The publishing industry isn’t uniformly kind to people who try to break into it. The first thing that comes to my mind is the dearth of LGBT thrillers out there. Until several years ago, if I wanted to read about a rogue agent rescuing... Read More
Public libraries have embraced some interesting ideas of late. Seed lending. 3-D printers. Kittens. Sometimes, it seems that we’re so eager to be trendsetters that we end up adjacent to a bullseye only five times out of a hundred. As a... Read More
Congratulations, Carla Hayden. Carla Hayden is kind of a big deal at the moment. If you’ve never heard her name, don’t feel too bad. You’ll know her before long. Until very recently, Hayden was the CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free... Read More
“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.“ —attributed to Oscar Wilde. Whether or not he actually did say it, this aphorism captures the experience of many who have... Read More
At long last, a large institution has thrown its weight behind open access. A large group of institutions, actually. The Oberlin Group, which is made up of a bunch of libraries from institutes of higher education across the United... Read More
My first substantial job after college (after lots and lots of college) was the fulfillment of a childhood dream: I ensconced myself behind the counter of my local library and became a distributor of books. As a patron, I’d always... Read More
We librarians all have patrons who want specific materials removed from the shelves. It’s difficult to predict which items will inflame sensibilities or which strike readers as incendiary. Knowing your community is part of the battle,... Read More
As often happens, a distributor’s fairly simple idea of offering a one-stop platform for print and digital editions soon evolved into something more. Beyond the envisioned base of independent publishers and authors, libraries,... Read More