Friday, October 1, 2010

Daily Thoughts 10/1/2010 (books, library contractors)

Photograph of a statue of an ape, examining a human skull. Writing on the book on the right - "Darwin", writing on bottom - "Darwin's ideas" (in Hebrew).

6/10/2007, Okedem, Creative Commons 2.0
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Darwin%27s_ape.jpg 

Daily Thoughts 10/1/2010

Today has been a quiet, steady day.  I worked a bit on my orders.  I also checked more in the 300s and did some weeding in the oversize books.  The displays are in order and we have enough bookmarks printed.  I also am going to do some followup for programming today.

Web Bits

Book trailer for Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson. It made me place a hold on the book.

I also put Richard Yancey, Monstrumologist on hold which is a horror novel.

While I was reading Publishers Weekly, I came across a review for The Shadow Market : How a Group of Wealthy Nations and Powerful Investors Secretly Dominate the World by Eric Weiner.  I found it intriguing.


More on the LSSI contractor questions from Library Journal. http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/887000-264/lssi_controversy_still_brewing_in.html.csp
There are some interesting quandries when I look at this. Apparently, they centralize human resources and accounting in their corporate offices. This could be both good and bad. It means that they are more likely to hide their finances because it opens their books to all the libraries they are managing if they are asked to prove how they save money. It also means that the figures may not be as accurate because much of the accounting is not done on site. They also significantly cut salaries. In addition, they are are using centralized ordering. This can limit diversity of material in the collection. They may be using a kind of cookie cutter model where they act like a franchise. Ordering may not necessarily reflect what the community needs.

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