Friday, May 29, 2015
Vinyl LPs Come Back in Style
E-Books for Low-Income Children
The Plan to Give e-Books to Poor Kids
Cory Turner | April 30, 2015
Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see?
I see a blue horse, a purple cat, and a new program — unveiled today by President Obama — with one goal in mind:
 |
| Source: http://www.amazon.com/JUDY-MOODY-WAS-MOOD-BOOK/dp/0763648493 |
More specifically, $250 million worth of e-books available to young, low-income readers — free. The effort will work through a new app, being developed by the New York Public Library, that has the buy-in of all the major publishers.
"Children should not be unable to get reading materials because their parents don't have money," says Carolyn Reidy, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster, which has offered up all of its titles for kids from 4 to 14.
Sharks on Twitter
More Than 300 Sharks in Australia Are Now on Twitter
NPR.org | January 1, 2014
Sharks in Western Australia are now tweeting out where they are — in a way.
Government researchers have tagged 338 sharks with acoustic transmitters that monitor where the animals are. When a tagged shark is about half a mile away from a beach, it triggers a computer alert, which tweets out a message on the Surf Life Saving Western Australia Twitter feed. The tweet notes the shark's size, breed and approximate location.
Since 2011, Australia has had more fatal shark attacks than any other country; there have been six over the past two years — the most recent in November [2013].
<more at http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/12/31/258670211/more-than-300-sharks-in-australia-are-now-on-twitter>
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Digital Policy and Rights
We Need a Digital Constitutional Convention
Alan S. Inouye | May 28, 2015
Today we stand at the crossroads of establishing digital society for generations to come. By now, it is clear to everyone—not just network engineers and policy wonks—that the Internet is at the same time a huge mechanism for opportunity and for control. Though the advent of the Internet is propelling a true revolution in society, we’re not ready for it. Not even close.
For one thing, we are so politically polarized at the national level. The latest evidence: the net neutrality debate. Except it wasn’t. For the most part, it was characterized by those who favor assertive regulatory change for net neutrality stating their position, restating their position, then yelling out their position. Those arguing for the status quo policy did likewise. As the battle lines were drawn, there was little room to pragmatically consider a compromise advanced by some stakeholders.
Tools for Faculty, Researchers and Students
Stackly
HighWire.org | April 2, 2015
<details at https://stackly.org/ and http://home.highwire.org/sites/default/files/StacklyLaunch.pdf; more information available at http://home.highwire.org/products/stackly; available as a browser add-on https://www.stackly.org/tools; brief review at http://www.nfais.org/highwire-launches-stackly>
Using Digital Maps to Resolve Political Conflict
The Security Implications of New Mapping Technologies
Will digital mapping technologies such as GPS and Google Maps transform international politics? Jordan Branch thinks it’s possible. Just as the first map and atlas printers helped establish the territorial state as a dominant political unit, today’s mapping technologies may redistribute power in new ways.
Jordan Branch | May 8, 2015
<more at http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/Detail/?lng=en&id=190291; page contains links to related articles>
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Mexican Government Agency Wants to Remove Google Links
Google Wages Free-Speech Fight in Mexico
ADVFN | May 27, 2015
<more at http://uk.advfn.com/news/DJN/2015/article/67035376; related link: http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-wages-free-speech-fight-in-mexico-1432723483 Google Wages Free-Speech Fight in Mexico; 'Right to be forgotten' debate about Internet privacy spreads beyond Europe>
How Large Is the Internet?
John McAfee: The Dark Web Is a Twisteed Parallel Universe Where Homer Simpson Predicted 9/11
John McAfee | May 26, 2015
To put 2 exobytes into perspective, the world's largest library, the Library of Congress, which contains virtually everything written since the history of writing, houses approximately 8TB of data. As an aside, the Wire in 2013 estimated that the NSA collects 29TB of data from its various sources every day.
The Deep Web is the new frontier of information science, but massive technical challenges are still to be understood and resolved in order to mine this wealth of information.
 |
| Source: http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Deep_Web_Wide.jpg |
Some sites have login passwords that restrict the ability of web crawlers to gain access and to index information. There are data incompatibilities, and form data that requires specific inputs in order to gain specific responses. There are internal pages with no external links, unpublished and unlisted posts, and information in JPEG or MP4 format, the contents of which cannot be analysed by indexing mechanisms.
<more http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/dark-web-twisted-parallel-universe-where-homer-simpson-predicted-9-11-1502995>
How Technology Has Helped Privacy
Little Discussed Ways That Technology Enhances Privacy
Joshua Bleiberg & Darrell M. West | May 26, 2015
<more at http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/techtank/posts/2015/05/25-privacy-enhancing-technologies; from the introduction to the above referenced paper by Benajmin Wittes and Jodie Liu: The domestic and international debate around privacy issues often overstates the negative impacts of new technologies relative to their privacy benefits, argue Benjamin Wittes and Jodie Liu. Many new technologies—whose privacy impacts we frequently fear as a society—actually bring great privacy boons to users. Wittes and Liu assert that society tends to reap the benefits of privacy without much thought while also tallying and wringing its hands about the costs. People have privacy today with respect to so many types of content, they observe, for instance in the areas of medical information, politically sensitive publications and purchases, erotic materials, and secret communications. And such privacy is the result of, paradoxically, a series of technologies, which are the subject of endless anxiety among commentators, scholars, journalists, and activists concerned about—ironically enough—protecting privacy in the digital age. See full paper at: http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/05/21-privacy-paradox-wittes-liu>
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Elsevier and Open Access Policies
'Simple and Seamless' or 'Significant Obstacle'?
Carl Starumsheim | May 21, 2015
Academic, library and technology organizations are denouncing a new sharing and hosting policy adopted last month by publisher Elsevier, saying it undermines open-access policies at colleges and universities and prevents authors from sharing their work.
Elsevier, which publishes thousands of journals, introduced the policy last month. It aims to strike a balance between making sharing “simple and seamless” and “being consistent with access and usage rights associated with journal articles,” the publisher said in a blog post.
<more at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/21/academic-library-and-technology-groups-criticize-new-elsevier-sharing-and-hosting; related link: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/open-access-lobby-attacks-elsevier/story-e6frgcjx-1227368653638 Open Access Lobby Attacks Elsevier>
Google Fellowships
Google Offers Digital Inclusion Fellowships in Nashville
Jamie McGee | May 21, 2015
Two of 16 digital inclusion fellowships will be offered in Nashville for a year, supported by Google and the Nonprofit Technology Network, a Portland, Ore.-based organization. The fellows will work with the Nashville Public Library and the Martha O'Bryan Center to build and expand digital literacy initiatives.
Preventing Phishing Attacks
Password Alert, Google's New form of Defense Against Phishing
EMSISoft Blog | May 1, 2015
<more at http://blog.emsisoft.com/2015/05/01/password-alert-googles-new-form-of-defense-against-phishing/; related link: https://support.google.com/a/answer/6197508?hl=en
Phishing prevention with Password Alert FAQ>
Friday, May 22, 2015
How Disease May Affect Intelligence
Infections Can Affect Your IQ
Ingrid Marie Fossum | May 21, 2015
Anyone can suffer from an infection, for example in their stomach, urinary tract or skin. However, a new Danish study shows that a patient’s distress does not necessarily end once the infection has been treated. In fact, ensuing infections can affect your cognitive ability measured by an IQ test: “Our research shows a correlation between hospitalization due to infection and impaired cognition corresponding to an IQ score of 1.76 lower than the average. People with five or more hospital contacts with infections had an IQ score of 9.44 lower than the average. The study thus shows a clear dose-response relationship between the number of infections, and the effect on cognitive ability increased with the temporal proximity of the last infection and with the severity of the infection.
<more at http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2015/05/infections-can-affect-your-iq>
The Workings of Thought
The Bugs in Our Mindware
Many Obstacles Lie on the Path to Rational Thought
Richard E. Nisbett | May 7, 2015Three baseball umpires are talking about how they play the game. The first says, “I call ’em as they are.” The second, “I call ’em as I see ’em.” And the third says, “They ain’t nothin’ till I call ’em.”
Most of the time all of us are like the first umpire, thinking that we’re seeing the world the way it really is and “calling ’em as they are.” That umpire is what philosophers and social psychologists call a “naive realist.”1 He believes that the senses provide us with a direct, unmediated understanding of the world. But in fact, our construal of the nature and meaning of events is massively dependent on stored schemas and the inferential processes they initiate and guide.
We do partially recognize this fact in everyday life and realize that, like the second umpire, we really just “call ’em as we see ’em.” At least we see that’s true for other people. We tend to think, “I’m seeing the world as it is, and your different view is due to poor eyesight, muddled thinking, or self-interested motives!”
<more at http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/the-bugs-in-our-mindware>
Is the Internet Getting Full?
The Internet Is Running Out of Room—But We Can Save It
Jacob Aron | May 15, 2015
The meeting sparked headlines warning of a "full" internet and the potential need for data rationing, but the reality is more nuanced. The crunch is real, caused by fast growth of online media consumption through the likes of Netflix and Youtube, but physics and engineering can help us escape it. The internet just needs a few tweaks.
Fear of a capacity crunch stems from a hard physical truth – there is a limit to the amount of information you can cram down any communications channel, fibre-optic cable or copper wire. Discovered in 1940 by Claude Shannon, this limit depends on the channel's bandwidth – the number of frequencies it can transmit – and its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
<more at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27536-the-internet-is-running-out-of-room--but-we-can-save-it.html>
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Augmented Reality from World War Two?
From World War Two: Early Example of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality?
Jim Brewer | May 21, 2015
As explained at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05wdql2, these domes were used to train British gunners to fire at attacking German aircraft during World War Two by projecting films of incoming bombers and fighters onto the inside of the dome. The Langham Dome is the one surviving example of the many that were built during World War Two. To hit the target with a gun, trainees had to anticipate the flight path and hit that path, since firing directly at the plane would miss the target by the time the shell was fired.
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| Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05wdql2 |
3D Printing and Space Exploration
America Makes & NASA Want You to Design Their 3D Printed Space Habitats
Andrew Wheeler | May 20, 2015
America Makes and NASA have announced a $2.25 million dollar competition to build and design an entirely 3D printed habitat for deep space exploration. NASA is no doubt thinking about its upcoming plan to journey to Mars, and looking for creative solutions for building a habitat there. Back in April, Tethers Unlimited was awarded a contract by NASA to develop a recycling system for the ISS. The system would convert plastic waste to 3D filament, just another step towards a self-sustaining 3D printed habitat.<more at http://3dprintingindustry.com/2015/05/20/america-makes-nasa-want-you-to-design-their-3d-printed-space-habitats>
Your Expressions on Your Avatar with Oculus Rift
Oculus Can Map Your Real-Life Expressions Onto Your Avatar
Katie Collins | May 21, 2015
At some point you have probably created a virtual visualisation of yourself on the internet, but however much your Xbox avatar or MyIdol app character looks like you, it's highly unlikely that it will move like you too.All that could be set to change thanks to researchers at the University of Southern California and Facebook's Oculus division, who have devised a method to record facial expression using the virtual reality headset and transpose them onto a virtual character.
<more at http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-05/21/oculus-maps-facial-expression-onto-avatar; related link https://www.oculus.com/>
How Software Can Change the Way We Think
Toolkits for the Mind
James Somers | April 2, 2015
When the Japanese computer scientist Yukihiro Matsumoto decided to create Ruby, a programming language that has helped build Twitter, Hulu, and much of the modern Web, he was chasing an idea from a 1966 science fiction novel called Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany. At the book’s heart is an invented language of the same name that upgrades the minds of all those who speak it. “Babel-17 is such an exact analytical language, it almost assures you technical mastery of any situation you look at,” the protagonist says at one point. With Ruby, Matsumoto wanted the same thing: to reprogram and improve the way programmers think.It sounds grandiose, but Matsumoto’s isn’t a fringe view. Software developers as a species tend to be convinced that programming languages have a grip on the mind strong enough to change the way you approach problems—even to change which problems you think to solve. It’s how they size up companies, products, their peers: “What language do you use?”
That can help outsiders understand the software companies that have become so powerful and valuable, and the products and services that infuse our lives. A decision that seems like the most inside kind of inside baseball—whether someone builds a new thing using, say, Ruby or PHP or C—can suddenly affect us all. If you want to know why Facebook looks and works the way it does and what kinds of things it can do for and to us next, you need to know something about PHP, the programming language Mark Zuckerberg built it with.
<more at http://www.technologyreview.com/review/536356/toolkits-for-the-mind/>
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Can You Search Handwritten Text in a Browser?
A Google for Handwriting
Josefin Svensson | April 28, 2015
To be able to use computers to analyse and search handwritten texts would revolutionise research in the humanities. And the technology to digitise printed books and make them searchable already exists.Uppsala University library has recently launched a digital platform—Alvin—where digitised works from cultural heritage collections are now being collected into a single database. With just a few clicks it will be possible to search collections, opening up new possibilities for researchers and other interested parties.
'The works are searchable, for example via Google, which means you can go back over historical materials and find new angles. The texts don't need to be consulted on site either, which provides greater accessibility', says Per Cullhed, development strategist at Uppsala University library.
<more at http://phys.org/news/2015-04-google.html>
Book Review: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever
BiblioTech: A Review
Barbara Fister | May 7, 2015
I was delighted to get a copy of John Palfrey’s new book, BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More than Ever, from the publisher, Basic Books. Generally, I find Basic Books’ list full of interesting and valuable titles and I have enjoyed reading other works by John Palfrey. He has a way of making complex things simple, as he and Urs Gasser did in their book, Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems. I admire the ability to write clearly and advocate for practical solutions to pressing problems – something Bruce Schneier did so well in his masterful Data and Goliath.While BiblioTech is enormously readable, if not always deeply compelling (perhaps it’s simply harder to make a case for libraries than for the need to throttle back the out-of-control surveillance engine that took over and now drives so much of the internet), it frequently frustrated me. I suspect that is because I am not the audience for this book. As the author explains it in his introduction, he is writing for “all those who do not work in libraries and who should be taking a greater interest in the fate of these essential knowledge institutions on which we rely more than we seem to realize.” He’s writing for people who might care about what libraries could be but are not caught up in nostalgia about what they used to be.
<more at https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/bibliotech-review>
How Makerspaces Are Changing Our World
4 Ways Makers Are Changing the World
Cisco Blogs | May 20, 2015
Hackathons, tech shops, makerspaces: These terms are increasingly prevalent in today's vernacular, and for good reason. They represent a burgeoning global movement with people of all ages developing, designing, and often marketing their creations. In the age of the maker, anyone can be an inventor. Their potential impact on the world is enormous. Innovations and discoveries are no longer produced exclusively by scientists in white lab coats or research and development departments of major corporations. Thanks to affordable technologies and online environments, individual makers can launch small companies to manufacture and market their goods. This shift in industry is influencing the way we learn, shop, sell, and interact. Here are four ways this movement is changing our world.Jobs and economic growth.
Makers are more than tinkers and hobbyists. They are small business owners and job creators.
<more at https://3blmedia.com/News/4-Ways-Makers-Are-Changing-World>
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
The New Research University
Rebirth of the Research University
Nicholas B. Dirks | April 27, 2015
In California, some of us spend a good deal of time feeling nostalgia for days past (specifically, 1960) when the California Master Plan for Higher Education was codified, approved, and financed. In the world of higher education, this visionary plan was the greatest organizational idea for public higher education in the 20th century. It connected excellence in research to the mission of near-universal education by defining the roles of its three systems of universities, state colleges, and community colleges.Today, however, there is a growing belief that higher-education systems modeled after the master plan have run their course; many people in state governments and the public at large not only assume that such a model costs too much in absolute terms, but also increasingly question the value and quality of higher education, particularly of the sort delivered at elite research universities. Indeed, at the root of debates about the cost of higher education, the worth of college, the vocational utility of degrees, and the commitment to teaching among research faculty, there is a widespread suspicion that we cannot have all that the master plan promised. There is a growing belief, in particular, that research can no longer be the primary mission of our great universities.
Gadget: Google Chromebit
5 Ways to Use Google Chromebit in the Enterprise
Conner Forrest | May 19, 2015
Recently, Google announced a new, affordable computing device called the Chromebit. Here's how enterprises can get the most out of it.If you work with technology or you're simply a fan of new gadgets, it seems like there isn't much you can do with $100. After all, Moore's Law observes that the number of transistors will increase, but it doesn't guarantee a drop in price.
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| Source: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2015/03/more-chromebooks-for-everyone.html |
Sure, it's much cheaper to purchase a new computer than it was a few decades ago, but rising manufacturing costs mean that it is still kind of expensive.
But recently, Google announced its $99 Chromebit -- a computing stick, made by Asus, that turns any display into a computer. The Chromebit offers 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, USB 2.0 port, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi 802.11ac, and a Rockchip 3288 ARCM Cortext-A17 processor with an ARM Mali 760 GPU.
But recently, Google announced its $99 Chromebit -- a computing stick, made by Asus, that turns any display into a computer. The Chromebit offers 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, USB 2.0 port, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi 802.11ac, and a Rockchip 3288 ARCM Cortext-A17 processor with an ARM Mali 760 GPU.
Machine Learning is Changing Business Enterprise
How Machine Learning Is Eating the Software World
Alex Woodie | May 18, 2015
Marc Andreessen, who created the World Wide Web, famously said in 2011 that software was eating the world. Four years later, that trend has accelerated, only now it appears that machine learning technology is on the cusp of eating software, and that algorithms will take over the world, with a little help from their friends: the APIs.Not that this is a bad thing, at least not as Elon Musk envisions, with AI-powered overlords enslaving the human race (a separate story for another day). But if you recognize the points that Andreessen made in his famous Wall Street Journal article—how outfits like Amazon, Netflix, Flickr, and Pandora that are essentially software companies eviscerated the “bricks and mortar” giants that had dominated the markets for books, movies, photos, and radio up to that point—then you have probably recognized that the trend has only intensified here in 2015.
In today’s big data world, the focus is all about building “smart applications.” The intelligence in those apps, more often than not, doesn’t come from adding programmatic responses to the code–it comes from allowing the software itself to recognize what’s happening in the real world, how it’s different from what happened yesterday, and adjust its response accordingly.
<more at http://www.datanami.com/2015/05/18/how-machine-learning-is-eating-the-software-world/>
Monday, May 18, 2015
A 3D Printer in Your Kitchen?
3D Printing Could Be Next Tool in Chef's Arsenal
Jonathan Maze | May 18, 20153D printers were first developed in the early 1980s, and commercialized in the early 1990s. Since then, the technology has been used to make everything from aircraft turbine engines to human organs.
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| The ChefJet Pro debuted at the NRA Show this weekend. 3D Systems |
Now the powerful tool is being introduced as part of a chef’s arsenal.
3D Systems, based in Rock Hill, S.C., which invented and first commercialized the 3D printer, debuted the ChefJet Pro at the NRA Show this weekend. It is the first professional-grade printer for the food world, said Carrie Kommers, a consultant for 3D Systems.
<more at http://nrn.com/technology/3d-printing-could-be-next-tool-chef-s-arsenal>
Digital Arabic
Arabic Digital Library to Lauch by Year's End in Dubai
The National | May 11, 2015The first phase of a digital library offering a collection of Arabic books is to launch by the end of the year.
The Dubai Digital Library, which is being set up by the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation (MBRF), aims to keep pace with the changes in publishing, growth of technology and use of internet and smart devices for reading and research.
The platform will offer translations, Arabic and foreign periodicals, dictionaries, biographies and maps.
<more at: http://www.thenational.ae/uae/technology/arabic-digital-library-to-launch-by-years-end-in-dubai>
Cold War of Code
The Code War: Russia Plans to Free Itself from iOS and Android
Based on Finland’s Sailfish operating system, the plan is the latest way Russia is fighting for independence from US technology
Alex Hern | May 18, 2015The cold war may have ended in the 90s but Russia is still fighting to free itself from American influence over its technology sector, with the country’s minister for communications announcing plans to create a new mobile operating system to challenge iOS and Android across all the Brics nations.
Meanwhile, another Russian company is designing its own central processing units to take on Intel and AMD.
According to Russia’s RBC financial newspaper, the country’s ministry of communications instigated the project to replace Android and iOS, meeting with Finland’s Jolla to discuss the creation of a new mobile operating system based on Jolla’s open-source Sailfish operating system.
<more at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/18/russia-ios-android-sailfish-os>
Friday, May 15, 2015
Step One in a Library 3D Printing Effort
How to Start a 3D Printing Program at Your Library
Brandi Scardilli | May 5, 2015If you’re thinking about installing a 3D printer in your library, there are a lot of things to consider before you do so. You have to decide on a model, find a place to put it, and figure out whether (or how much) to charge for its use. Three library representatives share their experiences with implementing a 3D printing program at their institutions.
Sauk City Library in Wisconsin started its 3D printing program in 2012. Director Ben Miller, a former systems librarian, says that when he was hired, the library board was looking to “advance the library into the 21st century.” For Miller, one of the ways to accomplish that was to buy a 3D printer. So far, patrons have printed phone cases and characters from “Pokémon” and “Minecraft”; one person printed playing pieces for the board game Settlers of Catan; and another prints replacement parts for his electric razor when it breaks because the part he needs isn’t sold separately. “[O]ne of the things that we’re trying to focus on is being a place of creation instead of just consumption. And so the 3D printer was new enough and was sort of a big enough idea for a small town that we talked about it a lot at board meetings,” says Miller, and they decided to purchase one.
<more at http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/How-to-Start-a-3D-Printing-Program-at-Your-Library-103675.asp>
Challenges in Maintaining Digital Formats
Saving the Digital Record: Harvard Library Safeguards Material Stored in Obsolete Formats
ScienceBlog.com | May 9, 2015When digital becomes dinosaur, most people simply get inconvenienced. But librarians and archivists get seriously concerned.
Ensuring that digital content — whether it’s a short story by John Updike or a very rare audio recording of a vanished Native American language — lives on past its initial platform is one of the most pressing issues in preservation science. Harvard is one of a handful of cultural institutions in the first wave of adopting a technology and process to preserve its digital content.
Libraries and archives at Harvard hold thousands of unique items across hundreds of digital formats, including aging technology such as CDs, floppy disks, tapes, and cassettes. To retrieve content prior to total obsolescence or decay of digital formats, librarians are using digital forensic software commonly employed by the police or the FBI to solve crimes, which enables them to identify content noninvasively and migrate it to a more stable platform.
<more at http://scienceblog.com/78316/saving-the-digital-record-harvard-library-safeguards-material-stored-on-obsolete-formats/>
The Past Keeps in Touch with Our Present
How New Technologies Push Us Toward the Past
William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone | May 8, 2015
Reading all the stories and hearing the rumors about Apple’s autonomous vehicles, Google’s drones, and Amazon’s experiments with new delivery systems, it’s easy to imagine looking out your window in a few short years and seeing a world that is positively Jetsons-like. Think through the implications of these technologies, however, and an even more startling vision emerges: the future will look more like the past.
Much has been written over the last decade about how the Internet, by enabling online commerce, social networks, and easy access to information and entertainment, has transformed the global economy. But we’re just beginning to see the dramatic changes this will in turn bring to the physical landscape. Ubiquitous connectivity will not only supercharge our way of life and our ways of working, it will in some sense reverse them.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
National Endowment for Digital Libraries Needed
We need a National Digital-Library Endowment
Jim Duncan & David H. Rothman | May 12, 2015As a boy, Warren Buffett is said to have read book after book on money.
Thankfully, he did not live in Los Angeles and rely on the library at Roy Romer Middle School. Students there couldn't check out a Buffett biography, or any other title, when a Los Angeles Timesreporter dropped by last year. The reason? The library at the time was locked up because of staff cuts.
Wait. It gets worse. Romer Middle School has lots of company throughout the United States in its school library horrors. One hundred and seventy-six certified librarians worked in the Philadelphia city schools in 1991. Today, the count is just 11 in the 218-school district.
But Mr. Buffett and other members of the super-rich could at least help, through a national digital-library endowment, funded by interested billionaires. The endowment could help pay for librarians, e-books, other content, and related technology for school and public libraries. It could especially target high-poverty areas and promote the hiring and professional development of minority librarians—while also nurturing the love of literature for the new America.
<more at http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/05/13/we-need-a-national-digital-library-endowment.html>
Lachine Library: High-Tech for the Patron
Lachine library a high-tech marvel
Kathryn Greenaway | April 28, 2015Dozens of messages scribbled on note paper and stuck to the wall behind the checkout desk at the expanded Bibliothèque Saul-Bellow last weekend gave the facility glowing reviews — “it’s the best library in the world!” and “c’est génial!”
The $13 million, state-of-the-art facility at the corner of 32nd Ave. and St-Antoine St. held an open house Saturday and close to 3,000 people dropped by for a visit. The library officially opens for business on May 2.
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| The centre piece of the expanded and modernized Bibliotheque Saul-Bellow in Lachine is the massive, circular metal and wood staircase leading the open and airy second floor. The polished concrete floors are heated. Photo courtesy of the Ville de Montreal. |
“The turnout was fantastic,” Lachine borough mayor Claude Dauphin said of the open house. “Now it’s time for the people of Lachine to take ownership of the building. Come out and use it. It is a library for the 21st century.”
Gone are the days of severe-looking librarians silencing chatty visitors with a stern “no talking!” The now open and airy Bibliothèque Saul-Bellow — expanded above and beyond its original 1974 concept — invites discussion and offers busy programs of activities targeting both grown-ups and youngsters.
Fixing Copyright
Tech, Trade, and Library Groups Form Copyright Mega-Coalition
Rob Stott | May 6, 2015The Re:Create Coalition brings together various groups from the technology, trade, and library industries. The alliance will advocate for less-stifling copyright laws that foster innovation.
A group of library, technology, and trade organizations have joined together to advocate for simpler and more transparent copyright laws.
In a statement, members of the Re:Create Coalition said that more balanced copyright policies that depart from the overprotective laws currently in place, would allow for greater innovation in knowledge creation and product development.
This is perfect timing for us to be together and talk about [copyright law] issues, and have a coordinated voice.
Copyright coalitions are nothing new, but the group believes that it is likely the largest and most representative to ever come together. Members include the American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Consumer Electronics Association, Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), Electronic Frontier Foundation, Computer and Communications Industry Association, and Media Democracy Fun, among several others.
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