New book from Walt Crawford

Walt Crawford has a new book: Balanced Libraries, from Lulu Press.  From the description and reviews I've seen, this is a great book for any library pursuing what is being called "a new service model."  That term confuses me and doesn't really say anything.  It's kind of like saying "we change."  Well, duh.  Sorry...I just have a low tolerance for adminstrative-speak.  But that has nothing to do with Walt's book.  He's writing about the actual changes that are taking place and how libraries can shift to meet our customers' changing needs.

I agree with Jessamyn West that it's very, very interesting how much small and independent presses have been growing in recent years, perhaps fueled in part by all of the self-publishing on the web.  Authors have choices...it's no longer a small list of four publishers in the library world that we all have to choose from.  This is a good thing, and I think will result in more being published, and what is published will be of a higher quality and closer to the author's original intentions.