Homeless Advocate Goes High Tech (DC Man uses social networking to advocate for the homeless.)
'Text' Books (Japanese women write novels quickly using just their thumbs.)
AP Reporter Reprimanded For Facebook Post; Union Protests (How what you say online can affect your job.)
and as a special bonus...this tidbit created quite a stir on DOCLINE-L, with posts about how the National Library of Medicine should work to make sure their network is not available to such institutions that cut out library jobs (although it kind of degenerated into a vague 'us' vs. 'them' where some people favoured degreed librarians and perhaps unintentionally stepped on the feet of library technicians, or favoured shutting out small library collections, so I have to admit, I weighed in on that.) In this case, there won't be anyone with a library background trained to staff it, degreed or not. And I hope the hospital gets exactly what it sows. This idea that everything's free on the Internet is so wrong. Electronic resources are costly, need a lot of oversight and maintenance, and there's still interlibrary loan resources (such as through DOCLINE) and other cost-saving benefits such as consortial access that they're simply going to be shut out of.
Hospital library closes to public, goes electronic
'They can put whatever spin they want on it, but brass tacks is that they're closing the library,' [library volunteer Joyce Herbst] said. 'I guess I just don't understand how you can take that resource away from a teaching hospital. How can it be a teaching hospital, without a resource library and someone to run it? I just think it's not a very smart thing to do.'
The library closes on Friday, at which point medical librarian Pat Hamilton, who has run the library along with a staff of volunteers for 24 years will be out of a job. I hate to hear things like this, all due to a desire to cut costs indiscriminately without really understanding the costs involved. Bah!
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