Smell

Miss the smell of a book while reading your ebook? It is now possible to purchase an aerosol that replicates the smell of a new book or the “classic musty smell” of an old book. The new book smell comes from adhesives and chemicals in the paper, while the old book smell is the result of the breakdown of cellulose and lignin in the paper compounds over time.

Engage

The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) has published a major multi-author report entitled The Library in the Life of the User: Engaging People Where They Live and Learn. Highlights reported by compiler and co-author Lynn Silpigni Connaway

People associate the library with books and do not consider the library in relation to online resources or reference services.
People may not think of using libraries to get their information because they do not know that the services exist and some of the existing services are not familiar or do not fit into their workflows.
The context and situation of the information need often dictates how people behave and engage with technology.
Engagement and relationship building in both the online and physical environments is important for the development of successful and effective services.
The abstract and a link to the full report is at
http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/2015/oclcresearch-library-in-life-of-user.html

No Off-Site for New York Public Library

The New York Public Library is building a new underground storage facility in which the 2.5 million items in the research collection will be barcoded and shelved according to size, not subject, with an automated retrieval system designed to fulfill user requests within 40 minutes. The system is expected to be operational by the end of spring, 2016. The library’s originall proposed to move the collection to a  storage site in New Jersey was met with strong protests from users.

Tom Mashberg, New York Times, November 15

Digital Book Sales Down

Third quarter digital book sales, which include e-books and audio books, were down 11.8% at HarperCollins and 10.7% at Simon & Schuster compared to the same period in 2014. Audio books have been showing increasing sales overall, so the decline is probably associated entirely with e-books.

Publishers Weekly, November 6, 2015