Repetitive stress injury workers’-comp costs as a justification for implementing RFID ….. hmmmmm. That’s a new one on me.

I can’t say (as a public library patron) that I wouldn’t check out books that are fitted with RFID, but it sure would make me think twice. On the other hand, since RFIDs are clearly the wave of the future, no matter how loudly the ACLU and the EFF protest, why groan and moan about it?

But will RFIDs answer this perennial SFPL user question: “When the online catalog says a book is ‘missing,’ does that mean it’s checked out?” [EFF link courtesy Librarian.net.]

As usual, Librarian.net puts it way better (and way more succinctly) than I ever could:

Of course, any librarian knows that the best thing to do is to call your librarian [who is at the library already] and then have her [or him] find the answer which might involve using Google but might not.

Nicholson Baker has announced that Duke University Libraries has agreed to house his American Newspaper Repository collection. To make a long story short, Baker saved a lot of old newspapers in their original runs by organizing a corporation and purchasing the newspapers from various libraries (most of the collection was from the British Library) that were allegedly getting ready to consign them to the Dumpster. He then wrote a book-length diatribe about the ordeal, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, that, among other things, claimed that vicious, short-sighted librarians were all but deliberately destroying the cultural heritage that newspapers embody. As the originator of the post about this story on LISNews wryly observed, “Maybe now old St. Nich will quit bashing librarians and stick to writing novels.”