http://librarysociety.pbwiki.com/ A fun idea from a casual conversation. This is not to say that CILIP, ALA, ALIA et al are unnecessary. Rather that the social computing thing can help a more responsive and flexible international collaborative set-up to emerge.

Many thanks to Stuart at the Royal Armouries Leeds. He gave us a very interesting insight into the library and its work. As well as a wide ranging library they have some fantastic archive materials, some dating back to the thirteenth century.
The library provides a reading room service for people interested in the Armouries’ collections, from [...]

Libraries need to open on Sundays, many would say. Today I learned that two of Rotherham’s libraries do open on Sundays, 10-2. Thanks to good transport links they are available to pretty much everyone in the borough. Indeed most days everyone should be able to get to a library, even when their nearest library is [...]

OK, so what are libraries then? As Matt asks, what is it that we can offer that is different and worthwhile when compared to Borderstones and Amaspace?
Answers on a comment please… all libraries welcome; let’s not make this about public libraries only.
My answer, copied from a comment to another post, is…
In looking at ‘information’ simply as [...]

Interesting post from Matt on Amazon is Library 2.0 Great ideas, but it makes the classic mistake takes the position of  equating libraries with ‘information,’ which I am uncomfortable with.
Amazon is a partial competitor, sure, and a good source of inspiration. But libraries are not bookshops, digital or not

Intereresting comments over at Katharine’s blog. It may be that the article missed some key points on this service. If they did, where is the rebuttal/clarification from the service?
The issue of charging is still an important one. As Walt said in the comments to my original post, if you introduce ‘premium’ services it can have [...]

At times it feels that users are waved around like Uthman’s shirt, to justify any position library/librarian critics wish to espouse. Rarely are these users identified, or relevant evidence presented. It’s users, stoopid; that’s all you need to know.
Do other ‘users’ get used like this? When the great accounting frauds were revealed, were their ‘users’ [...]

Found via Booksurfer.
 http://www.northantset.co.uk/news?articleid=2861582
£15 an hour? I always imagined doing this sort of thing in public libraries as part of my job, should I be a public librarian. This sort of service should be the essence of what public libraries offer, alongside access to the products of imagination and research.
Public libraries should not be charging for this kind [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6654083.stm ’Tellytubby land’ some say. I have to agree. It’s as if the architect basically wants to say ‘I woz ere’ in the ugliest way they could.
But it’s architecture, Pete. Who are you to criticise its grand genius?…
So much library design is all design and no library. The artistic genius and landmark blah de blah of [...]

Weinberger sees Wikipedia’s Neutral Point of View as being reached via the happy to and fro of consensus seekers. When an article is stable, it has achieved NPOV nirvana.
Now this view has been discussed elsewhere, and I had the same feeling. Doesn’t a stable page have as much chance of reflecting the absence of certain [...]