Default icon on this one- all my other cultural icons are dying:(

[captainsblog]

Take your pick.



This is one of those tales of stupidity looming large- and it's coming soon to a library near you.

Last week, I was contacted about something extremely disturbing that had recently happened at Urbana Free Library (UFL). A weeding process had taken place that had discarded thousands of nonfiction books in a hasty, arbitrary way — a way that utilizes only one of the UFL’s stated selection criteria.

The criterion? Older than ten years. Period. Regardless of cost, circulation or cultural value-

The $300 two-volume Art of Florence is gone; the Pritzker prize winners in architecture are gone; the History of Art by Janson is gone. Deb does not care if they circulate or not. She decided without staff input or support to do this.

And the thinking behind this? Totally MBA, not MLS, and it has to do with the electronic tagging of the books through a technology called RFID, designed primarily to allow self-checkout of materials and the layoff of librarians. Says the director from hell:

    [It] has to do with RFID [tagging]. We have to touch every single piece in the collection and have to tag it… And you don’t want to be doing all that and then find you’re — six months from now — you’re weeding and taking things back out you just went to the trouble of doing this for. So that was what was driving the speed at which it was happening… The timetable needed to move along more quickly.

    The tags aren’t here yet; we’re getting our training next Wednesday; to keep those people busy who were hired — and I also need this weeding to happen before we insert — now I’m just on a logistical system that says, I have 154 hours of staff time that will be wasted. I need them to do something productive…

Because, yeah. Filling dumpsters with actual information looks real good on internship reports.

The ultimate recipient of all this largely-stupidesse was an outfit called Better World Books.  Do they deliver these books to the needy in other countries? Not really: they sell them. The first book mentioned on that website is not Art of Florence but Fifty Shades of Grey.  Somehow I suspect there's very little benefit downline from this theft.

Libraries beyond suburban Chicago can expect this same fate.  E-books are being severely limited or overpriced; facilities are being cut back; and the last few times I've walked in for a physical item, I've found misfiled materials and general cluelessness on the part of very young staffers.

But they all have RFID tags so I can check them out myself:P




Good luck with that.  There are fewer of them, in fewer venues, and they're becoming beyond reach for many.  I had lunch with a friend yesterday, who had headed out the night before with another friend to see Great Gatsby, not in 3D, at a small suburban screen. When they got there, they discovered the showing had been canceled in favor of a Special Event Preview showing of Man of Steel- and they were not invited.

That's becoming the next big thing, as even Spielberg and Lucas, creators of the blockbuster, are fearing:

Earlier this week, Steven Spielberg said the movie industry was about to implode.

Specifically, while speaking at USC Spielberg noted that since so many movie studios are opting to bet on one large $250-million-budget film rather than a few smaller films, this will eventually result in a giant meltdown for Hollywood.

George Lucas followed up predicting that going to the movies will be a Broadway event costing anywhere from $50 to $150 dollars some day.

It looks like they're right.

Paramount announced it will sell $50 tickets for people to view showings of Brad Pitt's zombie thriller "World War Z" on June 19 — two days before the film's release.

That's 50 each. But wait! There's more! You also get an HD version of the film when it comes out; you get to keep your 3D glasses; they throw in a limited-edition poster; and the venue kicks in a small popcorn.   No, not even a refreshing beverage. 

I watch maybe four of these Major Motion Pictures in theaters each year; we typically watch four better, cheaper, less blockbustery ones on DVD every couple of weeks.  So this won't affect us all that much at first- until the studio model starts choking them off and there's nothing left to watch.





No links on this one- they'd all be dead or recycled.  It finally dawned on me that Car Talk, which I've listened to semi-regularly on Saturdays for our entire marriage, has finally reached its end:

Ray answered a question by saying it was the choke pull-off.

That was a standard (almost standard to the point of being an in-joke) in those late-80s days of carbeurators.  It really brought home the reality- these callers all have REALLY OLD CARS, with not that many miles on them!

I'd heard rumors, but no official announcements on the show itself or NPR, that the boys were retiring. Turns out, they effectively did it in October. The callers, the Puzzlers, most of the segments are just recyclings of their back catalog.  Yet they still pimp the 888 number at least ten times a show, as if you could still call in a question about your cah; and they apparently come in from time to time to record topical bumps that make the show sound like it's still more or less current.  The Dewey Cheatem and Howe Shameless Commerce Division is becoming more and more of a self-fulfilling prophecy, for themselves as well as NPR.

The only thing that would end this scam would be if they were to move Car Talk Plaza to the Urbana Free Library and have their quarter century of calls all wiped so they could re-use the cassettes:P



Yet there is hope. Buzz Aldrin's on NPR now, and once he catches them in these acts of stupendous stupidity, I suspect they'll all change their tune:

Comments

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

I buy from Better World Books a lot through Abebooks.com. They provide me works I need at a very good cost, and the libraries gain some funds back when they weed by withdrawing and selling the books to Better World and other rebuyers like them. So at least UFL will theoretically be able to purchase other materials and services with those materials. It's an ecosystem of use and reuse, and my used books from Better World are much loved.

Other than that, I can't say much about the validity or invalidity of UFL's tactics, but users and fellow librarians _never_ like weeding projects by date only or weeding without some advance input from users, which is now part of our policy, so our deans can't make us weed without consulting and informing users. When I've was forced to move works offsite on solely a date criterion without consulting my user base first, and was given only 10 days to review the proposed moves myself, about 4 years ago, the fallout lasted months if not years and led to that policy change. And I wasn't even withdrawing works, I was moving works offsite because our Dean was taking away a lot of our office space and having us move works offsite to make room within our other buildings. I feel bad for the rank and file librarians who are going to have to deal with all the angry users, and I hope the administration at that library steps up and responds personally to the unhappiness, because yeah, unhappiness. My faculty did not believe the dean would screw them that way, and decided it was the library's fault, even though we could point to the fact that he had mandated the move.

But do not kid yourself, this happens at _many_ libraries, all the time, UFL is getting the press because they're in a university town with a library school. This is _exactly_ the sort of pushback they need-- give librarians time to get input and do review of plans like this dammit.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Also:

I'd heard rumors, but no official announcements on the show itself or NPR, that the boys were retiring.

I heard about this _repeatedly_ all fall. Now, I'm closer to Boston than you are, but seriously, it was widely repeated, dunno how you missed it!

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

I knew about the what, but not the when. I figured there'd be a farewell show with lots of pledge breaks. Maybe they tried to do it, but it got canceled as soon as George Wendt found out about it.

[symian.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I'm not going to the movies as much as before. 3D will have to get much better before it will make me go to the theater. Meaning, they will have to WOW me with it in content.

The thing is, if I wait 6 months I can get it on Blu-Ray cheaper than going to the theater. I have a nice big flat screen and don't have to deal with idiots who don't turn of their phones, and don't miss that glow when they are checking their texts.

The movie industry will have to reinvent themselves - actually, go back to the days when going to a theater was a special event - to make me return to the theater.