The Lepper Library in Lisbon, Ohio has initiated a new program to deal with severe budget cuts:  they are asking their users to help out by sponsoring magazine subscriptions.

This is a creative and interesting way to help maintain and even expand a collection.  I could even see an effort to encourage people to purchase books by their favorite authors for the library’s collection (perhaps they could be given the first hold slot for checking out the item).

This isn’t as good of an option for academic libraries, but I suspect that there are some possibilities in this approach.

found via Save Ohio Libraries

Change is the one constant of the universe – unless you need it for the bus.  Seriously, though, thoughts of change can be very stressful for those in a workplace.  Libraries are no different.  In fact, we have avoided changing some aspects of how we do things in libraries for so long that I suspect we are about to enter a period of rapid change.

So how do we cope?  The usual suggestions are to embrace change, view it as an opportunity, a way to empower the way you do your job.  There may be a better approach, one that encourages people to look at the negative potential of a given change.

The idea behind this is to understand what can go wrong, and adjust your planning to either avoid the problems, or better yet incorporate them into your plans in a positive way.  Not only will this process allow you to better implement change, but it will help to understand those who will resist it.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter writes an excellent essay on this topic in her discussion of John Taysom’s ideas.  She argues that it is actually the optimist that is better able to appreciate the negatives, and then to harness their energy in a productive way.

found via Dysart & Jones

Jenny Levine makes a great case on The Shifted Librarian for adding a feature to your sites that allows users to easily share your content via social networks.  Not only will this offer a way for your users to help spread the work about services and activities that you offer, but it can help them keep track of information they find so that they can revisit it later.  This will be a benefit for users of mobile browsers, which are rapidly becoming a more significant portion of visitors to our web sites.

You may notice that I have followed her advice and have added the Add to Any service to this blog, visible at the bottom of every post (and checked to ensure it validates against XHTML and CSS standards, of course; a requirement I have for any add-on).

I wrote a post about the BookChaser Editions service last year, but encountered a reference to another service they offer, and this led me to others:

• BookChaser Covers : compares cover images available from Amazon, Google Books, LibraryThing, and Open Library.
• BookChaser BookInfo : compares information about a book obtained from Amazon, Google Books, ISBNDB, Library of Congress, LibraryThing, Open Library, and WorldCat.
• ISBN Analysis Tool : compares x-ISBN-like service availability for a given ISBN obtained from Amazon, Google Books, LibraryThing and WorldCat.

All lookup services are by ISBN.