Daily Thoughts 2/27/2010

Besuch in der Bibliothek, 1741, Pietro Longhi

Daily Thoughts 2/27/2010

If you get a chance read With A Little Help The Price is Right by Cory Doctorow in the February 15, 2010 Publishers Weekly, Pp. 18-19. It is an excellent article on ebook pricing and the issues surrounding it. I also saw a book which looks interesting: Playing With books: The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing, and Reimagining the Book by Jason Thompson.

Today was another quiet day. I did more weeding in the mezzanine and a bit more checking through the 800s today. It is moving along steadily. I also checked on having security strips put in books.

I am thinking about the flyers, bookmarks, and other marketing materials in the library. I checked out another book today, The Market Place of Ideas Reform and Resistance in the American University by Louis Menand.

I started reading The Marketplace of Ideas on the way home. The first line of the introduction reads, "Knowledge is our most important business." I rather like that statement. It fights right in with my profesion. I also found out that the series editor for this book is Henry Louis Gates, Jr. from Harvard University. This indicates the book has quite a bit of thought in it. I've noticed that a lot more professors are writing books for the general public these days. It seems ideas are escaping from the "ivory towers."

The first chapter of the book is on the concept of a general education. I got a humanities focused education so I can relate to this. My undergraduate degree was in anthropology. There is not a whole lot of practical application for an undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology focused on modern culture. It was a step towards my professional masters degree in library science.

A public library is of course a public marketplace for ideas. Our job as a librarian is partially to select which ideas which people will partake of. It is considered a place for self education. There are questions right now whether our library is part of the city, or part of the school district. Is self education a form of formal education? or an adjunct to it? It is an interesting question.