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I know that this has almost nothing whatsoever to do with libraries, books, or anything else I generally deal with, but boy, it’s the coolest news story I’ve seen all week:
New ‘Super-Earth’ Found in Space
It’s orbiting a red dwarf star (Gliese 581) just about 20 light-years from us, it’s about half again the size of Earth, and there’s a great chance it has liquid oceans.
Jackpot.
This request came from Lisl Zach and Michelynn McKnight of the Louisiana State U. School of Library Science by way of the METRO-L listserv a short while ago:
As
part of a research project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, we are
collecting first-hand accounts of information professionals’ responses to a
range of community-wide disasters such as the recent Pacific
Northwest ice storms and the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes.These
experiences will be used to develop case-based guidance material to help
prepare information professionals to face similar events in the future.If
you, or somebody you know, have had an experience responding to a disaster, we
hope that you will take a few minutes to complete our brief online survey. We are particularly interested in hearing how
information professionals have met the needs of their users at a time of crisis
by providing new or customized services. These services could include extending library hours, providing Internet
access to displaced persons, developing outreach services for people in
shelters, or any other library responses to suddenly changed
information needs. This research effort
goes well beyond the traditional focus of disaster planning-that is, the preservation
of the physical plant, collections, and staff-and concentrates on the potential
role of information professionals as important "first responders"
during community-wide disasters.The
survey should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. The results of the survey will enhance our
understanding of the types of disasters in which information professionals have
been involved as well as the ways in which they have responded. Please pass
this survey on to anybody you think might be interested.
You can take the survey online here, and more information regarding the project can be found here. There’s also a letter of consent, which I’ve put behind the link.
I just hitched my Typepad account to FeedBurner. I have no idea what this means in terms of what readers (all 4 of them) will see on the off chance they actually look at what’s here, and I somehow doubt that I have hordes of fans who are busily linking a number of RSS feed readers to this site. If they are, and if I’ve just done a majorly stupid thing that prevents access, I apologize in advance.
All of which is a long excuse for describing how Lara and I spent last evening, listening to Jeff Feldman, author of "Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation (and Win elections)" (which got a very interesting if strange review here and an even more interesting response to that review here) and Bill Keeler, who’s run for the New York Senate, utilizing those ideas. Both gentlemen kindly agreed to a book reading event which was held at the Barnes & Nobel on 8th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan at the request of Robert Lasner, who owns Ig Publishing, the press that published Jeff’s book. (Disclosure: Robert’s my brother-in-law and I’m an investor in Ig. I know that disqualifies me for running for public office, but there it is.)
The Ladies Home Journal from December 1900,
which contained a fascinating article by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. “What May
Happen in the Next Hundred Years”.
For the complete story, click here.
Two personal favorites:
Prediction
#4: There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All
hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city
limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels,
well lighted and well ventilated, or to high trestles with “moving-sidewalk”
stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will
teem with capacious automobile passenger coaches and freight with cushioned
wheels. Subways or trestles will be reserved for express trains. Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.
Prediction
#16: There will be No C, X or Q in our
every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by
sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a
language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more
extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.
"Queens‘ Biggest Cake" Marks the
Occasion; Time Capsule to Be BuriedQUEENS VILLAGE, NY, April
17, 2007–Library Director Thomas W. Galante, and a host of government and community
well-wishers joined to cut Queens‘ Biggest Anniversary Cake in honor of Queens Library’s 100th
anniversary of incorporation. The event was held at Antun’s in Queens Village."Queens Library is the busiest
library system in the U.S. We needed a cake this big to mark
the occasion," said Library Director Galante. He added: "We’re proud
to be one of very few organizations that can look back on more than a century
of service and honestly say, ‘people in Queens depend on us more now than they did
a century ago.’ A hundred years from now, people in Queens will still rely on their library
for education, information and recreation. We enrich lives. Today is National
Library Worker’s Day. The anniversary couldn’t come at a more apt time. Our
staff is the reason why Queens Library will continue to be relevant long into
the future."Queens Library was chartered from
several small, independent libraries in 1896, prior to the Act of Consolidation
in 1898, which made the five boroughs into New York City. Queens Library was incorporated on
April 17, 1907. Andrew Carnegie gave the nascent public library a
big boost by financing six stately buildings on the condition that the City
would pay ongoing operating expenses. Queens
Library, Brooklyn Public Library and New York Public Library were incorporated
separately. They remain independent of each other to this day.The anniversary cake measured 16
feet x 20 feet. It was baked by Junior’s. It used 1200 lbs. of cake batter, 500
lbs. of fudge filling and 500 lbs of frosting. Total calorie count defied
description. Most of it was donated to City Harvest.A follow-up event will be held on April
25, 2007. A
time capsule will be buried at the Queens Library at Queens Village. It contains items donated by
children from all over Queens to illustrate "The Way We Were in 2007." It will
be opened at the library’s bi-centennial.Queens Library is an independent,
not-for-profit corporation and is not affiliated with any other library. The
Queens Library serves a population of 2.2 million in the most ethnically
diverse county in the U.S. With a record 20.2 million items in
circulation for FY 2006, the Library has one of the highest circulations of any
public library system in the world. For more information about programs,
services, locations, events and news, visit the Queens Library Web site at www.queenslibrary.org or phone 718-990-0700.
First of all, a major round of congratulations to FactCheck.org which has been nominated for a 2007 Webby Award (in two categories)! [APPLAUSE] They’ve made it to the finals, in fact, and the RS wishes them luck in nabbing that sucker. For what my opinion is worth (exactly what you have paid for it), I’ve been in love with this organization since they first appeared. They truly are impartial in the dirt they uncover both from left and right wings of the political spectrum, and their analysis is consistently thorough and well-researched. For that alone they deserve to win. If you feel compelled to help them out a bit towards said winning, go vote for them here. If not, well, I have another question for you.
Clearly, Google now believes that it can catalog books for the Library of Congress. Well, maybe it can. That’s unfair–of course they can. Should they, though? That’s a different question.
[Read more…] about Webbys, Google, and The Ultimate Computer
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies–‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’"
—from "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater."
There’s more to say and point to today–like this, and this and this–but it’ll wait until tomorrow.
But be assured that I only want you for your mind. More importantly, I want you for your knowledge of and expertise with digital cameras, face-up copiers, flatbed scanners and digital data formats.
The project we’re talking about is funded by a grant from the New York Metropolitan Library Council and deals with original printed material from 1829 or so. The subject material is an original history of the case of William Burke and William Hare who were tried and convicted of exhuming corpses for sale to the University of Edinburgh for use in clinical medical study.
The work is paid, part-time and would last from April to September. If you are interested (or know someone who might be), the website to respond to is here.
Time is of the essence, so the sooner you respond the sooner your resume is likely to be looked at by myself and HR. We’re hoping to get someone into place in the next 2 weeks.
I’m looking forward to working with you.
If you’re not in the habit of reading Tomdispatch.com on a regular basis, this is definitely the time to start. The reason being that Chip Ward has penned an excellent article for the site titled "What They Didn’t teach us In Library School: The Public Library as an Asylum for the Homeless." Now as a point of fact, my reference class at QC did touch on this point but more in a hypothetical sense, as a thought exercise regarding how libraries might be forced to deal with community issues such as (in this case) homelessness. No hard and fast rules were given to us as there are no hard and fast rules to such issues, but it’s something that I hear about more and more frequently in my own circles.
While you read you should probably keep in mind that the directors of public policy who have essentially created the myth that "homelessness has always been with us" (when in reality, chronic homelessness as a social phenomenon was very hard to find in the U.S. before the 1980s barring major economic dislocations like the Great Depression) and the public policy folks who fund public libraries tend to be the same people, or at least people who travel in the same social and financial circles. As Tony Robbins might say, "Hmmm. Something to think about."