News

OCLC Report Suggests Ways To Generate New Library Support
Those worried about funding should take heart from the new OCLC report funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which reveals a lot of latent support for libraries that potentially can be turned into active support for funding especially when libraries stress equal access and shared community values. » » »

Readex Partnering with CRL for World Newspapers Archive
Readex is partnering with the Center for Research Libraries to create the World Newspaper Archive, which it describes as “the world’s largest, fully searchable digital archive of international newspapers.” The project initially will offer 35 titles covering 19th and early 20th century Latin American newspapers. » » »

Third Annual Thrillerfest Meets in Manhattan
Top authors, publishers, editors, literary agents, would-be writers, and avid fans gathered at Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt Hotel July 9-12 for the International Thriller Writers conference, which featured stars such a Lee Child, Alafair Burke, Katherine Neville, Steve Berry, and a host of others. » » »

Editorial: Beyond the Kindle
Though electronic reading devices may come and go, ebooks and downloadable audio are here to stay, just another piece of the library’s arsenal of offerings and services. Their adoption is one more example that librarians are quick responders to new technologies and formats. What’s the worry? » » »

Blogs

Wyatt's World

Celebrity Stories

• Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve by Christopher Andersen (Hyperion)
• Life with My Sister Madonna by Christopher Ciccone and Wendy Leigh (Simon Spotlight Entertainment)
• Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door by David Kaufman, (Virgin Books)
• Society's Child: My Biography by Janis Ian (Tarcher)
• Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson by William McKeen (Norton)

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Review

Hellboy II: The Art of the Movie
222p. ISBN 978-1-59307-964-2. $24.95. FILM

Hellboy: The Companion.
238p. ISBN 978-1-59307-655-9. $14.95. LIT
ea. vol: Dark Horse. Jul. 2008. pap.

Just about every event film has a tie-in book—except Iron Man for some inexplicable reason—but some are better than others. This super cool duo of Hellboy titles from Dark Horse Books, publishers of Mike Mignola’s graphic novel series, gets it exactly right. Hellboy II: The Art of the Movie has all the elements that fans want: the full shooting script—including a deleted scene—plus tons of concept art, screen grabs, storyboard art, and some wicked studio shots of the film’s many monsters. » » »

—Mike Rogers, LJ/LJXpress

Xpress Reviews

Xpress Reviews—First Look at New Books
Carol Cassella’s Oxygen, Jess Winfields’s irreverent and fun My Name Is Will : A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare, Joanne Passet's The Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster, a biography of the librarian behind sexologist Alfred Kinsey, and other reviews just in! » » »

Highlights

The New Digital Awareness
Reference librarian Shannon Bohle says that with the constant bombardment of new twists on technology, “we need to take a step back and consider how librarians in the last decade have found themselves on the fast track from the sequestered content villas of subscription databases to the sprawling information architecture of our new socially networked digital environment.” Moreover she conflates digital awareness with social awareness, even pointing to the digital divide “among us as librarians and among our own institutions.” » » »

Hot Tickets
The annual BookExpo America gathering is always a crystal ball for previewing what next season’s hot books will be. The speed at which galleys get grabbed up is a good barometer for what will fly off the shelves later when the finished books are released. LJ book review editors preview what galley titles were fast movers at BEA. » » »

Saša Stanišiæ: Citizen of the World
Bosnian-born Saša Stanišiæ is a rising star of European literature. Now living in Germany, his first novel How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone proved a smash success. The 30-year-old author sits down with LJ ’s Mirela Roncevic, who hails from nearby Croatia, for a candid conversation. » » »