CustomFlix DVD Distribution on Demand

"While I frequently talk about creating DVDs from family movies, there are certainly plenty of potentially commercial projects that need to go beyond the home computer and into a distribution pipeline. While burning DVDs from your PC is an option, this also means taking responsibility for fulfillment and all the headaches associated with shipping physical goods. Mastering houses can produce large print runs of your DVD content, but then a risk of being stuck with hundreds of extra copies is introduced. For a small fee, someone else can take on the fulfillment headache for you and keep the inventory levels down to a minimum. CustomFlix is that someone else. For a $49 setup fee, plus a per sale fee, CustomFlix manages distribution, provides online trailers of your DVD, prints artwork on the packaging and allows you to focus on all the details of content creation." [Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle]

I wanted to highlight this service in case there are libraries that could make use of it either as a fundraising tool or simply for cost-recovery to create video media for local history information, digitization projects, and the like. Could be interesting, especially if you don't have the resources to do this yourself.

"Free Wi-Fi Service at 53 branches of NYPL!!! Suweeeeeet!!" [Library Stuff]

Overall, this is great news, and NYPL has even posted an informational page about this on its web site (including a list of the specific locations).

While it's great to see NYPL run with this, I'm worried that there is one little caveat:

"The Wi-Fi service is funded through the Federal Universal Service Discount program."

That's the scientific term for "filtered internet access," and technically it should mean that your access will be filtered by default if you take advantage of NYPL's service. What's more disconcerting is that the page explaining Wi-Fi -- that even offers troubleshooting help and lists limitations and disclaimers -- doesn't note this anywhere on it. Even worse, CIPA requires the Library be able to turn off the filter when requested by an adult, and NYPL's page doesn't note that you can request this. So if this is true, I guess that's actually a pretty big caveat.

Thanks again, CIPA!

"RSS feeds whose title contains 'librar'." [Scripting News]

Over on Siva Vaidhyanathan's blog, Peter Hirtle rightly nails the Library of Congress for its hypocritical stance on copyright.

Library of Congress Having it Both Ways!

"Did you see the following press release from the Library of Congress's American Memory project? They are crowing about the fact that they have made important unpublished plays by Zora Neale Hurston available through their web site.

I (like them) think this is a terrific thing - but they can only do this because the plays were registered for copyright as unpublished manuscripts. The copyright was then never renewed.

Since that time, and with the active support of the Copyright Office (in the Library of Congress), registration has been removed as a requirement for copyright and copyright term has been lengthened. If the law as it stands today was in effect when the plays were written, these plays could not be made available until 2031." [SIVACRACY.NET]

And let's not forget that most of these plays were lost to the world until 1997 when they were rediscovered in the Copyright Deposit Drama Collection. If they'd been buried under copyright law, we wouldn't even know about them until (at best) 2031.

Excellent - not only is Library Techlog back, but so is ...useless miscellany! Welcome back, Eric!

This is one of the great things about RSS. Both Matthew and Eric had taken a hiatus from blogging for several months. If I still checked web sites manually, they would have dropped out of my daily/weekly routine, and I wouldn't know that both had new content today.

But with RSS, I just left my aggregator subscribed to them, patiently waiting for their return, and today they magically appeared. Three cheers for RSS!

Matthew Eberle of Library Techlog returns to the blogosphere with a heckuva post:

Da Vinci Code

"Hi y'all. Just saw in Library Journal that OCLC is making some 2,000 records available through Google. This is very cool and the kind of teamwork Gary Price for one has been urging for a while. I've stuck this project together with John Udell's Library Lookup bookmarklet to get something that moves toward a universal library lookup.

Here's the OCLC WorldCat record you can find through Google for the Da Vinci Code.

Here's the Semi-universal Library Lookup that should go from Amazon to a Google search for WorldCat records." [Library Techlog]

In the immortal words of Keanu, "Whoa!" And it works quite nicely, thank you very much!

In case you're not familiar with how Illinois is divided into regional library systems, here's a quick overview. There are 13 of them covering the entire State, although it will soon be down to nine this summer due to two mergers currently underway. I work at the Suburban Library System, which is the consortial headquarters for academic, public, school, and special libraries in Chicago's south suburbs. (We're currently investigating merging with Chicago Multi-type Library System.) The Systems do a lot of behind-the-scenes work that helps make Illinois libraries as great as they are, facilitating shared catalogs, delivery, interlibrary loan, reciprocal borrowing, technology initiatives, group purchases, grants, and more.

The Illinois Library Systems FY2003 Annual Report just came out and is available in PDF format. Here are some of the more interesting statistics from it:

• The shared catalogs of the Systems held a grand total of 43,665,833 holdings last year. In fact, Illinois libraries own an average of more than 9 items for every household in Illinois.
   
• Those shared catalogs circulated 42,121,007 items last year, with Illinois residents checking out more than 80 items per minute!
   
• There's a great chart on the back page that breaks down the costs and values of just a few of the System services, which comes out to a total value of $295,288,397. Of course, that's not even remotely, nearly, even-on-this-planet close to the amount of funding we receive.
   
• Here's what I consider to be the kicker, though. "For every dollar the State spent on cooperative library systems in FY2003, the citizens of Illinois received $14 in services, a 14 to 1 return on investment."

And yet, our Governor has cut funding for libraries and library systems, plans to make further cuts during the next fiscal year, and is diverting money to buy children one book per month, rather than giving that money to libraries.

Yo, Rod - give library systems that money and get a 14 to 1 return on your investment! Do the math and fund our libraries, for the good of every Illinois resident!