Phil Agre is a professor of library science at UCLA whom I’ve long wished to meet.

A few weeks ago the Los Angeles Police Department announced that he was missing. He abandoned his apartment and his job at some point between December of 2008 and May of 2009, according to the LAPD missing person alert (pdf).

I just learned about it in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, but I won’t bother linking to their article because it is subscription only. It is in today’s issue if you have access and want to look for it.

Friends and colleagues of his have set up a website to let him know that he’s missed, as well as a site devoted to his work.

I first read Phil Agre in the journal Progressive Librarian, issue 12/13, 1997. That issue had an article of his titled, “The End of Information and the Future of Libraries.” It’s very much worth reading.

I always feel a little hucksterish when I use this blog to try to sell books, but Library Juice Press is a business, and selling books is what it is about. So here we go…

I have too much inventory of Ed D’Angelo’s book, Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library: How Postmodern Consumer Capitalism Threatens Democracy, Civil Education and the Public Good, and I need to put it on sale.

So, through the end of 2009, the price will be $10 instead of $18, if you buy it via the website. Big sale. Blowout sale. Bring your wife, your wallet, your pink slip and your checkbook.

I like this book, and you might too. If you want to read the first two chapters, they are online and accessible from the book’s page on the website.