It's the weekend before the 4th of July (Independence Day in the United States), and it is the last Sunday of June 2019. Let's see what stories we got.
- Barnes and Noble has not been doing well, and recently they got bought by a hedge fund. In the United States, getting bought by a hedge fund is pretty much the kiss of death given hedge funds usually just strip companies they buy for parts, sell off what they can for profit, and then scrap the rest in bankruptcy court, and move on leaving devastation in their wake. The new owners, who also own a British book chain, claims they want Barnes and Noble stores to be more like small independent bookstores; this is ironic given B&N in its prime helped to decimate a lot of those small stores it now wants to imitate. We'll have to see how it goes. Personally, I remain very skeptical. Story via Fortune magazine, which naturally has an optimistic look to it (they are a business magazine after all).
- Meanwhile, Amazon has woes of its own, this time is the issue of fake or counterfeit books being sold on its site. Amazon may protest their innocence, but at the end of the day, they are just not policing properly. After all, and we need to be honest here, they still make money even on those fakes to the chagrin of honest book sellers and publishers. Amazon basically has no real incentive let alone sense of decency that would make them do something substantial about the issue. Story via Vox.
- In news of libraries and archives, a team of editors and librarians saved the Sunset magazine archives. Story via Stanford Magazine. What happened? "Since 1898, Sunset—publisher of Sunset magazine and more than 800 books—had chronicled life in the West. That history had been preserved for posterity and research, meticulously catalogued in multiple rooms and dozens of file cabinets. Time Inc., Sunset’s owner since 1990, had just told the editors to empty everything into dumpsters. They were moving to Oakland." Then the team came together to help preserve this important periodical and the history it documented.
- A scholar returns to the MLA (Modern Language Association) annual conference, and he finds the MLA basically contemplating being a dead man walking. Story via The Times Literary Supplement.This quote from the article sums the situation nicely: "The current state of the humanities can be found in the juxtaposition of these two sessions. First, academics devote their lives to writing things they know that nobody will ever read, then they gnash their teeth about why nobody cares about what they do." In a disclosure note, I will say part of why I left further academic work after my Masters in English to go to library school was the idea of having to write things "that nobody will ever read." Granted, this blog probably gets three or four readers on a good day, but that is still more than anything I could have written had I pursued a doctorate in English or most other humanities field. I could say more, but I will stop here while I am ahead.
- Via the academic journal Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, (warming: PDF for the article), an article on "Book Blogs as Tastemakers." This is an article I would like to read in depth when I get time, but I wanted to make sure I highlighted for my four readers. The Literary Salon blog breaks the article down a bit so you get an idea what it is about.
- Via Open Culture, "in 1886, the US Government Commissioned 7,500 Watercolor Paintings of Every Known Fruit in the World: Download Them in High Resolution." Read the article, and it includes the link to where you can see and get the images.
- Book Riot looks over the story that DC Comics is shutting down its Vertigo imprint and some of the questions that raises.
- Did you know that Yale University has a Babylonian collection? It does, and it includes ancient tablets that well may be the first cookbook ever. They even went ahead and tested some of the recipes recently. Story via Yale News.
- Via RA for All, a blog I follow about reader's advisory, on asking the patrons what they did not find and then listening. A nice idea in theory, and more useful to public libraries. I will be honest, in my academic library the campus faculty already do plenty of telling us, without any asking, what we do not have that they think we need to buy, and a lot of it is expensive things we cannot afford for pet projects that may or not support the curriculum. We are a teaching and student centered library, not an R-1. I think in this case, I may skip asking that question, or at least use it very sparingly. But as I said, for public librarians who do more active reader's advisory (which usually applies to recreational reading), have at it. For us, one place we may be asking the question is for users of our graphic novels collection, which is mainly recreational.
- Via Readers Read blog, just when I thought I had seen it all: IDW announces they are going to publish The Mueller Report as a graphic novel. On the one hand, I think it is totally ridiculous and maybe even a bit of dumbing down going on. However, on the other hand, this is not the first time some major government document or report has been condensed and adapted as a graphic novel. For example, the 9/11 Report was adapted to a graphic novel and also adaptations like The Great American Documents, Volume 1: 1620-1830 (link to my review of that). So adapting The Mueller Report is part of that tradition. If I get my hands on the graphic novel version, despite my moratorium on reading anything political, I will read it so I can review it here. Stay tuned.
- Via China Daily (English edition), a story on how China wants to send more of their books out into the world. Story highlights a recent seminar in China bringing together representatives of the book trade from various countries to discuss what kinds of books about China may be of interest.
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