books and libraries

I spent much of my afternoon looking for a teapot, and had no luck. Is $40 or $50 the going price of a teapot these days? I couldn't bring myself to fork over so much dough, so will keep looking. The stores here are decked out in holiday gear, with some of them airing Christmas jingles over their loudspeakers... eek, it is upon us. And the commercials on Canadian TV? Is it normal that November (early November at that) is flooded with Xmas commercialism? These are probably stupid questions - yes, of course. Buy early. Buy buy buy. Meh. Anyways! I spent much of last night with a cup (no pot) of tea and my computer. Steve is up in Sendai for the weekend, playing a few exhibition games, and I am here, researching library stuff and e-book readers. I came across a TON of great websites last night - my tabs bar was near capacity and I was actually wondering if my Mac might pull some PC stunt and just shut itself down/off/blackscreen because of a bad case of tab-overload. It didn't... yay. I was interested in opening the e-book vs book, future of libraries can of worms, and there is just so much out there. And, after three hours of reading and tabbing and reading some more, my thoughts are in complete disarray and mumble-jumble - this is a big issue and there is a lot to think about. The whole Google books thing, physical vs digital, and the influence of social media on information and nature of information makes for some hefty issues to toss around upstairs. So, here are some sites that I have/had open last night - there are some gooders. With the Times article, I found the comments just as interesting (if not more) than the article.

The Future of Libraries (CNN Article)
Libraries of the Future (Technology and Libraries - upcoming changes)
Library Bytes (blog)
Lorcan Dempsey (another lib-blog)
Project for Public Spaces
A Library to Last Forever (NY Times article by Google co-founder Sergey Brin - check the comments too!)
Library Revolution (Guardian (UK) article on the changing nature of libraries)
Libraries 2020 (a recent symposium in Ontario - good links and articles)
A Library Without Books (Boston Globe article; and from Libraries in 2020: The "paperless library" rhetoric reminds me of nothing so much as the "paperless office", which has been predicted as coming any day soon for close to 40 years now.)

There's more... but this is enough to occupy several hours of your life, at least. (That is, I suppose, if you're into libraries.) I realized how nerdy (or maybe grown-up? GASP! no!) I am when, at 10:30 on a Friday night I was wishing I had a teapot for more yummy tea, whilst browsing and reading and learning about libraries and the future of librarianship.

At the Used Bookfair last week in Jimbocho: there were many stalls and many, many people ogling over books and more books... love it.

nothing to do with books but... floating head guys - so funny, no?