Bob Sullivan writes a great article titled:

That famous space shuttle photo: When is sharing stealing?

on photo rights when amatuer photos go viral.  He examines the case of Stephanie Gordon who tweeted her cell phone photo of the spaceship endeavor that she captured from the air through her passenger cabin window aboard a Delta flight to Palm Beach.

Sullivan writes that Stephanie’s photo has now been viewed an estimated “1 million times, and shown by media TV, Web and print news outlets around the world. She was paid by precisely five news organizations. ”

And that’s the issue discussed in this article how “Gordon’s now-famous photo of the space shuttle Endeavour soaring through the clouds got her an overwhelming amount of attention — her 15 minutes of fame, Internet style. It also landed her smack in the middle of an ethical and legal debate that may be as important as the future of the Internet itself.”

Here’ a neat article about Book Recommendation/Review sites . . .  Reviewed succinctly in this article by Paula J. Hane.

She Lists some of my favorite sites :

Like Goodreads & LibraryThing ,  some that I have never warmed to like Shelfari & BookBrowse, plus NoveList (which you usually have to get through your library), and  some I haven’t tried, like  WhatShouldIReadNext , and how to use GetGlue and LivingSocial if you’re a booklover.

Announced this week is bookish.com -an effort by publishers promoted as a way to help readers find books, but perhaps a way for them to also compete directly for online sales with booksellers.

You can read all about it here.

Periodic Table of Storytelling ©ComputerSherpa

The Periodic Table of Storytelling is a masterpiece worthy of more than than just one glance!

Better World Books is offering 75K in grants to library communities.

What’re you waiting for? Libraries have up until March 25th to submit their “Game Changing” ideas. Winners will be announced on May 16th and the winning projects implemented between 5/16/11 and 12/31/11.

Don’t be frightened away by the close deadline and short time frame, these grants are for compelling projects that will make a dramatic impact literacy in your community.

Successful applicants will use the funds to advance a compelling literacy project that Better World Books will follow and share with you.

If you work at a library, know of anyone that works at a library, love your library or have ever been touched by the power of a book, check out www.betterworldbooks.com/librarygrants. There you’ll find out more about the Better World Books library grant program and how to participate.

Ask about their weeding solutions too -betterworldbooks.com can take your weeded books and find them a new home. You’ll share a percent of the income from the sale of those books, and so will Better World Books’ literacy partners. Your library or Library Friends’ group can use this no cost program to help manage your discarded and donated books. Betterworld Books will help you make the most of your weeded books by selling them on 23 online-marketplaces and sharing the proceeds with you and one of their nonprofit literacy programs.

Stony Stratford Library -photo credit Karen Parker

This is BRILLIANT!

People in a Buckinghamshire town have borrowed every single book from their local library to block plans to close it down.

Even here across the pond the New Yorker reports how ” more than a thousand Stony Stratford residents made their way to the red-brick building, scoured the shelves for their allotment of fifteen titles, swiped their library cards, and left the building completely bare of books.”

They’ve named their effort the “WOT NO BOOKS CAMPAIGN TO SAVE OUR LIBRARY”

The library calculated that books had been checked out at a rate of around 378 per hour.

“A local resident mentioned the idea, maybe as a bit of a joke, but we thought it was a great idea so we put it to FOSSL[The Friends of Stony Stratford Library],” siad Emily Malleson.

“I put it on Facebook and emailed everyone I could think of and it’s just gone absolutely mad.”

Photo Credit Karen Parker

And the best news of all? The Library’s got a year’s reprieve and other local libraries are learning from their example how to keep their libraries open.

Save, Saving, Saved! Photo Credit Karen Parker

Ponies by Kij Johnson

This Nebula award nominated short story pushes some readers’ buttons and they light up. Not mine. Maybe your’s?

It will be interesting to see how tween readers and guys respond to this contemporary dark fairy tale. I will try it out on some and let you know how it goes. The saving grace: It is short and to-the-point, though not sweet.

my rating

The initial tween avg rating of three 10 yo girls

Want to weigh in on this one? Take my gendered reading poll on goodreads.

Can’t get enough of this? Give me a generational response too!

View all my goodreads.com reviews

Julia Yu’s Goodnight Dune is an inspired illustrated parody of the omni-present Goodnight Moon that accompanies seemingly every American gift giving occasion for babies, toddlers, and new parents.

This alternative illustrated verse will reward your love or fascination with Frank Herbert‘s Dune!

Who knows, it may even encourage a love for Sci-Fi in very young readers?

Here’s an excerpt for the curious among you:

Excerpt From Julia Yu's Goodnight Dune copyright Julia Yu, 2011. All Rights Reserved

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

View all my goodreads reviews

How long should an ebook license last?  The rights for a  hardcopy book allow libraries to circulate it indefinitely -basically til it wears out.  Harper Collins has determined that an e-book should only circulate 26 times before the license needs to be renewed (aka til the library has to shell out more money).

In a CSM article about the controversy Rebekahh Denn presents the example of Andy Woodworth, an irritated blogging librarian who summed  up the situation in a post on his blog  as “The Publisher of Tolkien Has Taken A Business Lesson From Sauron”.

There’s an organized effort among concerned librarians to boycott Harper Collins  and Library Journal has published an open lettter from HarperCollins and their distributor, Overdrive, responding to the controversy the policy has created.

What’s fair? What’s not? Who loses if this policy becomes the defacto norm?

Here’s a blog post from Karen Healy of her Personal List of Feminist Young Adult and Middle Grade Novels. It is an interesting list. Take a look!

Also worth following is Karen’s discussion of Bitch Magazine’s 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader published Jan 28, 2011 and their subsequent decision to remove these three books from the list:

Tender Morsels

Living Dead Girl

Sisters Red