A weekly round up of library and information centre news and opinions from around the world.

Library and Information Center News – Edition 16/2018

In this week’s edition:

Another way to measure outcomes for libraries

The requirement of librarians to prove their worth and the worth of the libraries they manage seems never ending.  To this aim, the Public library Association (PLA) in America is holding a webinar on exploring data collection methods for outcomes measurement. It is free but registration is required. Click on the title above and click on the registration link on the resulting page. Links to the archived, earlier webinars in the series are also available on the page.

Banksy and Bristol Council’s under threat library service

The threat to 17 (out of 27) of Bristol’s (UK) public libraries, due to budget cuts, if you can believe it, has resulted in the well known anonymous street artist Banksy, contacting the council to ask what the challenges are, the current options available, and his thoughts on how the community and individuals can help. In the interim, the council has found enough money to keep all the libraries open but currently no information on what level of service the libraries will be able to provide when they are open.

Will Stratford upon Avon be known for more than Shakespeare maybe?

Borrowers, at the Stratford and other Warwickshire libraries, have found that when they opt to get their receipt after returning material via the RFID scanning machines, the string of returned titles on their receipts are “constructing” a number of, what can be viewed as, amusing poetry examples.

A find of rare “poisonous” books

Disconcerted University of Southern Denmark librarians discovered arsenic infused covers on copies of a book, whose scraps of manuscript they wanted to read. Published back in the 19th century, the book’s author wrote it in a bid to warn people of the real dangers the use of arsenic posed. Back in the day, while it was considered dangerous to eat, arsenic was not considered to be so for a multitude of other uses. It was used, for example, in green paint and for green material to prolong the life of the colour, and on stamps that people then licked. Only 4 copies are known to exist and, needless to say, library staff have decided the copies will be digitised to minimise the handling!