 Comments

Sacre Bleu! While some librarians at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference were left wondering whether Google “had used them,” for their book collections after the search giant did not exhibit in Anaheim, the company this week announced that it had signed its 29th library partner for Google Book Search. Google officials announced that the Lyon Municipal Library, France’s second largest library after the national library in Paris, and the project’s first partner in France, has signed on to make more than 500,000 books available online as part of Google’s Book Search Library project.

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Fight Over a Beloved (And Lucrative) Book

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in books, economics and publishing. 0 Comments

U of Nebraska Press sold almost one million copies of a book about American Indians on the Great Plains. The director moved to SUNY and now the book is moving too. Fair game or unfair edge?

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Socially Awkward? Hit the Books

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in books and psychology. 0 Comments

A group of Toronto researchers have compiled a body of evidence showing that bookworms have exceptionally strong people skills. Their years of research—summed up in an article by Keith Oatley in the June 28 issue of New Scientist—has shown that readers of narrative fiction scored higher on tests of empathy and social acumen than those who read nonfiction texts. And follow-up research showed that reading fiction may help fine-tune these skills: People assigned to read a New Yorker short story did better on social reasoning tests than those who read an essay from the same magazine.

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Sharing Their Literature and Their Lives

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in books and book groups. 0 Comments

When the phone call came 44 years ago, I was in the full bloom of a second pregnancy. The caller was Diana, a college friend who was also, it turned out, expecting her second child. Diana had moved into a nearby suburb, had found me in the phone book under my husband’s name, and presented this absurd proposition: Why didn’t we start a book group? Read books? With a toddler and a house to manage, I barely had time to read headlines in the local daily. Besides, we were both due to have our babies within weeks. Diana, always a determined sort, dug in. Didn’t I miss reading? Didn’t I miss adult company? We were, after all, former English majors who still might be capable of analyzing symbols and finding important themes in literature.

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Swimming in Picture Books

Published by rwatstein July 12th, 2008 in web sites, books and museums. 0 Comments

This is a website companion to a past physical exhibit featuring “illustrations that captured the sensations of being by or in the water. For this virtual version, there is more information about the stories and their illustrators of the sort you might learn during a gallery talk.” Click on images near the top of the page to see larger pictures and annotations. From the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University.

Swimming in Picture Books website

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Summer Reading That May Improve Your Fall Teaching

Published by rwatstein July 12th, 2008 in education, books and reading. 0 Comments

This summer reading list features titles on improving teaching and learning at the college and university level, most from a national association of faculty developers.

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10 Suggestions for Summer Book Groups

Published by rwatstein July 5th, 2008 in libraries, library services and books. 0 Comments

When vacations, families, and the great outdoors call, book groups can quickly take a back seat. Here are 10 ideas to help your group avoid doldrums and dog days.

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NYPL’s Outstanding Books to Remember from 2007

Published by rwatstein June 21st, 2008 in books and NYPL. 0 Comments

The New York Public Library has selected 25 Books to Remember from 2007. Chosen by a group of librarians who are specialists in their genres, these outstanding works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry provide an informative or transformative reading experience, and are chosen for their literary excellence, uniqueness of concept, and command of subject matter. Among this year’s choices are the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books) by Junot Díaz and Time and Materials: Poems 1997–2005 (Ecco) by Robert Hass.

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More Than Hours of Books - Teen Summer Reading Programs Round-Up

Published by rwatstein June 21st, 2008 in books and reading. 0 Comments

Asking teens to read ten books and log their hours is, well, just a big yawn to them. Teens and young adults need interaction and energy-expending activities more than ever during the summer months, and we’ve turned up some great Teen Summer Reading Programs that put a new spin on spending time at the library.

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Any Book Can Be a Rare Book in Bookstore-Hungry Newark

Published by rwatstein June 21st, 2008 in books. 0 Comments

Bookstores here are so scarce that many readers have trouble naming one. Amiri Baraka, New Jersey’s former poet laureate, buys books at the Montclair Book Center, nine miles away. The chancellor of Rutgers-Newark, Steven J. Diner, orders online or shops for books in New York City. Alix Takouezim, who moved here two years ago from Bayonne, says she often borrows books from friends or colleagues for her 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son. In 2007, Newark ranked last among the nation’s 69 largest cities in the number of bookstores per capita, with 15 stores for 281,000 people, or 0.53 stores per 10,000 residents, according to a study titled “America’s Most Literate Cities,” by Jack Miller, the president of Central Connecticut State University. (For what it’s worth, New York City, well known for having many bookstores but also many people, ranked 63rd.)

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Research Libraries Embrace E-Books

Published by rwatstein June 7th, 2008 in libraries, library services, books and digital. 0 Comments

Sixty-nine percent of university research libraries plan to increase spending on e-books over the next two years, according to a recent study published by Primary Research Group Inc. This finding and others were based on a survey of 45 research libraries in countries around the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Japan. Clearly e-book technology has improved dramatically in a short period of time. Only a year-and-a-half-ago college librarians were saying that e-books were not ready for the campus environment.

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Microsoft Abandons Book Scan Plan

Published by rwatstein June 1st, 2008 in search, books, collections and Microsoft. 0 Comments

Microsoft last week announced that it will pull the plug on its book and scholarly article scan plans, Live Search Books and Live Search Academic, and that both sites will be taken down. “We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users,” reads a Microsoft blog post from Satya Nadella, Microsoft senior VP search, portal and advertising. “We believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer, and content partner.” Nadella said that books digitized under the programs would now be included in MSN search results.b

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10 Most Challenged Books of 2007

Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008 in American Library Association, books and censorship. 0 Comments

For a second consecutive year, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s award-winning And Tango Makes Three, a children’s book about two male penguins caring for an orphaned egg, tops the list of ALA’s 10 Most Challenged Books of 2007. Three books are new to the list: Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes; The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman; and TTYL, by Lauren Myracle.

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What Do Children Read? Hint: Harry Potter’s Not No. 1

Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008 in children, books and reading. 0 Comments

Children have welcomed the Harry Potter books in recent years like free ice cream in the cafeteria, but the largest survey ever of youthful reading in the United States by Renaissance Learning revealed May 5 that none of J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular books has been able to dislodge the works of longtime favorites Dr. Seuss, E.B. White, Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton, and Harper Lee as the most read.

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Read the full report What Kids Are Reading here

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McMaster University Library Partners With Kirtas Technologies, Ristech and Lulu.com to Unleash Thousands of Rare Books to the World

Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008 in books and collections. 0 Comments

Imagine owning a copy of Galileo’s 1632 book, Dialogo di Galileo Galilei (Galileo’s Dialogue), challenging the traditional thinking that the universe revolves around the earth. At the time, the book and its concepts were so controversial, that Galileo was convicted of heresy in 1633 and the book was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Or perhaps a first-edition, autographed copy of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine is a more suitable choice for your own personal library? These books and more will be made available to the public, beginning this fall, through a unique partnership between Canada’s McMaster University Library and U.S.-based companies Kirtas Technologies, Inc. and Lulu.com.

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25 Ways Libraries Can Support a Book Group

Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008 in libraries, library services and books. 0 Comments

Neil Hollands writes: “Libraries need to recognize book group readers as one of their core audiences, a population that deserves extra-mile service. Here’s my list of 25 ways that a library can support book groups. Consider adding one or two of the practices from this list to your repertoire.”

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Scanning Rare Books for Google Book Search

Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008 in books, Google, collections and preservation. 0 Comments

In a dimly lit back room on the second level of the University of Michigan library’s book-shelving department, Courtney Mitchel helps a giant desktop machine digest a rare, centuries-old Bible. Mitchel is among hundreds of librarians from Minnesota to England making digital versions of the most fragile of the books to be included in Google Book Search. The manual scanning is much slower than Google’s normal process.

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The 50 Best Cult Books

Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008 in books. 0 Comments

The Telegraph presents its selection of history’s most notable cult writing. What is a cult book? Cult books include some of the most cringe-making collections of bilge ever collected between hard covers. But they also include many of the key texts of modern feminism; some of the best journalism and memoirs; and some of the most entrancing and original novels in the canon. In compiling their list, the editors were looking for the sort of book that people wear like a leather jacket or carry around like a totem.

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Online Texts for Community College Students

Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008 in education, books and publishing. 0 Comments

Plenty of professors are thinking about ways of introducing alternatives to traditional textbooks that they or their students deem too pricey. Some are involved in efforts to create material that is online, free and open source in design. A new effort announced Monday aims to help this movement grow at community colleges. As Judy Baker, dean of the distance learning program at the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, sees it, not enough people are focusing on compiling content tailored to two-year college students. “We have more economic and racial diversity than the normal population, so it’s even more important for content to be culturally relevant and meaningful,” Baker said. “It’s important for faculty to be able to localize the information, and because our students are not always as prepared for a college-level textbook that comes from the publishers, we need to provide supplemental information.”

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What If You Ran Your Bookstore Like a Library?

Published by rwatstein April 27th, 2008 in libraries, library services and books. 0 Comments

Ten years ago, stories like “B&N: The New College Library” (Library Journal 2/1/98) and “What If You Ran Your Library Like a Bookstore?” (American Libraries, 3/98) kicked up a controversy about the viability of libraries. Ironically, these days it’s the book business that has an aura of crisis and gloom, while visits to libraries are surging. Over two billion items are checked out annually, and nearly all libraries offer free Internet access along with many of the amenities of a bookstore. Truth be told, the book business has always had an aura of crisis and gloom. It’s the Eeyore of industries. But lately, it’s become clear that the book industry really does need to be saved: from itself.

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OverDrive Offering Downloadable MP3s Sans DRM - More than 3000 Titles to be iPod Compatible; Cuts Huge ebook Deal with Random House

Published by rwatstein April 27th, 2008 in libraries, library services, books and digital. 0 Comments

OverDrive has hit the mother load of e-texts: the company in late March answered the prayers of librarians and patrons by announcing it will begin offering MP3-compatible audio downloads (yes, that means iPods), as well as cutting a massive distribution deal for more than 6500 Random House ebooks. The company will release at least 3000 downloadable audiobook titles—about 15 percent of its catalog—in MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM), to provide compatibility with nearly every MP3 player and mobile phone. OverDrive MP3 Audiobooks go on sale in May at Borders.com and should be available to libraries by June’s end, to be followed by the release of OverDrive Media Console for the Mac.

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