Barbara Palmer Casini, Graham Rowbotham, Helen Edmonds and James Herring
IF I sometimes seem to be obsessed with: library legislation issues, no doubt this is the result of my having become a public library trustee and having been forced to deal with…
Abstract
IF I sometimes seem to be obsessed with: library legislation issues, no doubt this is the result of my having become a public library trustee and having been forced to deal with municipal officials for funds and to lobby with state and federal legislators for increased public library funding. I was, therefore, interested to hear Joseph Dagnese, President of Special Libraries Association, say at a recent colloquium at Drexel University, that SLA, once the least political of professional associations, has in recent years become increasingly involved in lobbying for the legislation it supports. The problem is that, as dealing with legislators and bureaucrats for funds and the authorization for new programmes becomes even more necessary, the US library community is recognizing that it is not terribly effective at doing so. Libraries and librarians have simply not been winning many of their battles lately.
As the internet has evolved through the emergence of social media, so too have the communicative practices of The Archers listeners. Many of them now use Twitter to comment…
Abstract
As the internet has evolved through the emergence of social media, so too have the communicative practices of The Archers listeners. Many of them now use Twitter to comment, discuss the show or participate in the omnibus episode ‘tweetalong’. Primarily, this chapter recognises the hundred-plus Twitter accounts which have been created by listeners to authentically roleplay characters, organisations, animals and even objects from the show. I frame these practices and ground the chapter in academic discourses of ‘fan fiction’. Reflecting on my own activity as @borsetpolice, I look at the role and place of this fan fiction from the individual practitioner’s perspective but also the wider listener base. In this chapter, I develop an argument that these practices contribute towards the community of listeners online, as well as the show itself. I explore the types of activities and accounts involved, where they often focus around major storylines, and then reflect in detail on the individual’s motivations and practice. I situate this in terms of an opportunity to become involved in an online community that aspires towards everyday rural ideals, and how this can be understood as a significant affective experience for listeners. This need for escapism into ‘banal’ worlds, the desire to participate, and the sense that fan fiction is a game that we take part in are also drawn out as significant.
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EVERY now and again, one of the solemn monthly or quarterly magazines, by way of enlivening its pages, inserts a terrific onslaught on municipal libraries, in which the judgment…
Abstract
EVERY now and again, one of the solemn monthly or quarterly magazines, by way of enlivening its pages, inserts a terrific onslaught on municipal libraries, in which the judgment of heaven is called down upon the fiction reader, and the library authorities are condemned as a set of ignorant and inefficient office‐holders, who pander to a depraved public taste. The last assailant of this sort whom we had the pleasure of setting right was Mr. J. Churton Collins, who used the Nineteenth Century and After, as the medium for conveying his accusations. Now comes Mr. W. H. Harwood, who fills six‐and‐a‐half pages of the Westminster Review for February, 1906, with a quantum of twaddle about libraries, which differs from most recent articles of the same sort only in its dulness. In his use of this journalistic cliché, Mr. Harwood displays the customary ignorance of the Public Libraries Acts, by styling his paper “Free Libraries and Fiction,” and by his failure to prove even one of his statements by reference to a single concrete fact. Briefly, Mr. Harwood's position is this:—
Faced with the obvious impossibility of remaining totally self‐sufficient whilst trying to maintain collections and services in difficult economic times, many librarians have…
Abstract
Faced with the obvious impossibility of remaining totally self‐sufficient whilst trying to maintain collections and services in difficult economic times, many librarians have turned to resource sharing as the answer to their problems. This article aims to review the ever growing field of literature on resource sharing in order to try to discover what resource sharing is, what need there is for it, what it is intended or hoped to achieve, what sort of resource sharing plans and schemes have been implemented, and in particular to try to find any evidence in the literature on the real benefits and actual costs involved in resource sharing which could be used as justification for such schemes in comparison with other methods of maximizing access to resources.
500 YEARS OF THE PRINTED MAP: a forthcoming exhibition at the British Museum, June—December 1972.
Douglas J. Ernest and Lewis B. Herman
In recent years, guides to hiking trails and wilderness areas have enjoyed an increase in popularity. Here, Douglas J. Ernest and Lewis B. Herman evaluate more than 100 such books.