Two more library-related links.
From the Des Moines Register:
Clive [Iowa] is merging its parks and recreation and library operations into a single department called leisure services.
...
The decision to merge the departments coincides with the retirement of library director Vicki Hibbert in January and the pending retirement next month of Kelly Canfield, the city’s first and only parks and recreation director. Canfield was hired in 1984.
...
The position does not require exhaustive knowledge or experience in library and parks and recreation activities, although Seaman possesses plenty in the realm of recreation, city staff said.
Am I being a HUGE fuddy-duddy, or does that sound like a TERRIBLE idea? I mean, the idea that a library is purely for leisure makes me cringe, and then the idea of the head honcho not being required to, you know, have library experience... it just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. But we'll see, I guess.
And then, from The Atlantic (via Chrissy):
The National Library of Norway is planning to digitize all the books by the mid 2020s.
Yes. All. The. Books. In Norwegian, at least. Hundreds of thousands of them. Every book in the library's holdings.
By law, "all published content, in all media, [must] be deposited with the National Library of Norway," so when the library is finished scanning, the entire record of a people's language and literature will be machine-readable and sitting in whatever we call the cloud in 15 years.
Just... WOW.