RIASS stuff:
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Book Review: Beach Season by Lisa Jackson et al'Rating: 
Book Review: Ocean Beach by Wendy Wax'Rating:
Guest post: Wendy Wax, author of Ocean Beach
Other bookish stuff:
How to kill your book cover design:'Part of the trouble is that a book cover illustrator normally comes to the story after the fact. The novel is more or less set in concrete by the time the artist comes to the scene; he is told exactly what is needed as far as the scene and characters, and thus works within closer restraints than the writer usually does. In effect, the artist often starts his project with one creative hand tied behind his back. As he works, he will be constantly bumping into the creative cage he's working in.
Childrens bookshops buck UK High Street decline'Booksellers Association chief executive Tim Godfray said: Though it was gratifying to see an increase in openings in the latter part of last year, and childrens bookshops really holding their own, the competition from the internet and the arrival of e-books are putting pressures on high street and campus bookshops.
American publisher revives interest in Elizabeth Jolley'It is part of an ambitious program by'Persea Books'to revive interest in Jolleys work after most of her novels were unavailable in the USA at the time of her death in 2007. The New York-based company has already published'The Vera Wright Trilogy,'Foxybaby'and'The Sugar Mother'' all to rave reviews ' and now it plans to publish'Mr Scobies Riddle'andMiss Peabodys Inheritance.
The enterprising librarian'Think of greater integration in the learning and research process through greater curriculum support, data curation, scholarly publishing, or support for grant writing or expertise profiles. Think of network based reading services, or jobseeking and homework support. As goals shift in a changing environment, so does the need to think about how to marshall the means to meet them.
Sarah Churchwell on Gatsby:'We're in that same space as Gatsby: We want the glamour and we're enchanted by the objects and yet we are reluctantly recognising how toxic that whole world is. Gatsby not only is the first novel that really understands all of that, but it also plays to both sides of our emotional ambivalence right now.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: a philosopher for the Facebook generation'Here I am, then, alone in the world, with no longer a brother, neighbour, or friend, but only myself, for company. The most sociable and loving of humans has been banished from society by unanimous agreement.
Is this the end of the professional critic?''In our current cultural cornucopia, we need good critics more than ever. Britain shows how great critics can still survive in print, if given the respect and space they deserve. We need to treasure them because if Osbornes fantasy of a critic-free world comes to pass, we really will have cause to look back in anger.
Biblioclasm (The practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material) and other obscure words
No Mass Layoffs at Harvard Libraries
Essay: On Publishers, Reviewers and Bloggers'But for many established bloggers, and nowadays for many startup bloggers too, the reviews become subsumed into the greater enterprise of maintaining and growing the blog. With a little advertising, paid-for content or tie-in marketing, it can even pay for itself and enable the blogger to give up the day job. Then the emphasis switches to aggressively selling the blog by linking to it from as many places as possible, guest blogging on other blogs, actively touting for author interviews and the like, or even deliberately provoking controversy to get a buzz going.
Why Hollywood stopped innovating:'Because it's harder to get financing and audiences, companies are competing to make bigger, costlier films while eliminating risk, which is why ever-more movies are based on existing intellectual property. Eighteen of the all-time 100 top-grossing movies (adjusted for inflation) were sequels, and more than half of those were released since 2000.
John Green on Fahrenheit 451, and the role of books in a digital age''I think it will be really interesting to discuss the themes of the novel ' particularly thinking about the ways context and sustained intellectual engagement adds meaning to human life ' in a place (the Internet) that is not exactly known for sustained intellectual engagement. Social networks are often home to precisely the kinds of factoids and half-truths that Bradbury worries about in'Fahrenheit 451.
Hashtags Are Over'#sonottrue
Wal-Mart Converted into Library
Siren Books is looking for an editorial assistant.
GIS for historians'Neatline'allows scholars, students, and curators to tell stories with maps and timelines.'As a suite of add-on tools for Omeka, it opens new possibilities for hand-crafted, interactive spatial and temporal interpretation.
The cover for'The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling:
The cover for Jaclyn Moriartys forthcoming'A Corner of White, a book that Markus Zusak describes as Perfectly strange, and absolutely comical and heartfelt Jaclyn Moriarty is one of the most original writers we have.
Team Human trailer:
