The author of the popular Freakonomics book looks at the question, “If public libraries didn’t exist, could you start one today?”

“But here’s the point I’m (finally) getting to: if there was no such thing today as the public library and someone like Bill Gates proposed to establish them in cities and towns across the […]

Anyone familiar with UofT’s flagship humanities and social sciences Robart’s library knows that it’s the target of a lot of well earned potshots. Here are a few of its better known claims to fame:

is it sinking?
‘Brutalist’ architecture
it’s a peacock … !?

The ‘prison’ analogy is another fave, what with the books cloistered into […]

Here’s a quick redirect to a Library Juice post with a couple of nice resources.

First is this guide for collecting from diverse sources.
(or: outsourcing, how not to)

Fostering Media Diversity in Libraries: Strategies and Actions.

Second there’s a link to a note on the ALA’s opposition to media concentration in […]

Kudos to the Canadian Library Association and its Open Access Task Force for adopting an Open Access policy for CLA publications.

Here are main recommendatins of the report:

CLA will provide for full and immediate open access for all CLA publications, with the exception of Feliciter and monographs The embargo […]

In keeping with the topic of the day, here’s a report on internet filtering from the National Coalition Against Censorship which is admittedly, a bit dated, having been produced in 2001. But it gives an excellent overview of many of the issues and problems being discussed in the wake of the LPL debate. […]

*Scroll down for news about the London Public Library’s decision to implement internet filtering*

Not that I want to interrupt the letter you’re writing to the LPL board of directors, but as luck would have it, this would be the week that Canadian representatives decided to make life difficult at the World Intellectual Property Organization Development […]

To add on to Sabina’s earlier post … now that Siobhan Stevenson’s call for keeping the public domain in public libraries has cracked into the public domain itself through First Monday, it’s time to talk turkey.

First, let me wax poetic for a moment and say that isn’t it great to be a […]

Congratulations go out to Marcel LaFlamme of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College in Boston, MA. for his essay entitled “Towards a Progressive Discourse on Community Needs Assessment: Perspectives from Collaborative Ethnography and Action Research.”

LaFlamme’s essay will be published in an upcoming edition of the PLG Journal. […]

Open Medicine’s first issue of peer reviewed medical literature is available online. Dean Giustini of UBC Library and the Google Scholar Blog has been a key player in bringing this new publication to life, and writes about it on both his blog, and now the Open Medicine blog as well. […]

The Internet Library of Early Journals is a digitized collection of journals from the 18th and 19th centuries.

(via MetaFilter)

- JH