LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Via promotional emails from Powells.com (at least they haven't gone under yet)...

How The Dose Works--Seven days a week, the Daily Dose brings a reader's review to your Inbox — along with a chance to win free books!

Each day shortly after midnight we post the day's featured item on our web site and in our email to Daily Dose subscribers. The reader whose comments we use has until day's end (11:59 p.m. Pacific Time) to visit our special contest page and claim the prize. Each day we add $20 credit to the available total — until someone wins free books. Then the next day it all starts again.

To enter, write a short review of any item on Powells.com that you think we should tell Daily Dose subscribers about.

Click here to read the complete and official Daily Dose contest rules.

For those wishing for broadcast quality copies of the commentary in the most recent LISTen episode relative to this story, such is now available. Use the contact details to request such. Copies would be provided on CD and would be available for the cost of postage and the disc. This is open for libraries wanting to share such with radio stations for broadcast within the US and beyond.

The latest issue of The Informed Librarian Online ( www.informedlibrarian.com) is up.

Every month we post a new Guest Forum which I am sure your readers would be interested in reading.

This month's Guest Forum is by: Chaunacey Dunklee, Senior Reference Librarian at Fullerton Public Library

The article is titled: Transparency Isn't Just for Windows Anymore

It can be accessed full-text during the month of January Here

The popular book, "Library World Records", (Official website: http://www.lwrw.info/Aboutrecords2.htm) about fascinating facts about libraries and books around the world, has just been published December 2008 in paperback format. The book can be ordered in advance from the American publishers McFarland & Co (links below). "Library World Records" first published in 2004 has been called the Guinness Book of World Records for books and libraries and the new December 2008 edition provides answers to such questions as:

From Shelf Awareness: One publisher's mistake; young readers' bonanza.

Komenar Publishing goofed on a print order and wound up with "200% more product than intended." As a result, Komenar is donating 1,000 copies of the trade paperback edition of Heroes Arise by Laurel Anne Hill, an illustrated sci-fi novel involving "a quest across an alien landscape," to public libraries that have bookmobiles for underserved people or programs to bring books into schools.

For more information, e-mail info@komenarpublishing.com or call 510-444-2261.

After a squirrel appeared this summer on Powell's Books (Portland, OR) reusable bags and then scurried around and appeared elsewhere in and about the store--on mugs, T-shirts, etc.--the staff became tired of referring to the anonymous critter as "the squirrel."

So now the store is staging a naming contest: as Dave Weich of Powells.com put it on his blog, "Winner gets a $100 Powell's card, a featured book shelf at Powells.com, and bragging rights into the future." The contest is mentioned on the website as well as in the latest stories about Fup, the late store cat whose fans hail from around the world. Already 238 people have submitted a name for Fup's distant cousin.

I know this story is going to get some readership once people notice the word FREE. Publishers Weekly reports:

Ben LeRoy, publisher of Bleak House Books, a division of Big Earth Publishing, thinks nobody, no matter how dire their economic circumstances, should be deprived of gifts this holiday season so during the month of December, Bleak House Books, and its sister company, Intrigue Press, will give away more than 100 frontlist and backlist titles (mysteries) to readers, who, hopefully, will pass them on to others.

“As I listened to a piece on NPR about shopping being down, and people stressing about not being able to give presents, it struck me: we’re ahead of projections, and this is one way we can help out. I can’t stuff [readers] with cash, but I can help them get books,” LeRoy said.

Anybody who’d like to take Bleak House up on their offer can do so by ordering books from the company's website. Wish list books will be shipped from either Big Earth Publishing’s fulfillment center in Colorado or from Bleak House’s Madison, Wisc. offices, either directly to the shopper or to a designated recipient. Postage and handling ($6-$8) are the responsibility of the shopper, and checks/credit card orders must be received by December 11.

The LSW Zine: A Call for Rants, Manifestos, Articles, and Artwork: Announcing the Library Society of the World Zine, a planned dead-tree compilation of writing about libraries by library people.

If all goes well, when librarians gather in Chicago in July of 2009 for the American Library Association Annual Meeting, LSW agents will be packing copies of the first ever issue of the LSW zine along with their “FRBR? I hardly knew her!” t-shirts and Roy Tennant thongs. We will then sell or otherwise distribute the zines to an unwary population of humid, bus-riding librarians.

Everyone loves a winner, and here are the winners of the New York Times "I Love My Librarian" contest (profiles and photos). They are:

OK, you've determined you're going to try to buy books from your local independent booksellers...but now the question is...what are you going to buy?

The New York Times has a list of Notable Books from 2008 , and a list of list of Notable Books for Children from 2008.

You've got the list, you've bought the book(s), what now? Maybe some greeting cards that recycle into bookmarks to go along with it? Ah, the perfect combo. Mention birdie sent you, and you'll get free shipping on your order through the month of December.