More on the library

[publius]

Where did the money come from for that waste of space euphemistically called a "ballfield"? And how much was it?
Maybe, THAT money woulda, coulda, shoulda been better used for the new library?
It's not really a matter of not having enough money. It's spending the money we get for stupid things.
We have several decent ballfields already. It really can't cost all that much to put another one in. But, this one is a fiasco!!!
It still needs bleachers, lights and a pressbox/refreshment stand?
All you need is a couple of acres and a pitcher's mound and a backstop..........and you're in business. Thats how I played when I was a kid.........back in the Stone Age.

[guest 1000]

i heard someone comment that they would be more than happy to have a new "snack stand" in town to grab a quick hot dog and french fries... but really, that ballfield should have switched places with the soccer fields so that the lights, scoreboard, loud speaker and concession stand, would be far enough away from the school and town as to not become an eyesore as so often happens.....

as for the library discussions, i think it was completely wrong for the board of education to even try to limit public hours, and i was glad that it backfired. the children are not in any danger in there, there is so much security around them, it is overkill. the library should set the example of embracing everyone and not reinforcing the exclusionary part of cranbury that it tends to have. i would like to recommend building a new beautiful glass addition on top of the library. it would have a very welcoming presence for the school and add the needed space.

[Guest]

I said it when Bartoletti was hired and again when Haney was hired. We are hiring people who don't have experience in small town, K-8 school districts. We're hiring from much larger townships and school districts and hiring people who want to be king of a large castle. We're all impressed because they come from good well known districts, but we don't really look to see if what they want is what is good for our town.

Charlie succeeded as Principal because he understood the K-8 school system, he understood that the school and community interact as one. We had a fantastic school under him and thankfully it has been kept up. However, we hire people who I don't think want the small school they want a large school feel and that's why you have issues arising such as the library or proposals such as new additions where each teacher has their own office (Bartoletti).

[Guest]

Fact check time. Haney came from a k-8 district smaller than Cranbury.

[Guest]

Teachers don't have there own offices. I think you mean that in the original plan there was a flex classroom that the middle school teachers would be able to use as an office depending on enrollment. That room is and has been used as a classroom.

Austin Schraudenbach

[Guest]

That is correct, Bartoletti originally wanted separate offices though, not just one class room. I did not say he got them. Also, Haney also worked in South Brunswick for 14 years. Which is a much larger district. He came from Clinton, but his attitude toward the library and in my seeing him work indicates he sees much bigger or perhaps sees more money available to be bigger.

[Guest]

With all do respect your memory is incorrect. In the last additition, Bob did not advocate individual offices. Interestingly, in the various coffees and public meetings prior to the last addition, I do not recall anyone bringing up the concept of offices for individual teachers. My advice to anyone with strong feelings about the school is to attend a board meeting and make your thoughts known. To argue anonymously does nothing to change public policy.

Austin Schraudenbach

[Guest 2]

Bill is correct - I sat at every meeting for the last addition -- from the first prelim to the very end -- and there was NEVER talk of individual offices for teachers. There was a teacher work room proposed -- where ALL the middle school teachers would have a desk so that they would have somewhere to work while their rooms were being used for classes during their free/prep classes. This one room was quickly made into a classroom.

[Guest]

[Guest]

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/09/library_without_the_books.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890
This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks - the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital.


“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’’ said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus. “This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’ [the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel in which books are banned]. We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.’’

Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,’’ though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.

[Guest]

Have you been to our public library recently? It is amazing was is offered....


The future of libraries, with or without books

Story Highlights
As books go digital, libraries are reevaluating their roles

Some say libraries will soon act more like community centers

Most say the physical book will stay in libraries, but with less importance

Some libraries use futuristic tools to attract new patrons
By John D. Sutter

CNN
(CNN) -- The stereotypical library is dying -- and it's taking its shushing ladies, dank smell and endless shelves of books with it.

Books are being pushed aside for digital learning centers and gaming areas. "Loud rooms" that promote public discourse and group projects are taking over the bookish quiet. Hipster staffers who blog, chat on Twitter and care little about the Dewey Decimal System are edging out old-school librarians.

And that's just the surface. By some accounts, the library system is undergoing a complete transformation that goes far beyond these image changes.

Authors, publishing houses, librarians and Web sites continue to fight Google's efforts to digitize the world's books and create the world's largest library online. Meanwhile, many real-world libraries are moving forward with the assumption that physical books will play a much-diminished or potentially nonexistent role in their efforts to educate the public.

Some books will still be around, they say, although many of those will be digital. But the goal of the library remains the same: To be a free place where people can access and share information.

"The library building isn't a warehouse for books," said Helene Blowers, digital strategy director at the Columbus [Ohio] Metropolitan Library. "It's a community gathering center."

Think of the change as a Library 2.0 revolution -- a mirror of what's happened on the Web.

Library 2.0

People used to go online for the same information they could get from newspapers. Now they go to Facebook, Digg and Twitter to discuss their lives and the news of the day. Forward-looking librariansare trying to create that same conversational loop in public libraries. The one-way flow of information from book to patron isn't good enough anymore.

"We can pick up on all of these trends that are going on," said Toby Greenwalt, virtual services coordinator at the Skokie Public Library in suburban Chicago.

Greenwalt, for example, set up a Twitter feed and text-messaging services for his library. He monitors local conversations on online social networks and uses that information as inspiration for group discussions or programs at the real-world library.

Other libraries are trying new things, too.

The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, in North Carolina, has a multimedia space where kids shoot videos and record music. It also runs a blog dedicated to gaming and hosts video game tournaments regularly.

Kelly Czarnecki, a technology education librarian at ImaginOn, a kids' branch of that library, said kids learn by telling their own stories.

"Our motto here is to bring stories to life, so by having the movie and music studio we can really tap into a different angle of what stories are," she said. "They're not just in books. They're something kids can create themselves."

Czarnecki believes that doesn't have to come at the expense of book-based learning.

The Aarhus Public Library in Aarhus, Denmark, takes things a step further.

The library features an "info column," where people share digital news stories; an "info galleria" where patrons explore digital maps layered with factoids; a digital floor that lets people immerse themselves in information; and RFID-tagged book phones that kids point at specific books to hear a story.

"The library has never been just about books," said Rolf Hapel, director of the city's public libraries.

Community Centers

Jason M. Schultz, director of the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California at Berkeley Law School, said libraries always have served two roles in society: They're places where people can get free information; and they're community centers for civic debate.

As books become more available online, that community-center role will become increasingly important for libraries, he said.

"It depends on whether we prioritize it as a funding matter, but I think there always will be a space for that even if all the resources are digital," he said.

Some libraries are trying to gain an edge by focusing on the "deeply local" material -- the stuff that only they have, said Blowers, the librarian in Ohio.

"How do we help add that value to a format like the Internet, which is expansively global?" she said. "So we look at what do we have here that we could help people gain access to by digitizing it."

That material can be used to start community discussions, she said.

Librarians

This shift means the role of the librarian -- and their look -- is also changing.

In a world where information is more social and more online, librarians are becoming debate moderators, givers of technical support and community outreach coordinators.

They're also no longer bound to the physical library, said Greenwalt, of the library in Skokie, Illinois. Librarians must venture into the digital space, where their potential patrons exist, to show them why the physical library is still necessary, he said.

A rise in a young, library-chic subculture on blogs and on Twitter is putting a new face on this changing role, said Linda C. Smith, president of the Association for Library and Information Science Education.

Some wear tattoos, piercings and dress like they belong on the streets of Brooklyn instead of behind bookshelves. They're also trying on new titles. Instead of librarians, they're "information specialists" or "information scientists."

Libraries like the "Urban Media Space," which is set to open in 2014 in Aarhus, Denmark, are taking on new names, too. And all of that experimentation is a good thing, Smith said, because it may help people separate the book-bound past of libraries from the liberated future.

"It's a source of tension in the field because, for some people, trying to re-brand can be perceived as a rejection of the [library] tradition and the values," she said. "But for other people it's a redefinition and an expansion."

Funding woes

In the United States, libraries are largely funded by local governments, many of which have been hit hard by the recession.

That means some libraries may not get to take part in technological advances. It also could mean some of the nation's 16,000 public libraries could be shut down or privatized. Schultz, of the Berkeley Law School, said it would be easy for public officials to point to the growing amount of free information online as further reason to cut public funding for libraries.

Use of U.S. public libraries is up over the past decade, though, and many people in the information and libraries field say they're excited about opportunities the future brings.

"I came into libraries and it wasn't about books," said Peter Norman, a graduate student in library and information science at Simmons College in Boston who says he's most interested in music and technology. "Sure I love to read. I read all the time. I read physical books. But I don't have the strange emotional attachment that some people possess."

"If the library is going to turn into a place without books, I'm going to evolve with that too," he said.

[HistoricallyFiscal]

[Guest]

My friend just published his first book, and it can ship in all 3 formats, digital, paper and one day if its popular maybe in audio. Anything new is required to be in digital format now. For the older books, its only limited to time and effort before its all scanned in.

I do like to bring a good book onto the beach with me, it doesnt require electrical and it wont turn off when the power runs out. But for most day to day reading, I'm doing it on my PC today. I've recently been looking at the Sony Reader seems better then the Amazon Kindle2. Its easier to read in the dark and in bed when I have my 1hr time slot
http://ebookstore.sony.com/reader/

[Guest]

[kindle killer?]

Books are going digital big time!



Tech news: For the smarter kind of bookworm

Asus, inventors of the netbook, is about to shake up the ebook world with the arrival of the world's cheapest digital reader

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6822723.ece

[Guest]

First of all, the more electronic readers the better. Even Amazon is pplatform neutral and already works on my iphone too.

That said, this link is to a blatant re-print of a press release and not a serious article. It is sales hype. They aren't even beyond the prototype yet. And they are vague about the screen technology. Most of the eReaders use a special electronic ink which is way easier on the eyes, less fragile and way more energy efficient (thus the weeks of battery life) than conventional screen tech. My guess is they are going with a traditional LCD tech here. If so, not interested... There is another company, plastic Logic, which just did a deal with Barnes & Noble, that has an interesting color reader with e-ink coming out next year though...