On reading this, I immediately had two questions. First, why has this never been a thing in NYC? The second is, how do I apply for a job there? From the Gothamist: The announcement of a floating library makes us wonder why there has never been a library on a boat in one of…
Hachette insisted that Amazon sell its books with “Digital Rights Management” that only Amazon is allowed to remove, and now Hachette can’t afford to pull its books from Amazon, because its customers can only read their books with Amazon’s technology. So now, Hachette has reduced itself to a commodity supplier to Amazon, and has…
If you read my last post–which I think of as "yesterday’s" but is really more like "two days ago’s"–you know that some very smart, observant, and well-spoken individuals think that the Era of American Participatory Democracy is either on the ropes or gone for good, depending on your reading of their arguments. That, if true,…
From WNYC’s web site: Anna Kirkland, assistant professor of women’s studies and political science at the University of Michigan and author of Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood, and blogger Lara Frater, author of Fat Chicks Rule!: How To Survive in a Thin-Centric World, look at the legal question of discrimination against the overweight.…
In the depths of my disgust at the news of the New York Public Library’s name change yesterday I completely missed this rather cool bit of news: Friday is gaming day at NYPL . The article in the time is called "Taking Play Seriously at the Public Library With Young Video Gamers," and it begins:…
Now that the weekend is upon us, I present you with some reading material. No introduction for this article, except to say that if you are (or have been, or plan to be) heavily invested in "the market"–by which phrase we generally mean the financial institutions in which we park our life’s savings in hope…
It’s been years since I edited anything more complex than a typed website column, but this article in Slate about documentary editors–meaning the folks who prepare original hand written manuscripts for the press rather than film makers–made for fascinating reading. Definitely worth a look if you have time today (or any day). And if the…
I know, I know, I owe you a discussion on how some knowledge of cataloging can help you refine your OPAC/web search strategies. The article was begun and then put aside as the Art Institute donated 4 boxes of new books that need to be cataloged, processed and moved to the library. That will take…
I read something like this and I honestly don’t know whether to laugh or cry: LOS ANGELES – The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum can’t locate or account for tens of thousands of valuable mementos of Reagan’s White House years, according to a published report. An audit by the National Archives inspector general concluded…
Even if I were not already a hard core fan of the Economist, I’d think this was a Great Idea: More than 160 years of articles from the Economist are set to become available online with the launch of The Economist Historical Archive 1843-2003. The archive will contain more than 600,000 pages of the weekly…