Bring your advocacy questions to the ALA Membership Pavilion (#2525) between 1 to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday for Advocacy Hour at the ALA 2010 Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.
Expert library advocates will be available to discuss issues affecting you and your library. Sunday and Monday will feature Dr. Ron Carlee of the International City/County Management Association offering an inside look at how to work with decision-makers. The sessions will open with a brief primer on Library Advocacy Day from the ALA Washington Office.
Advocacy toolkits, fact sheets and other information covering all types of libraries from across ALA also will be available. Advocacy hour is sponsored by the Advocacy Coordinating Group of the Committee on Library Advocacy (COLA).
The ALA Membership Pavilion is booth 2525 in the Washington Convention Center. Advocacy Hour takes place Saturday, Sunday, Monday, June 26, 27 & 28, from 1 to 2 p.m.
PLA is seeking bloggers to help us fan out and cover all of the exciting events at the upcoming ALA Annual Conference. If you are planning to attend ALA and you are interested in helping to cover the conference for the PLA Blog, drop a line to and I’ll send you more information.
Hop on the Bus to Visit two of Baltimore’s historic libraries!
Take advantage of your stay in Washington, D.C. while at the ALA Annual Conference to visit two of Baltimore’s jewels – the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Central Library and Johns Hopkins University’s George Peabody Library. Baltimore is just a short distance away from Washington D.C.
Monday, June 28, 2010
9 AM -4:30 PM
Meet in the lobby of the Renaissance Washington DC Hotel
(999 Ninth Street NW) at 8:30 AM
Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Integrated Technology Group (ITG), this trip is free! Lunch will be hosted by Carla Hayden, CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Space is limited, so please contact Sonia Alcantara-Antoine by Thursday, June 17, 2010 at to reserve your space.
The 2010 PLDS Statistical Report, an annual project of the Public Library Association, will be available in early July. The PLDS report is designed to meet the needs of public library administrators and others for timely and effective library-specific data that illuminates and supports a wide variety of management decisions. In addition to the library data, each year’s report contains a special survey — this year’s special survey focuses on children’s services.
Attendees of the ALA Annual Conference will be able to purchase a copy of the print report at the ALA store or you can advance order a copy using this form.
The report also is available in a subscription database format. Database users can view PLDS tables, including summary and comparison tables, with searchable data exportable into Excel/CSV file formats, and linked data from other report sections; access summary tables in interactive charts, control the type of chart the information is diplayed in, create customized PLDS datasets, and more. Get the order form and more information here.
Published in 1960, Harper Lee’s novel of racial injustice and honor in the depression era, racially divided deep South has been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 30 million copies. A film, named best courtroom drama by the AFI (American Film Institute) in 2008, featuring Gregory Peck was released in 1962. In addition to events held at their booth during BookExpo 2010, HarperCollins is embarking on a campaign ‘50 years 50 events’ which will run through the summer and into the fall with events scheduled at bookstores and libraries. Several books related to “Mockingbird” are also being released soon: Two new trade paper editions of the novel as well as a special 50th anniversary hardcover edition that includes the original art work. On June 8, “Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill A Mockingbird” by Mary McDonagh Murphy will be available. Based on Murphy’s upcoming documentary, “Hey Boo: To Kill A Mockingbird and Harper Lee,” it includes a collection of interviews with persons (including Oprah, Tom Brokaw, and Anna Quindlen) sharing their memories of the novel and its author. For more information on the anniversary events visit www.ToKillAMockingbird50Year.com.
Much of Wednesday’s BEA (BookExpo America) programming also focused on Ebooks. At ‘EBooks — Who is Reading?’ The results of a ‘consumer attitudes towards ebooks’ study sponsored by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and R.R. Bowker were discussed. The survey is ongoing, so the results discussed at this session were more of a snapshot. Also, the study has been ongoing for a while so you can see trend data if you take a look at past reports.
Here’s a quick look at some of the data discussed:
eBook sales went from 1.5% of all book sales in first quarter of 2009 to 5% in first quarter of 2010, with 33% of eBook buyers entering the market in the last three months.
25% of eBook consumers said that they mostly purchase eBooks and buy less print books than before; 15% said that they exclusively buy eBooks and no longer buy print and 9% said they only buy eBooks and will not buy a book if it is not available electronically.
The number one driver for why people purchase ebooks is affordability.
Men purchase slightly more ebooks than women. Women buy more print books. Also, the average salary of 75% of respondents is more than $35,000. A new digital divide?
How are consumers downloading ebooks? The computer is the most popular eBook reading device followed by the Kindle, the iPhone, Sony’s reader, mobile phones, the Nook and last, the iPad. (The iPad was only out for 3 weeks when these numbers were calculated.) These survey results and even more data are online, check it out here.
A new component to BEA this year is the DIY Conference Marketplace, which featured panels and educational sessions on self-publishing, as well as appearances by successful self-published authors like J.A. Konrath, Sheryl Matthys, and Maria Murnane.
Lots of talk about libraries and ebooks at yesterday’s Day of Dialog sessions, “Ebooks Set Free: Blio/Copia and Other Platforms,” and “Audiobooks, Music, and Movies: Content and Format Changes and Challenges.” In “Ebooks Set Free,” panelists including reps from Baker & Taylor (Blio) and Copia, as well as public librarians, Susan Caron, Toronto Public Library, and Christopher Platt, NYPL discussed the evolving ebook/library business model and the two related products these two companies bring to the table.
Copia is a ’social e-reading experience,’ described as a “Goodreads on steroids, the platform offers shared reading lists, mosaic views of books, tag clouds instead of lists, and social networking which leverages the ‘friends’ you already have. Blio is an ereader application, a digital media store that offers a state of the art circulation platform, integrates with library catalogs, and a feature-rich design with full color pages. Blio also offers text to speech, at the click of a button, with a suite of voice that can be assigned to characters. Both are device-agnostic (a popular phrase yesterday) meaning they can work on any device from laptop to smart-phone.
So, where is all the content for the world of ereading? Librarians need to start talking to publishers. Not only do publishers have a perception that libraries are not good for their business, but a business model that can make everybody happy has not yet evolved. Publishers need to know what librarians want, they also need to be educated on the value of the library (to them and to the world).
The next program, “Audiobooks, Music, and Movies” touched on many of the same themes. Mainly, what will be the new business model for libraries offering downloads of everything including ebooks. The business models associated with downloads are for consumers, libraries have not been considered. Panelists urged librarians to develop a competitive strategy and to know the cost per circulation of each download/item.
On the flip side, librarians would like to see ease of use in products, products that patrons can actually use. One of the panelists (Steve Potash, Overdrive) reported that research his company had done showed that 75% of consumers download to a pc or notebook, tho smartphone usage is growing.
There also was a discussion of lending model vs. one time usage, and also potential revenue streams related to the option to buy books by clicking from the library’s site.
Again, this panel concluded that publishers are looking to librarians for guidance…librarians need to engage with publishers. Potash noted that Overdrive research showed that American public libraries had nearly 1.5 billion visitors last year and that libraries need to leverage that power, by telling vendors and publishers how they want things to work, proposing business models and price points.
Here’s the list of forthcoming titles from this morning’s session (see previous post):
Amy Einhorn, Amy Einhorn Books, Penguin Group(USA):
Mark Mustian, “The Gendarme” (September)
Siobhan Fallon, “You Know When the Men Are Gone” (Winter)
Eleanor Brown, “The Weird Sisters” (Winter)
Eric Poole, “Where’s My Wand” (May)
Jennifer Hershey, Ballantine Bantam Dell
Anne Fortier, “Juliet” (Ballantine, August)
Stephen Hawking, “The Grand Design” (Bantam, November)
Lee Child, “61 Hours” and an as-yet untitled ‘Reacher’ novel (Bantam May, October)
Justin Cronin, “The Passage” (Ballantine, June) Thriller, lots of marketing, optioned for movies.
Laura Hillenbrand, “Unbroken” (Random, November)
Kelley Ragland, Minotaur Books
Nevada Barr, “Burn” (Augsut)
William Ryan, “The Holy Thief” (May)
Louise Penny, “Bury Your Dead” (September)
Charles Finch, “A Stranger in Mayfair” (November)
Julia Spencer-Fleming, “One Was A Soldier” (Winter)
Chelsea Cain, Untitled (Winter)
Liate Stehlik, HarperCollins
Tom Franklin, “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter” (Morrow, October)
Charles Todd, “An Impartial Witness” (Morrow, September)
Conor Grennan, “Little Princes” (Morrow, January)
Laura Lippman, “I’d Know You Anywhere” (Morrow, August)
Sena Jeter Naslund, “Adam & Eve” (Morrow, October)
LJ’sDay of Dialog (for librarians attending BookExpo) kicked off with “Editor’s Picks” a look at upcoming titles. Panelists included
Amy Einhorn, Amy Einhorn books, Penguin Group (USA); Jennifer Hershey, Ballantine Bantam Dell; Kelley Ragland, Minotaur Books; and Liate Stehlik, HarperCollins. Stay tuned for their picks!
