Visiting a Local Temple on Nathan Road in Hong Kong

by Michael D. Cooper
December 3, 2012


taurus-headed deity holding a trident

laughing big-bellied buddha-like figure

ah, Quan Yin
how wonderful to meet you again

scholars, warriors

all on the altars of this old temple
where i visit this morning

huge protectors carved from wood blocks
towering seven feet tall
(the cleaning woman got up on a stool
with a washcloth to bathe one
of their fierce faces)

monkey man in the midst
of many revered beings
as devotees light ten sticks of incense
and waft in worship with the fragrance

where is chairman mao now?

undoubtedly in the tao, all of us

Technology and the Academic Library Supplier

Presented to a library group in China (November, 2012)

For many years I have been operating as the owner and operator of a supply company to academic libraries.  My business, BUSCA, INC., has primarily been a provider of traditional books, music, and DVD films.  Now we are getting more involved in the area of e-books.

Naturally, e-books will continue to be a growing force in libraries.  They have numerous advantages over print books.  However, print books will also continue, for most libraries, to be an integral part of collection development.  This is particularly true of non-scienific specialty fields where the movement to digitize publications has not yet experienced a big impact.

One trend that we have noticed for a while is the demand by customers to be able to directly access their vendor's website.  As a consequence our company has had to develop a sophisticated back-end to our website.  This allows clients to more seamlessly transmit orders from their own ILS software directly to our system.  The motivation was to reduce staff time by eliminating steps involved with data entry redundancies. On a daily basis, BUSCA's Orders  Dept. now uploads and downloads files.  Some customers prefer to use another feature on our website that allows them to search and order items from the bibliographic database on our website.

Our EDI services include receiving orders from EDIFACT, a standard established by the United Nations Economic Commission.  We are now able to interact with various Integrated Library Systems, such as Aleph, Innopac/Millennium, Sirsi, Voyager, and the legacy system BISAC.  To compensate for the ability to receive orders electronically, our programmers had to develop software enabling BUSCA to  invoice our customers via electronic means.  Technical Services, Acquisitions, and Collection Development have also benefited from the capacity to download brief MARC bibliographic records from our website.

All of this website development has required our operation to become more of a technology-based operation. Our staff has had to upgrade skills.  We have numerous ongoing consultants to help us, including a librarian and a professor at Cornell University.  Increasingly I feel that I am running an engineering firm!

Not only have vendors needed to increase communications with libraries to ensure greater system compatability, vendors have had to do the same with other agencies.  For example, BUSCA now is a partner with OCLC, thus allowing us to send some of our customers electronic manifests containing OCLC records for all the books and DVDs that they have ordered and can expect to receive soon from our warehouse.  We must maintain an ongoing relationship with OCLC to upgrade software and help our library clients simplify their cataloging needs.

- Michael Cooper, President Busca, Inc.

Best-Selling SAGE Reference Titles

Take advantage of 4th Quarter promotional offers on Best-Selling SAGE Reference Titles.

For a limited time through December, you can take advantage of additional incentives on many of SAGE's best-selling reference titles.  This is a great opportunity to broaden your collection.


Contact Busca to place your order or learn more about this promotional opportunity.

New Titles on Aging from Edward Elgar Publishing

Aging, Economic Growth, And Old-Age Security In Asia

Edited by Donghyun Park, Principal Economist, Economics and Research Department, Asian Development Bank (ADB), Philippines, Sang-Hyop Lee, Professor of Economics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii, US, and Adjunct Fellow, East-West Center, Hawaii, US and Andrew Mason, Professor of Economics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii, US, and Senior Fellow, East-West Center, Hawaii, US

Population aging is perhaps the single biggest economic and social obstacle confronting Asia’s future. The region-wide demographic transition towards an older population is fundamentally reshaping the demographic landscape, and is giving rise to two key socio-economic challenges. This timely book provides an in-depth analysis of these challenges and presents concrete policy options for tackling them.

First, the expert contributors argue, Asia must find ways to sustain rapid economic growth in the face of less favorable demographics, which implies slower growth of the workforce. Second, they contend, Asia must find ways to deliver affordable, adequate, and sustainable old-age economic security for its growing elderly population. Underpinned by rigorous analysis, a wide range of concrete policy options for sustaining economic growth while delivering economic security for the elderly are then presented. These include Asia-wide policy options – relevant to the entire region – such as building up strong national pension systems, while other policy options are more relevant to sub-groups of countries.

This stimulating and informative book will be of great interest to academics, students, and researchers with an interest in Asian studies, economics generally, and, more specifically, public sector economics.

December 2012 320 pp Hardback 978 1 78195 230 6  Regular Price $120.00  Web Price $108.00

In Association with the Asian Development Bank

For this title and many more, contact Busca, Inc. today.  Or login to your account.

John Riley (Busca, Inc.) Interview with the GIST Team

Gifts and Deselection Manager for the August 2012 Issue of Against the Grain

the GIST Team: Tim Bowersox, Cyril Oberlander, Kate Pitcher, Mark Sullivan.

Your Gifts and Deselection Manager (GDM) is a truly revolutionary tool that allows libraries to easily handle the weeding process with full assurance that they are not removing items that are vital to the library. Tell us how you developed this part of the GIST package and why you decided to create it.

GDM’s collection evaluation tool was developed to help library staff save time through a thoughtful workflow based on criteria that would otherwise take them a great deal of time to compile. This was based upon our own experience in 2009, where It took us the entire summer to evaluate the reference collection because we had to manually search Hathi Trust, Google Books, Worldcat holdings, etc.  With additional major weeding projects on the horizon, we sought to convert this workflow into an automatic and batch process.

Fortunately, many of the services we consulted had APIs so we could automatically retrieve the exact same data we needed in seconds, rather than minutes. By incorporating a batch analysis tool, we could run an entire list of ISBNs and OCLC numbers in a fraction of the time it would take staff to manually check the same items. In addition, the GDM has a weighted and fully customizable collection building profile (based upon the OCLC Conspectus) that provides a recommendation for each and every item. The result was a list of titles, criteria, and recommendations to keep or deselect each item.

When we looked at how many other libraries are rethinking or refreshing their collection, the order of magnitude seemed like it would cost libraries too much time needed for developing new services.  In order for libraries to do other things, the manual collection analysis for moving collections to storage, weeding, digitizing, etc. all had to become automated.  GDM helps us focus on the next priorities, such as digital scholarship, publishing services, project management, and instructional design services.  We hope other libraries can save their staff time and devote much needed talent and time to developing innovative library services -- the local and network value of shared benefits is tremendous.

What are API’s? Who do you use them with? Are they easy to set up?

Application programming interface (API’s) are specifications that allow software to communicate with each other, in other words, GIST GDM uses OCLC’s API to utilize bibliographic and holdings data, and APIs from Amazon, Better World Books, Google Books, and Hathi Trust to evaluate other data about the books.  GIST GDM makes using APIs very easy, just follow the documentation, it guides you to the site to obtain unique keys to access the data sources.

One function of the Gift Manager that I think is particularly useful is the “acknowledgement letter generator.” We all know that dealing with donors is one of the reasons that gifts are sometimes discouraged. Your system allows the donor to itemize each donation and use it for receiving an outside appraisal for tax purposes. I think that this will encourage more gifts especially since donors can now self itemize up to $5,000 in value of their donation according to IRS regulations. How have donors responded to this development?

Donors appreciate a thank you letter, and as long as it is an automated process, library staff should too.  GIST GDM’s donor letters only supplies required data; donor name, address, title, author, format (Hardcover, etc.) and total number donated so that donors have an easier time filling out their taxes, it does not however supply the value of the specific items.

How do libraries deal with the differences in data between their catalogue and other libraries’ catalogues when using GDM?

GIST GDM uses Worldcat for the holdings and bibliographic record, while the Z39.50 link to your own catalog is a way to evaluate what edition and location your catalog has for the item.  Some libraries may want to use their consortia catalog to compare holdings within GDM.

Could you list the websites that interested libraries should consult to find out more about GIST and GDM initiatives? When is your next GIST users meeting?

Easiest way to find out who is using GIST in your neighborhood is to join the GIST-L listserv and ask by state, etc.  However, at the next IDS Conference – summer 2013, there will be an exciting GIST Institute, so stay tuned at: gistlibrary.org

The Gifts Management portion of GDM makes receiving gifts a viable enterprise again. Many libraries have stopped accepting gifts because of the expense and amount of work involved. GDM streamlines the process and even earns the library some money along the way. You have been able to add quite a few books to your collection as well. Could you tell us how and why this part of the GDM was developed?  Were you turning down gifts before its development?

Gift workflow management was the first component built with GIST GDM because there was no product out there that we knew of to help us streamline the workflow, and because we wanted to save time and effort spent on processing gifts.  How do we make the process more streamlined with our collection building profile and cooperative collection development criteria in mind?  The solution took almost one year to develop, and Mark Sullivan wrote, tested, and re-wrote the 20K+ lines of code to make it all happen.  We also wanted to thoughtfully develop our print collections at a time where many libraries are cutting back their print monograph acquisitions.  Before GIST GDM, our practice of receiving gifts was slow and not encouraged. Since GIST GDM, however, we have placed donation boxes near the entrance of the library and another location on campus, and have promoted donations to faculty and students.  In the start of using GIST GDM, we received 4,324 items in 13 months, and acquired only 16% or 713 items that were valued at $49K in Amazon.  The items not acquired were sent to Better World Books, and any revenue generated from sales went into building new collections.

You developed GDM from the ground up and you are now offering it as a free & open source program. How easy is it for other libraries to implement GDM? Do they have to belong to the GIST community to use it?

Because GIST GDM is a standalone application that is easily downloaded, it is relatively easy for libraries to implement.  The most common issues with installation are due to skipping parts of the implementation instructions, miscopying API keys into the GDM Settings, or trying to run GDM on unsupported systems (Windows XP, typically).  For the most part, Mark has worked with these libraries one on one. However, we created the GIST-L listserv to help the community of GIST libraries share experiences, discuss questions, etc. Users can also email us at dev.team@gistlibrary.org with questions or suggestions.

GDM fits in with your vision of the library as a constantly evolving and self-directed resource for the university. You have decided to not just sit back and wait for change to happen, you are embracing and making change happen. I think this library is a great model for others to emulate. Could you tell us a little about your philosophy as it relates to building a sustainable library for now and the future?

Our philosophy is to work with our colleagues and vendors to develop the solutions needed to transform libraries. We also look for problems with scale -- if it saves us 1,000 hours of work a year, imagine the collective impact this has on the roughly 200 other libraries currently using it. Not only does this help us all build and maintain better collections, but it also helps us focus on developing future library services. With so many libraries turning their attention to the topics of value and assessment, we simply can’t afford to carry on business as usual. Though change can be daunting, it’s much easier to get through if we all work together.

Could you list the websites that interested libraries should consult to find out more about GIST and GDM initiatives? When is your next GIST users meeting?

Easiest way to find out who is using GIST in your neighborhood is to join the GIST-L listserv and ask by state, etc.  However, at the next IDS Conference – summer 2013, there will be an exciting GIST Institute, so stay tuned at: gistlibrary.org

The 3000 Year Old Bookseller

A skit from the upcoming Charleston Acquisitions Conference written by John Riley of Busca, Inc.

This week it was reported that a 3000 year old bookseller has been found in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. He was celebrating his birthday with some other antiquarian booksellers at the Charleston Conference and the local paper picked up on it. The story has now gone viral so we sent our crack bookshop reporters to cover this breaking story. We now go Live to the Conference.
Reporter: You certainly give “antiquarian bookseller” new significance. You must have lots of valuable advice to share after all of these years.

Steve:  Is that supposed to be funny? I don’t get it.
Reporter: You’re old and books that are old are called antiquarian. I was just joking.
Steve:  I’m no antique. I’m as fit as a fiddle just like back in Byblos where I opened my first shop. Back then papyrus was coming on strong. All the other dealers were closing because clay tablets were going out of style in the publishing world. I saw the opportunity and I started selling papyrus books. I called my books papyrusbacks.  People loved’em. Pretty soon I had shops all over: Alexandria, Antioch,  Jerusalem.
Reporter: What was the name of your shop?
Steve:  It was called Steve’s Papyrusbookshop. It was kind of hard to say in Aramaic, but in Greek it just rolled off your lips. In Egypt I simply hung out a picture of a plant and a scroll. They could understand that. In fact The Library at Alexandria was my best customer: they wanted everything and I mean everything. The only problem I had with them is that when I used to go there every year for the Mediterranean Library Convention that guy Ptolemy Soter wanted to copy all my books and then give them back to me. Whaaaa?… he’s never heard of copyright? He just mumbled something about being the Sun God and he could do whatever he wanted. Well I told him I knew Pharaoh and he was no Pharaoh. Pharaoh used to pay for his books, especially his kid, Tut. He wanted to be immortal and what better way than with books! I warned the librarian there, Callimachus, that there was a fire danger storing all those scrolls on wooden shelves. I offered to get my cousin, he’s in window treatments, to fire proof the place, but the librarian couldn’t get funding. Some things never change.
Reporter: Who did you know back then?
Steve: Well, I did know Aristotle…personally….very good customer. Wanted  a little bit of everything. Very omnivorous. Not like Plato.  Plato just wanted a lot of the stuff I was bringing in from India.  Socrates I tried to sell some self help books to one time. He shouted at me that books were destroying culture. He said nobody knew how to think for themselves or memorize or speak in public. He hated books. Sheesh ….he sounded like Homer, always with the memorizing.
Reporter: What were some of the bestsellers back then?
Steve: Some of our bestsellers at that point in time were Buddha and Confucius. Meditation was popular in the desert, since there wasn’t much else to do. Yoga was just starting to catch on too. Kama Sutra was good under the counter stuff. The I-Ching was selling well to some of the Hippies, we called them Essenes.  They reminded me of San Francisco in the 60’s…I mean 1960’s…not 60’s.
Reporter: What were some of the biggest changes you have seen in the book world in your 3000 years?
Steve: Amazon and e-books, without a doubt.
Reporter:  3000 years ago they had those?
Steve: Yes. Very troubling to the book business both of them. Some Amazons in Lydia started a mail order business. You could send pigeon orders to them and they’d get you back a book in a couple of days no postage. Their pigeons ate very very little. It was hard for me to compete against that and their turnaround time on special orders sure beat the fast barge from Antioch. Then there was Pontius Pilate… always with the upping  sales tax on inventory. The Amazons got off with free freight and no tax. No unions either.
Reporter: What about e-books?
Steve: Very troubling as well. For years we went along quite happily with no vowels. Then some wisenheimer came up with sticking e’s in between consonants. It wrecked my whole inventory. I had to sell everything off in my remainder tent that sat out behind my main tent. But only old guys still wanted the stuff. The kids had moved on to what they called e-books.
Reporter: Well, thank you Steve for this interview. It was good to get a firsthand account of the last 3000 years. We all wish you another 3000 years in the book business.
Steve: Book business? If but I can last another 3 months I’ll plotz.

Wiley Fall 2012 Polity

Derrida: A Biography

by Benoit Peeters
9780745656151, 0745656153
$35.00/£25.00 UK
Hardback
Philosophy / History & Surveys Polity
700 pages
Status: Forthcoming

Title Summary

This biography of Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) tells the story of a Jewish boy from Algiers, excluded from school at the age of twelve, who went on to become the most widely translated French philosopher in the world – a vulnerable, tormented man who, throughout his life, continued to see himself as unwelcome in the French university system. We are plunged into the different worlds in which Derrida lived and worked: pre-independence Algeria, the microcosm of the école Normale Supérieure, the cluster of structuralist thinkers, and the turbulent events of 1968 and after. We meet the remarkable series of leading writers and philosophers with whom Derrida struck up a friendship: Louis Althusser, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Genet, and Hélène Cixous, among others. We also witness an equally long series of often brutal polemics fought over crucial issues with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, John R. Searle, and Jürgen Habermas, as well as several controversies that went far beyond academia, the best known of which concerned Heidegger and Paul de Man. We follow a series of courageous political commitments in support of Nelson Mandela, illegal immigrants, and gay marriage. And we watch as a concept – deconstruction – takes wing and exerts an extraordinary influence way beyond the philosophical world, on literary studies, architecture, law, theology, feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial studies.

In writing this compelling and authoritative biography, Benoît Peeters talked to over a hundred individuals who knew and worked with Derrida. He is also the first person to make use of the huge personal archive built up by Derrida throughout his life and of his extensive correspondence. Peeters’ book gives us a new and deeper understanding of the man who will perhaps be seen as the major philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century.

Contributors

Benoît Peeters was born in Paris in 1956. Following a degree in Philosophy at the Sorbonne (Paris I), he went on to study for his Masters at the école Pratique des Hautes études under the direction of Roland Barthes. He has since published over forty works on a wide variety of subjects and has written essays and biographies on Hergé, Alfred Hitchcock, and Paul Valéry.

Quotes

‘A real tour de force. Assimilating a vast amount of material – Derrida’s own voluminous publications, unpublished documents and correspondence, and conversations with a host of acquaintances – Benoît Peeters has produced a compelling narrative that sheds light on all aspects of Derrida’s remarkable career.’
Jonathan Culler, Cornell University

‘In addressing a philosopher of the importance of Jacques Derrida, whose massive output – about 60 volumes, not including his as yet unpublished seminars – has been translated and debated the world over, Benoît Peeters has quite rightly chosen not the origins or content of the work itself, but the life of the man behind it. In short, he has written an excellent biography entirely in keeping with Anglo-Saxon traditions.’
Elisabeth Roudinesco, The Guardian

The Crisis of the European Union: A Response

by Jurgen Habermas
9780745662428, 0745662420
$19.95/$23.95 Can./£16.99 UK
Hardback
Political Science / General Polity
120 pages
146.100 mm W | 223.500 mm H | 19.099 mm T 5.75in W | 8.80in H | 0.75in T

Title Summary

Translated by Ciaran Cronin.
In the midst of the current crisis that is threatening to derail the historical project of European unification, Jürgen Habermas has been one of the most perceptive critics of the ineffectual and evasive responses to the global financial crisis, especially by the German political class. This extended essay on the constitution for Europe represents Habermas’s constructive engagement with the European project at a time when the crisis of the eurozone is threatening the very existence of the European Union. There is a growing realization that the European treaty needs to be revised in order to deal with the structural defects of monetary union, but a clear perspective for the future is missing. Drawing on his analysis of European unification as a process in which international treaties have progressively taken on features of a democratic constitution, Habermas explains why the current proposals to transform the system of European governance into one of executive federalism is a mistake. His central argument is that the European project must realize its democratic potential by evolving from an international into a cosmopolitan community. The opening essay on the role played by the concept of human dignity in the genealogy of human rights in the modern era throws further important light on the philosophical foundations of Habermas’s theory of how democratic political institutions can be extended beyond the level of nation-states.

Now that the question of Europe and its future is once again at the centre of public debate, this important intervention by one of the greatest thinkers of our time will be of interest to a wide readership.

Contributors

Jürgen Habermas is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt and one of the most influential social and political thinkers in the world today.

Quotes

"One of Europe's most prominent intellectuals, a social political theorist of the highest standing. In pinpointing the lack of democratic participation, he builds a case that Europe's leaders will sooner or later have to answer."
Financial Times

"The Crisis' demand for a politicised and democratised Europe is a welcome tonic to an event currently marked by its lack of vision."
Fabian Review

"We should rejoice that a philosopher like Habermas is not giving up, but calling the European elite to order. He sees an opportunity in the crisis. 'With a little backbone the crisis of the single currency can bring about what some once hoped for from a common European foreign policy, namely a cross-border awareness of a shared European destiny.'"
Global Journal

"One of the most famous living philosophers."
Radical Philosophy
"There is something refreshingly honest about Jurgen Habermas's take on the European Union."
Irish Times

"For at least a generation Jurgen Habermas's work has made a significant impact on a variety of important debates in philosophy and the social sciences."
Political Studies

"No-one articulates the 'European' ideal with greater intellectual clarity, philosophical acumen and humanist fervour than Jürgen Habermas."
Muslim World




For these and many more fine titles from Wiley, contact Busca's expert staff.  We can find what you need.  Busca means search.

Nuevo libro de / New Book by: Myriam Morell

QUIERO CONVERSAR CONTIGO - Miriam Morell

AUTHOR INFORMATION (INFORMACIÓN AUTOR):
Miriam Morell (Puerto Padre, Cuba), ha publicado seis novelas: Las palmas son novias que esperan (1987), El fulgor de las estrellas (1991), El Ocujal (1995), Agar, la fugitiva (2001), Desnuda y al galope (2008) y Abisag (2011). También es autora de las colecciones de poemas musicalizados: Rocío (1994), Los girasoles (1995), y Alma de mármol alada (2000).

Miriam Morell (Puerto Padre, Cuba) has published six novels and a collection of poetry books.

DESCRIPTION (DESCRIPCIÓN):

El recuerdo de la narración más antigua del mundo se hizo pensamiento, al imponer freno, en el vigor y el entusiasmo de una juventud, que no fue indiferente al proyecto humano. Esta historia es un sentimiento, una pasión, que nació en una carta enviada desde la Tierra, única entidad del Universo, a un amigo en el exilio; para tratar de captar la existencia y hacerla energía y que los jóvenes alumnos alcancen la fuerza vital de su conciencia, al relacionar su ser con ellos mismos, y forjar así el alma de su tiempo.

The memory of the world's oldest account was, along with the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, was not indifferent to the human project. This story is a feeling, a passion that was born in a letter sent from Earth, the only entity in the universe, to a friend in exile, to try to capture the energy and make it available to young people and students to achieve his conscience. by relating his being with them, and thus forge the soul.

PLACE OF PUBLICATION (LUGAR): Miami, Florida, USA
SERIES (COLECCIÓN): Colección Caniquí
EDITION (EDICIÓN): First edition (primera edición)
PUBLICATION DATE (FECHA EDICIÓN): August (agosto), 2012
BINDING (ENCUADERNACIÓN): Paper (rústica)
FORMAT-PAGES ( FORMATO/PÁGINAS): 5 ½ x 8 ½ 125 p.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CAT. CARD # : 2012940051
I.S.B.N.:
ISBN-10: 1-59388-236-X / ISBN-13: 978-1-59388-236-5
PRICE (PRECIO):$ 19.95

For more information, contact Busca's expert staff today.

Edward Elgar Releases New Titles on Economic Regulation

Busca, Inc. announces the release of new titles in Economic Regulation from Springer, one of Busca’s featured publishers.  Log into your Busca account to take advantage of our discount on these and many other title from Springer, or contact our expert staff to learn more.

The Limits Of Regulation

A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Development

Stavros Mavroudeas, University of Macedonia, Greece

‘Whilst the regulation approach has gone beyond its peak of influence and has been diluted of much of its radical content, this outstanding critical appreciation of its strengths and weaknesses will prove an invaluable point of reference for all those engaged in the political economy of the national within the global economy.’

– Ben Fine, University of London, UK

September 2012 ● 232 pp ● Hardback ● 978 0 85793 863 3

Regular Price $110.00 ● Web Price $99.00 

For more information about this title or for paperback priced ebooks inquire now at BuscaInc.com

               

The Economics Of Edwin Chadwick

Incentives Matter

Robert B. Ekelund Jr., Professor and Eminent Scholar Emeritus in Economics, Auburn University, US and Edward O. Price III, Professor Emeritus, Oklahoma State University, US

‘Economists owe a great debt to Ekelund and Price for making us aware of Edwin Chadwick’s seminal contributions. Chadwick lived in the middle of the 19th century, but he anticipated many of the theoretical and practical advances that culminated in the law and economics revolution of the late 20th century. These include Coase’s analysis of social cost and Demsetz’s proposal for franchise bidding in natural monopolies. Read the summary of Chadwick’s ideas about railroads and consider that Britain adopted many of them but only more than a century later (while the US continues to wallow in ignorance). The book is full of similar examples where Chadwick’s prescience is extraordinary. Economists, legal scholars and practitioners, especially those working at the intersection of law and economics, will want to read this book.’

– Sam Peltzman, University of Chicago, US

September 2012 ● 264 pp  ●  Hardback  ●  978 1 78100 503 3

Regular Price $99.95  ●  Web Price $89.96 

For more information about this title or for paperback priced ebooks inquire now at BuscaInc.com

2012 PaLA Conference September 30 – October 3, Gettysburg, PA

Busca,Inc. will be at the 2012 Pennsylvania State Library Association Conference in Gettysburg, PA with our friends from BASCH SUBSCRIPTIONS/THE REFERENCE SHELF.  You can find us at Booth #EA167 on October 1 11:45AM – 5:00PM and on October 2 9:30AM – 2:00PM.  In addition to our Library fulfillment services, we will be featuring The Guide to the American Revolutionary War In Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina:  Battles, Raids, and Skirmishes by Norman Desmarais among the group of monographs that we have published.  We are an OCLC WorldCat Partner and a SKYRIVER Vendor Partner, and the personal attention of our staff can assist library operations in additional ways (including processing of ordered materials). Furthermore, BUSCA is a partner with EBRARY....and we will be adding additional e-book platforms in the future. 

2012 ILF Annual Conference November 12-14 - Indianapolis, Indiana

Come see us at booth #427 at the Indiana Library Conference, November 12-14, in Indianapolis, Indiana. BUSCA, INC. will be featuring details regarding its acclaimed library supply service for hard-to-find, foreign, and conventional print books and DVDs.  Being an OCLC WorldCat Partner and a SKYRIVER Vendor Partner allows our staff to assist library operations in additional ways (including processing of ordered materials). Furthermore, BUSCA is a partner with EBRARY....and we will be adding additional e-book platforms in the future. BUSCA has also published a group of monographs, which will be on-display at our exhibit.

Busca Offers New Spanish Titles

Busca will help you fill your shelves with a wide range of popular and hard to find Spanish language titles.  To find out more about these and many other bestselling Spanish language titles, or to locate that hard-to-find titles, log into your Busca account, or contact our expert staff.

EL CAMINO DEL SOL | Rainshadow Road

By: Lisa Kleypas 

9788415420088 | PB | 336 Pages | $20.95 | Ediciones B | Contemporary Romance

Language:  Spanish

Kleypas brings together richly nuanced characters, an emotionally riveting plot, and a subtle touch of the paranormal to create an unforgettable romance, that is pure reading magic.

- Booklist

Lisa Kleypas is the Award-winning author of twenty-one novels. Her books are published in fourteen languages and are bestsellers all over the world.

- Romantic Times

SYNOPSIS

Lucy Marinn is stunned and blindsided by the most bitter kind of betrayal: her fiance Kevin has left her. His new lover is Lucy's own sister. Facing the severe disapproval of Lucy's parents, Kevin asks his friend, Sam Nolan to "romance" Lucy and hopefully loosen her up and get over her anger. Complications ensue when Sam and Lucy begin to fall in love.

EL NARCO | El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency

By: Ioan Grillo 

9788493696160 | PB | 480 Pages | $25.95 | Ediciones Urano | Present Chronicles

Language:  Spanish

Effectively analyzes how Mexico came to control drug trafficking, how it spreads, and what can be done about it. This excellent work packs an exploration of the Italian Mafia, which also displays the fruits of direct reporting bolstered by intensive interviewing.

- Booklist

Accomplished, chilling account of the murderous growth of Mexican drug cartels, Grillo has reported from the region since 2001; his experience is evident in his easy, wry familiarity with the political and social currents of Latin America. It's a valuable contribution to the literature of the Drug War.

SYNOPSIS

The world has watched stunned at the bloodshed in Mexico. Thirty thousand murdered since 2006. It draws the first definitive portrait of Mexico's drug cartels and how they have radically transformed in the last decade. El Narco is not a gang; it's a movement and an industry.

BAILE CON SERPIENTES | Dance with Snakes

By: Horacio Castellanos Moya 

9788483834107 | PB | 176 Pages | $19.95 | Tusquets Editores | Fiction

Language:  Spanish

Shocking and bizarre the book certainly is, but what makes it most interesting is the way in which the violence, initially inspired by a vague personal sense of vengeance, begins to threaten the entire shakily-constructed social order.

- James Crossley, Review of Contemporary Fiction

It's Castellanos Moya's fantastical novel, and a different kind of revenge fantasy. Instead of working the intellectual angle, it goes for the jugular. Nothing could be as terrifying and unpredictable as poisonous snakes. They're the perfect stand-in for real-life violence that's too extreme to be credibly portrayed in fiction.

- Natasha Wimmer, The Nation

SYNOPSIS

A yellow Chevrolet from the fifties appears parked in the street. Jacinto, a homeless man lives inside of it. One night he dies decapitated and a psychopath inherits the Chevrolet and its inhabitants: a group of snakes with frozen eyes that act as if their souls are possessed, rising to the murder, falling apart entire lives and spreading terror in town.

LOS MENSAJES DE LOS SABIOS | Message from the Masters

By: Brian Weiss 

9788498726619 | HC | 306 Pages | $14.95 | Ediciones B | Mind, Body & Spirit

Language:  Spanish

Now in a new pocket format.

From the author of the bestselling Many lives, many Masters comes a spiritual guidebook that shows readers how to capture the energy of love.

The true story of a prominent psychiatrist, his young patient, and the past-life therapy that changed both their lives.

SYNOPSIS

Dr. Weiss fascinating case stories and the wisdom of his spirit guides to help bring joy, balance and harmony into life. Learn how to use the amazing power of love to get rid of fear, worry, sadness, anger and other negative thoughts and emotions, and bring love and healing into your life. This spiritual guidebook will change how you think about the world for ever.

Oxford University Press Bestsellers in Law

Oxford University Press is bringing you the best titles in law this August.  As a Busca customer you can take advantage of the Busca’s featured publisher discount.  To find out more about these and many other bestselling law titles, or to locate that hard-to-find title, log into your Busca account, or contact our expert staff.

Point Made

How to Write Like the Nation's Top Advocates

Ross Guberman

ISBN13: 9780195394870

Paperback, 338 pages

Feb 2011

Price: $15.95

Description

With Point Made, legal writing expert Ross Guberman throws a life preserver to attorneys, who are under more pressure than ever to produce compelling prose. What is the strongest opening for a motion or brief? How to draft winning headings? How to tell a persuasive story when the record is dry and dense? The answers are "more science than art," says Guberman, who has analyzed stellar arguments by distinguished attorneys to develop step-by-step instructions for achieving the results you want.

The author takes an empirical approach, drawing heavily on the writings of the nation's 50 most influential lawyers, including Barack Obama, John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Ted Olson, and David Boies. Their strategies, demystified and broken down into specific, learnable techniques, become a detailed writing guide full of practical models. In FCC v. Fox, for example, Kathleen Sullivan conjures the potentially dangerous, unintended consequences of finding for the other side (the "Why Should I Care?" technique). Arguing against allowing the FCC to continue fining broadcasters that let the "F-word" slip out, she highlights the chilling effect these fines have on America's radio and TV stations, "discouraging live programming altogether, with attendant loss to valuable and vibrant programming that has long been part of American culture."

Each chapter of Point Made focuses on a typically tough challenge, providing a strategic roadmap and practical tips along with annotated examples of how prominent attorneys have resolved that challenge in varied trial and appellate briefs. Short examples and explanations with engaging titles--"Brass Tacks," "Talk to Yourself," "Russian Doll"--deliver weighty materials with a light tone, making the guidelines easy to remember and apply.

Client Science

Advice for Lawyers on Counseling Clients through Bad News and Other Legal Realities

Marjorie Corman Aaron

ISBN13: 9780199891900

Paperback, 288 pages

Apr 2012

Price: $31.95

Description

Lawyers know that client counseling can be the most challenging part of legal practice. Clients question and often resist the complexities and uncertainties inherent in law and legal process. Honest advice from the lawyer can make a client doubt his or her allegiance and zeal. Client backlash may be directed at the lawyer who communicates bad news. Thus, the lawyer may feel torn between the obligation to clearly inform a client about weaknesses in legal positions and fear of damaging the client relationship. Too often, the lawyer struggles to counsel a particularly difficult client, but to no avail.

The End of Lawyers?

Rethinking the nature of legal services

Revised Edition

Richard Susskind OBE

ISBN13: 9780199593613

Paperback, 352 pages

Sep 2010

Price: $21.20

Description

This widely acclaimed legal bestseller has provoked a tidal wave of debate within the legal profession, being hailed as an inspiration by some and as heresy by others. Susskind lays down a challenge to all lawyers, and indeed all those in a professional service environment. He urges them to ask themselves, with their hands on their hearts, what elements of their current workload could be undertaken differently - more quickly, cheaply, efficiently, or to a higher quality - using alternative methods of working. The challenge for legal readers is to identify their distinctive skills and talents, the capabilities that they possess that cannot, crudely, be replaced by advanced systems or by less costly workers supported by technology or standard processes, or by lay people armed with online self-help tools.

In the extended new preface to this revised paperback edition, Richard Susskind updates his views on legal process outsourcing, courtroom technology, access to justice, e-learning for lawyers, and the impact of the recession on the practice of law. He analyzes the four main pressures that lawyers now face (to charge less, to work differently, to embrace technology, and to deregulate), and reveals common fallacies associated with each. And, in an entirely new line of thinking, Susskind argues that law firms and in-house departments will have four business models from which to choose in the future, and he provides some new tools and techniques to help lawyers plan for their future.

Susskind argues that the market is increasingly unlikely to tolerate expensive lawyers for tasks (guiding, advising, drafting, researching, problem-solving, and more) that can equally or better be discharged, directly or indirectly, by smart systems and processes. It follows, the book claims, that the jobs of many traditional lawyers will be substantially eroded and often eliminated. Two forces propel the legal profession towards this scenario: a market pull towards commoditisation and a pervasive development and uptake of information technology. At the same time, the book foresees new law jobs emerging which may be highly rewarding, even if very different from those of today.

The End of Lawyers represents a compelling vision of the future of the legal profession and a must-read for all lawyers. Indeed this book should be read by all those whose work touches on the law, and it offers much food for thought for anyone working in a professional environment.

Springer Releases New Titles in Medicine

Busca, Inc. announces the release of new titles in Biomedicine, Chemistry, Life Sciences and Medicine from Springer, one of Busca’s featured publishers.  Log into your Busca account to take advantage of our discount on these and many other title from Springer, or contact our expert staff to learn more.

Advances in Neuromorphic Memristor Science and Applications

Series: Springer Series in Cognitive and Neural Systems, Vol. 4

Kozma, Robert; Pino, Robinson E.; Pazienza, Giovanni E. (Eds.)

2012, 2012, VIII, 320 p. 164 illus., 116 in color.

Hardcover

ISBN 978-94-007-4490-5

Bacterial Regulatory RNA

Methods and Protocols

Series: Methods in Molecular Biology, Vol. 905

Keiler, Kenneth C. (Ed.)

2012, 2012, XI, 333 p. 55 illus., 10 in color.

A product of Humana Press

Hardcover

ISBN 978-1-61779-948-8

Computational Systems Neurobiology

Le Novère, Nicolas (Ed.)

2012, 2012, VIII, 570 p. 171 illus., 80 in color.

Hardcover

ISBN 978-94-007-3857-7

Information Processing in Computer Assisted Interventions

Third International Conference, IPCAI 2012, Pisa, Italy, June 27, 2012, Proceedings

Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 7330

Subseries: Image Processing, Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition, and Graphics

Abolmaesumi, P.; Joskowicz, L.; Navab, N.; Jannin, P. (Eds.)

2012, 2012, XIII, 180 p.

Softcover

ISBN 978-3-642-30617-4

Review of Norman Desmarais' "The Guide to the American Revolutionary War In Pennsylvania..." in the Brigade Dispatch

Read the latest review of Norman Desmarais's "The Guide to the American Revolutionary War In Pennsylvania..." in the Brigade Dispatch.

"This is the fourth in a planned six volume comprehensive guide to the location of thousands of military actions of the American Revolution-from the great and well-known battles through the many intermediate and less well known engagements to the almost numberless obscure skirmishes, raids, ambushes and chance encounters that were little noted at the time and which today are virtually unknown, even to many professional historians..."

Available at BuscaInc.com

A Visit to the Harvard Depository

Library Marketplace
(John Riley, Editor. Eastern Regional Sales Manager, BUSCA, Inc. www.buscainc.com)

Forward into the Past: Offsite Book Depositories, The Future of Libraries?

Open stacks are a fairly recent development that can be traced back to nineteenth century English and American public libraries when their library collections began to exceed the size of the reading room. Book stacks quickly evolved into a fairly standard form in which the cast iron and steel frameworks supporting the bookshelves also supported the floors, which often were built of translucent blocks to permit the passage of light (but were not transparent, for reasons of modesty).(1)

Previous to open stacks archival storage was the norm. The current practice of offsite storage can just as easily be thought of as archival storage. Books and other materials are kept in a secure, climate controlled environment with access limited to individual requests filled by librarians or other library personnel. Archives have been a major component of libraries since their inception and offsite storage has been used ever since the first libraries were created. Most libraries in Europe still keep books in storage with access only allowed by request after searching a catalogue of their available materials. Perhaps their holdings of incunabula and other rare books or simply the scarcity of many books encouraged the practice.

We have reached a similar situation today with an explosion of information and an inability to house all of it comfortably within reach. In addition, mass digitization has quickly converted tens of millions of books to electronic format resulting in less demand for the printed versions. Between these two irresistible forces libraries now find that returning to the archival model for storage, not just of little used items, but current materials as well, is a viable way to continue growing the collection while re-purposing precious space in the heart of their campuses or in urban settings.

I am one of those people who initially was horrified at the idea of storing most library books offsite or in compact shelving. Roaming the stacks was a pleasure I relished in my college years, but it is not something I do very often nowadays. It has become a rarefied pleasure that has possibly been outweighed by the benefits of “archival” storage: secure and safe storage, climate controlled atmosphere, and easy location of needed items. Some libraries report that up to fifty per cent of books searched in open stacks cannot be located, whether because the item was checked out or more disconcertingly, because it was stolen or simply misshelved. One archive that I visited recently, the Harvard Depository, has lost only two books in its twenty six year history!

In fact my interest in the subject of archival storage came about from a talk I attended given by Matthew Sheehy, Head of Access Services of the Harvard University Libraries, where he gave a detailed history and tour of the facility using slides and pictures. The size and scope of this project so amazed me that I later asked Matthew for a personal tour. He turned me over to the capable hands of Patrick O’Brien, Systems and Special Projects manager of the Depository. Lee Anne Hooley, Dark Archive Project and Document Delivery Librarian, was a great resource for details about the journal archiving function of the Depository.


I visited the Harvard Depository on a cool March afternoon and it was a good preparation for entering the temperature and humidity controlled warehouse that is kept at a constant fifty degrees and thirty five per cent humidity. The Depository is also pressurized from inside to create an outgoing breeze when doors are opened to keep out unwanted intruders such as flying insects. So a cool gust of air greeted us as we entered the towering stack area. Summer is the hardest time for the Depository with the infamous New England humidity forcing the air conditioners and dehumidifiers to run twenty four hours a day.


On this day the Depository was handling its usual hundreds of requests from the Harvard libraries and nearly as many from its Borrow Direct partners: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, New York Public, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. The partners have access to each others’ catalogues and patrons can “borrow direct” from participating libraries simply by requesting items from their catalogue screens. The books in the Depository are all in the library’s catalogue and can be delivered anywhere on campus within a day. Books ordered by 6:00 p.m. are delivered first thing in the morning. Same day delivery is also available if ordered early enough in the day. The Depository circulates about 2.5% of its holdings annually, around 215,000 items.

The Depository also acts as a “Dark Archive”, not unlike a ‘Seed Bank’ which stores seeds against the possibility of some future calamity. By storing runs of journals for JSTOR and others, the Depository provides a physical backup to online journals. In spite of the mass digitization of journals workers at the Depository deliver many articles electronically after scanning the appropriate journal.

The Harvard Depository has found that human retrieval of books works best for them. Employing the type of “scissor lifts” you see at Home Depot or Lowe’s they can go directly to the box they need and retrieve a single book. Books are grouped by size after bar coding and the box is bar coded as well. Robotic book retrieval typically brings back a whole box of books that contains the required material. Because of the size of the facility Harvard has found that individual item retrieval works best.
I got to ride along on one of the lifts with Patrick and I got to see firsthand how easily it can be positioned exactly where the driver wants it. Boxes are stored on shelves that have been polished with bowling alley wax to make sliding the boxes onto steel work trays practically effortless. I asked Patrick what other techniques they employee for long term storage and he told me “The “tray” boxes in which we store books upright are made with PH neutral paper. The air circulated in the storage area is filtered mainly for particulates. Lighting in the storage area is UV-filtered and switched by motion detection, so overall exposure is reduced as well as saving power. Pest control is managed on a regular basis with “bug lights” and periodic cleaning.” We also discussed earthquake preparedness and Harvard is beginning to take action on that front. Depositories in higher incidence earthquake zones, such as California, have built earthquake mitigation details into their construction from the ground up. It cost Stanford University millions of dollars simply to re-shelve all of the books that came down in their main library during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

The Harvard Depository is built in a “modular” format that has been extended several times since its inception in 1986. The Depository was the first facility specifically designed for library storage. Previously older warehouses or factories were retro-fitted for library use. This modular design will allow for continued growth in a facility that is absorbing nearly a half million items per year. The Depository now contains over nine million items including books, media, photographs, and manuscripts. It houses more books than the many libraries at Harvard combined do. Because of overcrowded shelves on campus and the Depository’s effective delivery system and limitless storage capacity most of the new books purchased for the library are going directly to the Depository. This has freed up a lot of space in the Harvard libraries for use as teaching and meeting facilities.

Another Harvard library, the Baker Library at the Business School, has developed a “virtual browsing” window on their catalogue that allows patrons to view books stored offsite as if they were on a shelf. For an added benefit the books are color coded by frequency of circulation.

Harvard Digital Archive
“In Cambridge, the Digital Repository Service (DRS) is a rapidly growing, 109-terabyte online library of 14 million files representing books, daguerreotypes, maps, music, images, and manuscripts, among other things, all owned by Harvard. In a facility that also serves other parts of the University, a two-person command center monitors more than a hundred servers. Green lights indicate all is well; red flashes when environmental conditions such as temperature or humidity exceed designated parameters. In a nearby room, warm and alive with the whirr of hundreds of cooling fans, their cumulative sound resembling the roar of a giant waterfall, a handful of servers hold the library’s entire digital collection. Other servers are dedicated to “discovery,” the technical term for the searchable online catalog, or “delivery,” the act of providing a file to an end user.” (2)

Robotic Storage Depositories
The first time I visited a shelving facility for “little used” books that employed robotic technologies I also got a personal tour of the Jean and Charles Schulz, of Peanuts fame, Information Center at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. When it opened in 2000 theirs was the third such facility built in the U.S. (Cal State Northridge was the first in 1996). Even though many other industries had been utilizing the same robotic technology for years libraries only started taking advantage of them comparatively recently. The first warehouses to employ robotic storage were aircraft manufacturers who needed “just in time” access to the hundreds of thousands of parts required for assembling even one airplane, let alone hundreds of others. Library compact storage is actually one of the smallest uses of compact storage in a field where industrial warehouses may cover many acres.
I also got to visit the robotic storage facility at Colgate University that like Sonoma State has decided to keep archival storage as part of the library building. Both libraries found that quick retrieval was paramount in convincing faculty and students of the effectiveness of storing books away from the open stacks. Colgate also found that storing current DVD’s and other media gave them another layer of security for items that had a habit of “walking” from more public spaces.

In some ways this new view on managing library materials is a return to the past, almost Medieval in its outlook. In Europe and elsewhere books are not kept on open shelves for browsing. Most books are kept in an archival setting and are retrieved only on request. This gives much more security to the collection and allows for compact storage. Once upon a time books were even chained to library desks for greater security. On a similar note, computer use for reading has been compared to more ancient modes of interacting with texts: scrolling, bookmarking, and using tabs.
One thing I think we need to keep in mind is the tension between curatorial demands and the desire to “save everything.” When visiting Sonoma State the librarians joked about the depository as “a monument to deferred disposal.” When seeing some of their holdings I couldn’t help but agree. Libraries need to work closely with faculty and students to make sure that what is sent off to storage is not material that is needed as reference materials. And Librarians need to exert their curatorial control over what is being saved. One added benefit of sending materials to offsite storage is that it must be catalogued beforehand. This has led to more cataloging efforts resulting in more easily locating items in the collection. (4)

I would like to close with an observation regarding the curatorial aspect of storage from the Cornell University synopsis of offsite library storage:
I turn readers’ attentions to the work of Jorge Luis Borges, who knew a thing or two about libraries, and much more about speculation. Writing of an infinite "Library of Babel," Borges describes two types of intruders. The first are inquisitors, always on the alert for material that offends orthodox sensibilities. "Other men, inversely, thought that the primary task was to eliminate useless works. They would invade the hexagons [Borges’ library shelves], exhibiting credentials which were not always false, skim through a volume with annoyance, and then condemn entire bookshelves to destruction." (Borges 1962, 84-85) (3)

Much of what offsite storage reminds me of, and not just the robotic part of it, is a science fiction tale. In fact such sci-fi movies as “The Book of Eli” directly address the possibility of a loss of books, archives and thus of our species’ memory. Science fiction has proven to be a good predictor of future realities. I am glad to see that Depositories such as Harvard’s are addressing this issue of preservation and re-invention in the real world.

(1) “Library” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library)
(2) “Gutenberg 2.0” Jonathan Shaw; Harvard Magazine (May- June, 2010)
(3) http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/storagehistory.html
(4) “Debate at N.Y. Public Library Raises Question: Can Off-site Storage Work for Researchers?” Jennifer Howard; The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 27, 2012; page A20)
For further reading:
http://blog.archive.org/2011/06/06/why-preserve-books-the-new-physical-archive-of-the-internet-archive/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-16325727

BUSCA, Inc. On the Road

BUSCA, Inc. enjoyed exhibiting at the recent ENY/ACRL Spring Conference at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, NY. Nearly 40 different institutions were represented. Library assessment was the main topic.

http://enyacrl.org/site/spring-2012-conference/

Look for BUSCA, Inc. next at the SUNYLA Conference at Fashion Institute of Technology June 6-8

http://sunyla.org/node/79

And then this Summer you will find us at ALA Annual in Anaheim, CA. Look for us in the Basch Subscriptions/Prenax Booth #2748

See you soon either at one of these functions or on the road. Happy Memorial Day from all of us here at BUSCA!

McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, 11/e

McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, 11/e

ISBN: 0071792732 / 9780071792738
Pre-pub price: $3200 (thru 12/31/12)
$3700 thereafter
Pub Date: September 2012

Place your orders now to take advantage of this exciting opportunity!

The 11th edition is a major revision with 2500 new and thoroughly revised entries and updates to the more than 7000 entries.

Text is complement by 13,000 two-color illustrations and 100 full-color plates.

Coverage spans the hottest fields of science and technology, including:

• Cell, developmental, and molecular biology - with articles on stem cell technology, new insights into RNA functions
• Climate science and meteorology, with full background on climate change research
• Cloud computing, data warehousing, computer security among many other areas of information technology
• Cosmology including coverage of dark matter, dark energy, and advances in the study of the age and shape of the universe
• Environmental science with the latest on environmental conservation, and novel energy sources
• Engineering - civil, chemical, electrical, environmental, mechanical, metallurgical, and other areas extensively updated

Google Stops Selling EBooks Through Independent Bookstores

News today from Publishers Weekly that Google has decided to stop partnering with independent bookstores who were re-selling Google ebooks. Google ebooks have struggled since they were launched and now Google is redirecting all ebooks to their Play site in attempt to compete with Apple and Amazon. Independent bookstores will now be looking for new partners to continue their attempt to compete with the ebook giants.


http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/51377-google-ends-ebook-agreement-with-indies.html?utm_source=Publishers+Weekly%27s+PW+Daily&utm_campaign=138a83439c-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email

ALA/ALCTS Meetings at ALA Midwinter 2012 Dallas

In case you missed them here is a complete list of the ALCTS meetings from the ALA Midwinter Convention. Busca was happy to have attended a good number of these.

http://connect.ala.org/node/43

BUSCA Had a Great Time in Dallas for Midwinter ALA

Busca enjoyed visiting with many of our current customers and meeting many new ones from all over the country. Even though attendance was down it was good to meet with librarians from the Southwest who found it easier to travel to Dallas. We spent a lot of time in ALCTS meetings as well as on the exhibit floor and we brought back many new ideas to incorporate into our service. Here are a few reports from the Convention.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/libraries/article/50411-at-ala-midwinter-librarians-show-some-fight.html

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/hall-erickson/alacognotes_dallas_highlights201201/index.php?device=accessible

BUSCA on the road in the New Year!

BUSCA is hitting the road this New Year 2012 the Chinese Year of the Dragon and the quadrennial Leap Year. Look for us at the upcoming HELIN Consortium Conference on January 11 at Bryant University and soon after at ALA Midwinter in Dallas where we can be found lending a hand to Basch Subscriptions in Booth #736. With all of this mild weather expect to see us soon at your library too. Happy New Year!