We begin our new blog series, Libraries We Love, with Ian Anstice, "Librarian in Charge" at Cheshire West and Chester Council and creator of Public Libraries News. Ian, where were you born and how did you become a librarian? I was born in a depressed and depressing town called Newport in South Wales. It had few
Library Journal just published an op-ed I wrote about the dangers of going digital. I thought I would share it with some additional details just for friends and colleagues. Digital publishing is fraught with risks for publishers and I’m eager to get feedback on the challenges I’ve identified. Risky as it is, Berkshire Publishing is moving
As we launch Berkshire's "Building Sustainable Libraries Survey" with Against The Grain journal (ATG), where preliminary survey results will appear, I want to acknowledge the people who contributed suggestions and commented on the draft survey. Some of them are authors of articles in the forthcoming ATG issue I've nearly finished guest-editing, and others are colleagues who
Amy Fredsall, our wonderful customer service coordinator, is now at the Massachusetts School Libraries Association in Sturbridge, with lots of books and flyers to show, and quite a number of free books and small gifts. Do stop by and say hullo to her. She has sample pages from the soon-to-be-published second edition of the Berkshire Encyclopedia
As I prepare for a few quiet days at the beach (weather reports bode well) before returning to Beijing for 10 days and then a slew of events in late September, I realize that I haven't posted the story of the Jade Emperor's stone fish and our outing to Tanzhe-Shi, a temple west of Beijing, in
Tim Coates has been doing battle on behalf of citizens, readers, and authors as he's tirelessly campaigned for improved public libraries in the UK. Now he's written a history that seems appropriate for our time and also tells us something about his own efforts. The book is called Delane's War: 150 years ago a British Government
I'm on my way to New York for a remarkable "Berkshire" event tomorrow: a China celebration in New York on May Day that brings the renowned author Simon Winchester, a resident of the Berkshires and a friend of Berkshire Publishing, to a lunch hosted by Jones Day and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Here's the
I talk now and then about the pleasures of wandering in the library stacks, and about how there's just not the same serendipity online, but living in a small town far from a university, it's a long time since I have actually been in the stacks. But last weekend I went to see my daughter at
Here's the e-card I sent out a few days ago with news and links to sample pages and Table of Contents for the Berkshire Encyclopedia of China, and here you see the finalized cover with its five colors representing the five elements, one of the many ways we are showing aspects of Chinese culture
Editorial assistant Bill Siever, who has been known to get to work at 5am (maybe even earlier--how would I know?) sent an email yesterday alluding to The Shining and I had to get him to explain it. Apparently the crazed central character starts typing, over and over again, "All work and no play makes Jack a