Three great Rumors today even though it's Friday the 13th! First --The redeveloped New Bodleian library building will be renamed the Weston Library in honor of the £25 million donation given in March 2008 by the Garfield Weston Foundation toward its transformation into an advanced special collections library and cultural centre. Dr Sarah Thomas, Bodley’s Librarian, will make the announcement on 14 March during the Founder’s Luncheon held by the Bodleian Library, an annual event commemorating the birth of its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley in March 1545, and his legacy of philanthropy. The formal renaming will occur in 2014 following a major refurbishment of the New Bodleian building. The gift, the largest ever made by the Foundation, was announced at the launch of Oxford Thinking: The Campaign for the University of Oxford last May. It is also the largest donation received to date in the Library’s history, and is one of the leading gifts to the University’s campaign which aims to raise a minimum of £1.25bn.

Second -- this notice from Rick Prelinger (forwarded to me by Ken Robichaux) -- For those interested in orphaned works, there's a star-studded meeting on issues arising out of the proposed Google settlement happening today at Columbia Law School. Rick was following Peter Brantley's Twitter stream at #gbslaw, and you can too: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23gbslaw

Third -- John Regazzsi has been appointed newly created position of Chief Strategy Officer for the H.W. Wilson Company. Reporting to H.W. Wilson President and CEO Harold Regan. Mr. Regazzi will focus on a broad range of initiatives, including new products, product enhancements, business development, and marketing. We'll all recall that from 1981 to 1988, Mr. Regazzi was H.W. Wilson's Vice-President of Computer Services, overseeing the company's conversion from print to electronic publishing. He currently serves (and will continue on) as a full professor in the College of Information and Computer Science at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. In 1988, Mr. Regazzi was appointed President & CEO of Engineering Information, Inc., and in 1999, when Ei became part of Elsevier, Inc., he was appointed to the position of President & CEO of Elsevier, Inc. with responsibilities for electronic publishing. In 2004, he assumed the additional role of Managing Director, Market Development, where he was responsible for research and development, advanced technology and new strategic market initiatives. Mr. Regazzi holds a doctorate in Information Science from Rutgers University, an M.S. degree in Library and Information Science from Columbia University, an M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Iowa, and a B.A. degree in Psychology from St. John's University. He can be reached at jregazzi@hwwilson.com.
www.hwwilson.com

Just reading in the Wall Street Journal and ran across a letter to the editor from H. Frederick Dylla (Executive Director & CEO, American Institute of Physics) (March 3, 2009). The heading for the letter is "Free Model Hurts Science Journals." Says Dylla "One of the greatest fallacies of the information age is the notion that the World Wide Web can free publishing from all associated costs. It cannot. Whether or not information 'wants' to be free, it rarely is. For publishers of all types to stay in existence, their business models must reflect this reality." I couldn't agree more. It costs money to digitize content for the Web and maintain and refresh it. Dylla is responding to J. Gordon Crovitz's earlier column ("Information Wants to Be Expensive," Feb 23.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123534987719744781.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12360476113715863.html

The Charleston Conference Website has been updated to include information on the 2009 Conference November 4-7. Submissions for papers and preconferences are welcome! Why not propose your idea now while you are thinking of it?!
http://www.katina.info/conference

And speaking of the Charleston Conference, did you see the write up in the January 2009 Information Today (p.26) by Donald Hawkins on the 28th Charleston Conference? On the same page is "Friending Charleston," by Marydee Ojala. It's great to have this kind of pages and pages of press (three!) that is so complimentary of the Conference. Thanks to all of you for making the Conference a success.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-191477045.html

Just ran into this website! Things people ask of Librarians. My favorite question "Is the basement upstairs?"
Second favorite: "I'm looking for information on carpal tunnel syndrome. I think I'm having trouble with it in my neck."
http://www.rinkworks.com/said/libraries.shtml

After a long absence, I have some news to report finally! First, had a delightful and informative meeting with the glamorous Tracie Lee of Cengage Learning. Tracie is one of the few people I know who was born in Atlanta, how about that? Second, just learned that Steve Johnson -- the beer man - is retiring from Clemson University in March. Steve and his wife Maria are moving to Costa Rica where Maria is from and Steve is looking forward to gardening which is his passion. You'll all remember that Steve worked long and hard on the first issues of Against the Grain, back in 1989! I remember having late night conversations with him as we were getting ATG started. Steve also used to publish a very successful beer newsletter way back when and he also used to run a "beer tasting" night at the Charleston Conference with Maria. Much fun was had by all of us.

Hooray! Have just learned that the hard-working, astute and perfect Tom McNally has been named Dean of Libraries at the University of South Carolina where he has served as interim dean since 2007. McNally, who joined the libraries nearly 19 years ago as university librarian for public services, said strong libraries are essential to the university’s success. “The library plays a key role in the process of teaching, learning, and research,” McNally said. “We must continue to build and conserve our collections. We must work every day to develop services that keep pace with the technologies that our users are employing. We must remodel our libraries to reflect the changes in the ways our students learn and interact with one another. Each librarian we recruit must be a leader capable of creating initiatives and moving them into daily practice.” McNally earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Kent State University and a master’s in library science from the University of Washington. He was a librarian at Ohio State University, the University of Michigan and Loyola University in Chicago before joining the University of South Carolina’s library staff in 1991. McNally served as director of Thomas Cooper Library from 2003 until he was named interim dean of libraries in 2007, replacing Paul Willis.
http://uscnews.sc.edu/2009/02172009-LIBR047.html

Was interested to see the other day in the Chronicle of Higher Education (6/30/09) an article titled “The End of Solitude: As everyone seeks more and broader connectivity, the still, small voice speaks only in silence,” by William Deresiewicz. The article, which is very well-written and thoughtful, talks about solitude and the need to preserve integrity of self that solitude brings. Says the author, when he asked his students about solitude in their lives, he got answers like “I’m never alone more than 10 minutes,” or “why would anyone want to be alone.” This all reminds me of David Levy’s talk at the Charleston Conference, was it in 2003. Levy talked passionately about the need to take time to contemplate. David is at the University of Washington iSchool and his current research focuses on information and the quality of life. His book, "Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age," was published by Arcade Publishing. We need to get him back to Charleston. And be sure and read Walt Crawford’s Sites and Insights (December 2003) about Levy and the Charleston Conference as well as the Chronicle article. It will get you thinking.
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i21/21b00601.htm
http://www.ischool.washington.edu/people/facdirectory.aspx
http://citesandinsights.info/

Interesting and sad to note for us baby boomers that US News & World Report is reshaping itself. After losing advertisers and subscribers, they will now have a monthly print edition according to information received from Serialst via a telephone call to the publisher and a weekly digital magazine called U.S. News Weekly. According to Folio Magazine.
http://www.foliomag.com/2009/will-u-s-news-weekly-work.
And Steve Black via Serialst sends two great links of what’s happening in the magazine publishing business.
http://www.foliomag.com
http://www.magazine.org

Have just learned that the dynamic Kate Wittenberg has joined Ithaka's Strategic Services group as Project Director, Client and Partnership Development. Ithaka's Strategic Services group specializes in helping promising digital projects to develop sustainable organizational and business models, and working with established institutions to rethink the ways they serve their core \ constituencies. In her new role, Wittenberg will focus on building partnerships among scholars, academic centers, publishers, libraries, technology providers, societies, and foundations with an interest in promoting the development of digital scholarship and learning. From proposal creation to market research, business development, and product planning, she will draw on her years of work with scholars and experience building online academic resources to help digital publishing stakeholders identify, build, and sustain innovative initiatives. As we all know, Wittenberg spent most of her career at Columbia, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of Columbia University Press until 1999, and went on to found and direct EPIC (the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia)for the university. EPIC was a pioneering initiative in digital publishing, and a model publishing partnership for libraries, presses, and academic IT departments. Some of the ventures produced by EPIC include CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online), Gutenberg-E (a reinvention of the monograph as an electronic work) (see Sandy Thatcher's article on Gutenberg-E in the Dec/Jan ATG which will be mounted online shortly) and Jazz Studies Online. Ithaka (is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping the academic community use digital technologies to advance scholarship and teaching and to reducing system-wide costs through collective action. It pursues this mission by managing innovative services that benefit higher education, including JSTOR, Portico, and NITLE, and by providing research and advice to the scholarly community through its research and strategic services
groups.
http://www.Ithaka.org

Just heard from Al McClendon, one of the owners of Majors Books. As we all remember, in 2004 when B&T acquired Majors' wholesale and library services business from the Majors family, they continued running its retail medical bookstores in Dallas and Houston. Majors is now celebrating the January 2, 1909 opening of their Granddad's first medical bookstore at 1301 Tulane Avenue in New Orleans. Congratulations to the Majors family on their 100th anniversary!