James LaRue - myliblog

What follows is the draft of an article I wrote for library colleagues in Bulgaria. There's not much in it that's new; but it's an attempt to provide a more comprehensive narrative of how public libraries got to where we are regarding ebooks, and what Douglas County Libraries has attempted to do about it. eBooks - an introduction For decades, librarians in the United States of America predicted the arrival of the digital book. Finally, around 2009, the Amazon Kindle, followed by the Sony ebook Reader, became popular Christmas gifts. They were soon followed by the Barnes and Noble Nook. By 2011-12, Apple's iPad became the most stylish option, followed by a host of Android-based tablets. The early adopters of this technology tended to be well-educated, upper middle class, and middle-aged. By the end of 2012, about 20% of library patrons had, and preferred, ebooks to paper books. Again by the end of 2012, roughly 50% of the sales of all popular adult fiction were e...

We've been doing a lot of talking at the Douglas County Libraries about supporting local writers. I got this link to a blog with some interesting content: 150 Resources to Help You Write Better, Faster, and More Persuasively . I can't vouch for every link, but it looks helpful.

Just to help myself remember this. CherryTree is a fast, two pane, hierarchical notes taking program. It looks, feels, and works very like Notecase, with a few exceptions. What it has : easy and logical commands for creating the outline (left pane) tree. wonderful commands for the editing of the text (right pane) node. In particular, I like the checklist to do option. It automatically inserts "[ ]" at the beginning of the line. Click that, and it strikes through. In Notecase pro, the to do is on the tree, and a space bar strikes it through. That might be more logical for task management with lots of things to be done on the right. Fantastic commands for quickly arranging the reordering of PARAGRAPHS. Alt-Up, Down. What it has not : spelling check word count. But it's not a bad, free alternative to Notecase Pro. And is available for Windows and Linux. I also just ran across something called Kabikaboo , a Python-based outliner. It DOES have spell check...

[This article appeared in the January/February (volume 51, No. 1) issues of Public Libraries . Since then the link to the article has disappeared. So as copyright owner, I am putting it up on my blog.] The Last One Standing By James LaRue, Director Douglas County Libraries For Public Libraries, January/February 2012 Volume 51, No. 1 pp. 28-32 Back in 2008, I was interviewed by a reporter. With a sly and knowing air, he asked me if libraries were going to survive the Internet. On Feb. 27, 2009, after 150 years of operation, his newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, printed its final edition. Now when reporters ask me that question I answer, "You bet we'll survive. Will you?" Trends in publishing Two key trends have emerged which will drive the future not only of publishing, but of public librarianship. They are: The rise of e-books. By the end of 2010, Amazon reported that it had sold 115 e-books for each 100 paperbacks, and 3 e-books for each hardback. On Octo...

Mark Coker does a great analysis of the emerging economics of self-publishing, and what that means both for would-be authors, and legacy publishers. Recommended.

Oral history interview with Attilio F. Caporiccio by Caporiccio, Attilio F., 1916-2007 The key points: This is an outgrowth of our ten year partnership with the Library of Congress’s Veteran’s History Project. Mr. Caporiccio, who gave us his oral history of his WWII experiences, was a resident of Douglas County. Adam Spiers, one of our staff members, converted the transcript and some digitized photographs to the epub format. It is “published” on our website under the Creative Commons license. It is a short work: 42 pages long. You don’t need a library card to check it out. Just search for either the name “Caporiccio” or “Veterans History Project” then scroll down to find the cover. (Or just click on the first paragraph of this post.) Click on that, then scroll down to Access eContent. It begins to download. If you have an epub reader, now you’ve got it, and can read it. Why is this significant? This is an example of library as publisher, taking local content and making...

On May 2, I spoke (with others) at New Jersey's esummit . I jotted down several thoughts I wanted to record. First, I'm always surprised by the natural beauty of the state. When I left Denver, it was snowing (between days of over 70). New Jersey was blooming, green and growing. It truly is the garden state. Second, I really enjoyed meeting Eli Neiburger, who gave a rollicking and provocative first talk. But I think he was entirely too dismissive of the library's role in the collection, discovery, curation, and preservation of content. Overwhelmingly, the public looks to us for our cooperative purchasing power. They look to us to gather, organize and present. At DCL, we check out over 8 million items a year in a community of 300,000 people. We get 2 million plus visits to our website. The key use? Our catalog. We get another 2 million visits to our 7 facilities. The key reason for their visits? To check stuff out. After that, things drop significantly in levels of use...