Well at least now they can't say they didn't know.ALA President Leslie Berger spent Tuesday morning testifying before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. She was there to let them have it regarding the shady nature of the recent EPA library closings.She went there to talk about two things:-"the vital importance of access to scientific, environmental, legal, and other government information for EPA employees and the American public"- and how the recent closures of several regional libraries is "restricting access to important information about the environment in over 31 states"She was clear and thorough in stating the concerns of...
Books to Eat and Books about Eating
Bookslut has a nice post in their February online magazine by Heather Smith who writes the "Judging a Book By Its Cover" column. This month she covers "Books About Eating"She makes an interesting observation on the evolution of the food book market noting that they have gone from "books that were kind of eating porn, in which people traveled all over the world looking for the most perfect, exquisite loaf of bread, or the most tender baby sheep that charmingly scampers and gambols on the sun-dappled Tuscan hills and therefore is all the more delicious when it is cooked and...
Powell’s To Buy Books Online
Powell's, the poster child for independent book stores, has just quietly unveiled a new program where you can now sell them your books online. The story was covered in Publishers Marketplace (a fee site) and appeared in the daily email from Shelf-AwarenessHere is how it works:-You submit the ISBN numbers for the books you want to sell-The books that must be in good condition, meaning that there is no underlining or highlighting-Hardcovers have the original dust jacket,-No pages are torn, etc.The site checks the ISBNs and will then either decline the book or make an offer. If the seller agrees...
The Next Generation Book Collector: Four Bay Area Booksellers Weigh In
While so much energy is focused on the present or future state of bookselling little goes toward the much more vital issue of who is going to buy our books.The non-new book community calls this species book collectors while the new book community calls them readers. Though this post focuses on the antiquarian slant it is not a far reach to substitute 'reader' for 'collector'. This is a pressing issue for anyone who sells any type of book.Bruce McKinney of Americana Exchange took a film crew and headed to the Bay Area to talk with four preeminent booksellers. The topic:...
The Seeds of Frankenstein
We know that on a dark stormy night in 1816 Lord Byron read some ghost stories to his guests and then asked them to write their own version. Mary Shelley was one of those guests and that is when and where the gothic masterpiece Frankenstein was born. In her introduction to the Third Edition of the book Shelly says: When I placed my head upon the my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think...I saw--with shut eyes, but acute mental vision--I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put...