RBSC holiday closures

The department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University will be closed from July 2-5 in honor of Independence Day. We will resume our summer hours schedule (Monday-Thursday, 8am-4:30 pm) on Monday, July 6th.

Special Collections 2.0 Now Available!

Today is a very special day.

Special Collections 2.0 is now available for purchase!

I'm very, very proud of the book that Beth Whittaker and I put together over the past year and a half. I hope that others find it useful as well.

Please feel free to email other mentions of the book to me at lmthomas@niu.edu, or better yet, post them in the comments. I'd like to keep track of them if at all possible.

Like this one, at the Law Librarian Blog.

Oh, and here's where to buy the book. [Libraries Unlimited] [Amazon] [WorldCat] [Keenzo]

Convergence Schedule now available

If you're looking for me at CONvergence, here's where to find me:

Friday, July 3
5:00pm - 6:00pm Why Writers Should Archive (Bloomington)

You will be appreciated after you are dead. Preserving the writing process for posterity and posthumous publication.

Panelist(s)
Kelly McCullough, Meredith Gillies, Elise Matthesen, Lynne Thomas
Literature, Guest of Honor, Writing

7:00pm - 8:00pm British People are Funnier than American People (Edina)

Or do we just get the good stuff across the pond? What are your favorite British shows... The Office, I.T. Crowd, Look Around You? Share your appreciation and get some recommendations.

Panelist(s)
Pete Lane, Tod Gelle, Lars Peterson, Michael Thomas, Craig A. Finseth

Tags
Television, Comedy

Saturday, July 4
9:30am - 10:30am Honestly, It's for Reference! (Atrium 8)

Do you feel ashamed stalking the hallways of Toys R Us for that elusive Star Wars figure? Do you display your action figure collection in your house? How do you justify these purchases and more importantly, how do you display and maintain them?

Panelist(s)
Jeannie Holmes, Anna Waltz, Steve Fuchs, Steven Erickson, Michael Thomas, Jeremy Stomberg
Tags
Side Dish

12:30pm - 1:30pm Is Joss Whedon a Deity? (Edina) Edina

Is the cult of Whedon weakening? How has Dollhouse fared? Will there be a Dr. Horrible sequel? Don't hang up your brown coat just yet!

Panelist(s)
Patrick Rothfuss, Mia Hagarty, Michael Thomas, Wayne Bruns, Jody Wurl
Tags
Television, Joss Whedon, Guest of Honor

2:00pm - 3:00pm Farewell David Tennant! (Edina)

David Tennant's final series has aired. His feature-length specials continue yet the 11th Doctor and the Moffat-era is waiting in the wings. Celebrate the 10th Doctor and speculate on the future.

Panelist(s)
Michael Scott Shappe, Lynne Thomas, Steve Manfred, Kathy Sullivan, Matt Savelkoul, Michael Thomas

Tags
Television, Doctor Who

10:00pm - 11:00pm Chicks Dig Time Lords (Edina)

There is a (perhaps erroneous) perception that there weren't many women in Doctor Who fandom before the New Series, particularly in the United States. Do women approach and experience their Doctor Who fandom differently than men?

Panelist(s)
Lynne Thomas (mod), Kathy Sullivan, Jo Thomsen, Jennifer Stavlo

Tags
Television, Doctor Who

See you there?

Job Posting: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

I have been asked to forward this job ad to my readers:

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is looking for a Head of Special Collections Research and Instructional Services.

I'm told that this is a newly-created position due to re-organization in their Special Collections setup, going from subject-based organization to task-based organization, essentially. I am also told that funding for this job is stable, and applicants need not worry about it disappearing.

I hear that the Triangle research area is a nice place to live, and the folks that I have met from UNC-Chapel Hill's Special Collections are all really nice.

Happy Hunting!

Back from RBMS

I have returned alive from RBMS, and am now playing catch-up.

Further blog entries will be coming as time permits.

That is all.

Begin Radio Silence [RBMS edition]

I'm off to RBMS tomorrow. I won't be travelling with a laptop, so I'm unlikely to post anything until I return.

I do promise, however, to do what I did last year, which is take copious notes and post them to this blog when I get back.

If you're going to the conference, I hope to see you there! I'm an extrovert, so please feel free to walk up to me and chat! Otherwise, I'll see y'all on the other side.

Web 2.0 takes us to Fairyland

Today I'd like to mention an interesting social web 2.0 experiment that is going on. The image above is for a site where Catherynne M. Valente will be posting a chapter to a YA novel per week.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is a book that was mentioned in Valente's novel Palimpsest as having been read by one of the novel's main characters.

Catherynne had no plans to write this book. However, her family's finances suffered a hit in the current economy. As a way of producing some additional writing income, she has decided to publish one chapter at a time of this YA novel.

It is her hope that those who like the book will be inclined to give, but the book itself is given freely, and you can even download audio of her reading the first chapter.

Just as Early Modern authors had patrons that funded the creation of their art, Valente is hoping that her readers will do the same, creating a modern-day, distributed model of patronage. The SF community is tightly-knit enough that this experiment has now been widely distributed, having been BoingBoinged, along with twittered by Neil Gaiman.

Full disclosure: I am Catherynne's archivist, and I consider myself a friend, so I have a vested interest in the survival of her work in all of its forms, and in her general well-being so that she can keep working. I am also a huge fan of her writing, and would like to see as much incentive as possible for her to keep creating.

So, please go read the story. If you feel so inclined, donate.

Thanks.

Special Collections 2.0 Cover Art!

Behold, MY BOOK COVER!

You can order the book here.

Google Reader Round-Up

It has been a busy few days, and that doesn't seem to be letting up any. This week I'm traveling two days, and next week I'll be at the RBMS Preconference in Charlottesville, VA, giving a Web 2.0 workshop along with ArchivesNext's Kate Theimer (which, incidentally is looking for nominations for 2009 Archival Movers & Shakers), and helping to run a discussion group on small libraries.

*begin shameless plug*
Oh, yeah, and my book will come out on June 30th. Here's ordering information:

Whittaker, Beth M. Special collections 2.0 : new technologies for rare books, manuscripts, and archival collections / Beth M. Whittaker and Lynne M. Thomas. Libraries Unlimited Inc / GREENWOOD PUBLISHING GROUP INC (NH/PA/IL). 1591587204. 9781591587200. V7-P22408. 2009. US. Paper. Not yet published. USD45.00

*end shameless plug*

Here are some things that caught my eye in my Google Reader. Many of them will also be eventually added to my Delicious account.

In LibraryLand:

• There has been an update on the Tyldesley Diary scandal at the British Library. Via LISNews.
• The Electronic Freedom Foundation has developed a new program for monitoring Terms of Service, called TOSBack. Via LifeHacker.
• CurrentCites has an article on Twitter for Libraries (and Librarians).
• According to the New York Times, Google is preparing to take on Amazon in the Ebooks arena. Via LISNews. They have two other Google Books stories, too.
• Cornell has lifted restrictions on digital public domain works held in their libraries. LibraryJournal via CurrentCites
• The US CIO calls for a 2.0 version of citizen involvement in government. Via ReadWriteWeb. The White House Blog also weighs in on securing our digital future.
• Apparently our digital preservation problems are over. Wired reports on a tech that could make data last for a billion years. Via LISNews.
• The JISC is working on a new Data Management Programme. Via the Digital Curation Blog.
• Librarian, interrupted comments on Libraries and Netflix. Via TameTheWeb.
• McGill University is working with Kirtas to produce digitized books-on-demand. Via LISNewsWire.
• Cory Doctorow points out what librarians have known for years: that search algorithms are editorial decisions, and perhaps we shouldn't leave them to one for-profit company. Via BoingBoing.
• Can't decipher text-speak from SMS messages? Here's a tool that translates them into English. Via LifeHacker.
• SAA reveals a new job-search site. Via ArchivesNext.
• The ArchivesHub blog comments on the CLIR report on Archival Management Software.
• The threat to not allow people with disabilities access to books due to an international copyright treaty being fought by the US has been defeated, for now. Via BoingBoing.
• Errol Morris in the NYT on Fakes and Frauds. Via BoingBoing.
• OCLC report by Jennifer Schaffner worth looking at: The Metadata IS the Interface: Better Description for Better Discovery of Archives and Special Collections. Via ArchivesNext.

In the world of SF:

• There might be a Tom Swift Movie? Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld? As a bunch of father-son stories? via I09.
• I09 tells us based on a Clarkesworld article that Short SF fiction is predominantly on the internet. Includes an interview with Catherynne Valente.
• David Eddings, best known for the Belgariad and Mallorean books passed away last week. These were among the first fantasy novels I ever read, and I enjoyed them immensely. Obituary notices: SFcrowsnest, LocusOnline, SFFWorld, Guardian (UK)
• Nisi Shawl, one of this year's Tiptree Winners, is interviewed by Eileen Gunn. Via FeministSF.
• Harlan Ellison talks about writers getting paid. Via LISNews.
• John Hertz blogs about the Fanzines at the Eaton Collection.
• Isaac Asimov had a crater on Mars named for him. Via SFScope.
• The 2009 Mythopoeic Awards finalists were announced. Congrats to them! Via SFScope.

Now try to stay out of trouble while I'm gone, won't you?

USA, Canada, and the EU try to kill treaty that protects access to reading material for the blind.

Please Forward, re-tweet, blog, and generally make noise about this.

USA, Canada and the EU attempt to kill treaty to protect blind people's access to written material. (Via Boingboing). Additional links: Huffington Post. Read the actual proposal.

"The main aim of the treaty is to allow the cross-border import and export of digital copies of books and other copyrighted works in formats that are accessible to persons who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic or have other reading disabilities, using special devices that present text as refreshable braille, computer generated text to speech, or large type. These works, which are expensive to make, are typically created under national exceptions to copyright law that are specifically written to benefit persons with disabilities..."

U.S. Copyright law has typically allowed for this kind of copying/reuse/accommodation. Why on earth would we NOT want it to be codified on an international scale?

And yet, the United States is OPPOSING this treaty. This is, quite frankly, reprehensible.

It pushes two of my big buttons: my "I'm-a-librarian-information-for-all-button" and my "NOBODY-MESSES-WITH-MY-KID" button.

Let me explain.

I am a librarian. I believe, as part of my personal and professional training and philosophy, that information should be available to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, or their need for accommodations to render it usable to particular individuals.

I am also a parent to a child with significant physical disabilities who is cognitively at-age.

(I don't tend to blog about it here--if you're violently interested, you can check out my personal livejournal feed.)

Through my experiences raising Caitlin, I have learned first hand that not every reader has the ability to hold, open, and read a book without assistance or accommodations of some kind.

Caitlin is 6. She can recognize words, and follow them across a page, and read them, but she can't hold the book very well on her own. The words need to be big enough for her to see them despite her visual limitations. Being read to, audio books, and devices that can convert text to speech are a necessary part of Caitlin's intellectual life, both for her success in school and for the nurturing of her imagination. She enjoys books immensely, and they are central to her life (as we would hope they would be, having a mom for a librarian and a dad who's a writer).

Opposition to this treaty closes books for my daughter and other people with disabilities.

Shame on the US delegation. Shame on you.

*goes off to fume*

After WisCon, 6 New Authors!

I have returned in one piece (more or less) from WisCon, and it must have gone well because I could really use a long weekend off.

At last count, I talked to over 50 authors that attended the convention. Yes, I keep a list for my own reference. No, I'm not going to enumerate it because that would be boring.

These pictures were all taken during the SignOut, which is a multi-author signing event at the end of the convention. It's a really nice way to end the con--everyone can wander around and say goodbye and get their books signed without having to try to accost authors in hallways or at parties. First, some pics of folks with whom I chatted :

John Joseph Adams, Alex Bledsoe, and Kelly McCullough hanging out at their SignOut table. Both Alex and Kelly have new books out right now. Alex and Kelly are both already members of the SF archives here, so I stopped by to say hi.

Carol Emshwiller is a multiple Nebula nominee, and a Philip K. Dick Award winner for her book The Mount. She also holds a World Fantasy Award for her short story collection The Start of the End of It All. Also, she's a heck of a nice lady.

I am also pleased to announce that several new authors have officially joined the NIU SF archive.

Nnedi Okorafor (pictured here with her daughter Anyaugo and David Levine, who was seated at the same table)

Nnedi was born in the US, to Nigerian immigrant parents, and much of her writing is centered in Nigerian and Igbo culture. Nnedi is the author of Zahrah the Windseeker, which won the Wole Soyinka Prize for literature. Her second novel, The Shadow Speaker, was a finalist for the Andre Norton Award and a Tiptree Honor book. Her picture book, Long Juju Man, won the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa. I'm currently reading Zahrah to my daughter, and it's really good.

Jaime Lee Moyer (not pictured--she was too quick!) is a novelist and Rhysling-Award nominated poet. She is also the poetry editor for Ideomancer.

Lori Devoti writes paranormal romance and urban fantasy. Her most recent book, Amazon Ink, came out this month. She has been a Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award finalist.

Kristine Smith, the author of the Jani Killian series, won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2001.

Richard Chwedyk is a Nebula-Award winning short fiction writer, as well as a writing teacher. His stories have appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as several Year's Best anthologies.

Ted Kosmatka (not pictured--he was also too fast!) is a short story writer who has had several stories in Years' Best anthologies, as well as being nominated for British Science Fiction Awards and the Preliminary Nebula Ballot.

Welcome, Ted, Richard, Kristine, Lori, Jaime, and Nnedi, to the NIU SF archives!

ETA: clarification of Nebula Ballot nomination and correction of spelling mistake.