LISNews: Librarian News

So many people have so many things they can no longer afford. This is an excellent time to be a repo man.

When a boat owner defaults on his loan, the bank hires Jeff Henderson to seize its property. The former Army detective tracks the boat down in a backyard or a marina or a garage and hauls it to his storage facility and later auctions it off. After nearly 20 years in the repossession business, Mr. Henderson has never been busier.

“I used to take the weak ones,” he said. “Now I’m taking the whole herd.”

Boating was traditionally the pastime of the well-off, but the long housing boom and its gusher of easy credit changed that. People refinanced their homes and used the cash for down payments on a cruiser, miniyacht or sailboat. From 2000 to 2006, retail sales for the recreational boating industry rose by more than 40 percent, to $39.5 billion, while the average loan amount more than tripled to $141,000.

Full article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/business/20repo.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Book Review in the NYT of:
THE RETURN OF HISTORY AND THE END OF DREAMS

When Bill Clinton was in the twilight months of his presidency, he made a compelling case that by integrating China into the world economy we would gradually undercut the viability of its authoritarian government. It was only a matter of time, he told an audience of American and Chinese students in March 2000, before a Net-savvy, rising middle class would begin to demand its rights, because “when individuals have the power not just to dream, but to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say.”

Full review here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Sanger-t.html?ref=books

Book Review in the New York Times:

COMMON WEALTH: Economics for a Crowded Planet.

The timing for Jeffrey D. Sachs’s new book on how to avert global economic catastrophe couldn’t be better, with food riots in Haiti, oil topping $120 a barrel and a gnawing sense that there’s just less of everything — rice, fossil fuels, credit — to go around. Of course, we’ve been here before. In the 19th century, Thomas Malthus teased out the implications of humans reproducing more rapidly than the supply of food could grow. In 1972, the Club of Rome published, to much hoopla, a book entitled “Limits to Growth.” The thesis: There are too many people and too few natural resources to go around. In 1978, Mr. Smith, my sixth-grade science teacher, proclaimed that there was sufficient petroleum to last 25 to 30 years. Well, as Yogi Berra once may have said, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Full review here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Gross-t.html?ref=books

Book review of: THE AGE OF REAGAN A History, 1974-2008.

In the New York Times:

Strange to think that Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton University, would embrace Ronald Reagan as the historic alpha dog of postmodern American politics. For starters, Wilentz was trained as a Jacksonian-era scholar; the 20th and 21st centuries aren’t his bailiwicks. Then, back in 1998, Wilentz testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the impeachment of Bill Clinton was an abomination. He also endorsed Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008. Considered by some the heir apparent to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Wilentz is perceived more as an erudite spokesman for the Democratic Party than as a judicious analyst of the Republican agenda. Yet in “The Age of Reagan” — a smart and accessible overview of the long shadow cast by our 40th president — Wilentz largely abandons partisanship in favor of professionalism. Thus, the supposedly inflexible Reagan emerges here as the pragmatic statesman who greatly reduced the world’s nuclear stockpiles.

Full review here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Brinkley-t.html?ref=books

Technology's tight embrace gives us ample opportunity to read the fine print. In fact, we often have no choice, squinting into laptops in badly lit offices, in living rooms, on trains and even in cars; staring down at a BlackBerry or a Palm device as we wait for the first course; or trying to read the news crawl across the bottom of the TV screen. We do an awful lot of work with our reading, not to mention reading at our work. When it's time to read for pleasure, chances are that people, with eyesight already strained, might be on the lookout for a bigger picture.

Full story at Publisher's Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6561932.html

After Marisha Pessl finished her first novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, she got to work on a side project: Calamityphysics.com. The Web site is a companion piece to the book, designed as a window into the life — and dorm room — of the young protagonist, Blue van Meer.

Visitors can pick up objects, zoom in on pictures and newspaper clippings, visit Blue's MySpace page or unfold a map of the Great Smoky Mountains, where the story takes place. A distracting June bug buzzes around a bright blue desk lamp.

Full story at NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89922777&ft=1&f=1032

Any writer who has struggled to “do the words” would take heart from the self-effacing assessment written for himself by Ian Fleming, the raffish Englishman born 100 years ago this month who became one of the most successful authors of his time through the creation of the world’s best-loved spy, James Bond.

Full article in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/books/19bond.html?partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

Seems like no one:
http://myersmotors.com/

Essay by ROGER LOWENSTEIN

Virtually unnoticed during the primary season, the baby boom generation turned 62 this year and began to draw Social Security benefits. This heralded a milestone in America’s aging, and depending on which of the candidates you ask, it spells a budgetary straitjacket or possibly a looming social crisis. Over the next generation, the population of seniors will practically double, to 72 million. With more people retiring and a smaller share of people working, the strains on Social Security and especially Medicare will become evident. Over the very long term, the two programs combined are projected to consume virtually the entire federal budget. A portion of Medicare (the part that pays hospital bills) faces insolvency much sooner than that — in 2019. “The entitlement problem is here and now,” says Eugene Steuerle, a senior fellow of the Urban Institute. “It is so big and overwhelming, none of the candidates feel they can tackle it.”

Read full essay at the NYT.

See: http://members.cox.net/zawsdd/

There is a new product out called: Eye-Fi Card, Wireless 2 GB SD Memory Card. This SD card has wireless built into it. You put the card in your camera and the card sends your pictures to your wireless network. I knew that digital cameras would come out that would have wireless but it is brilliant to build it into the wireless card because now you can change your existing digital camera into a wireless camera.

ALA Editions has released the book Library 2.0 Initiatives in Academic Libraries

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C84Ui75fDs4

Want to see some architecture that is WOW?

Take a look:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ijsendoorn/2233761018/

At the website click on the shirt to enlarge so you can read it. Link

Here: http://www.totheear.com/index.aspx?p=video&videoID=304466

If you are a big music fan you might want to check out this site. The site is called "To the Ear" and organizes cover songs that have been put on YouTube. The web address is http://www.totheear.com

I am trying to get away from Google some. At Reference I don't like to use sites like Yahoo because there is so much clutter on the page. But Yahoo does have a clean search page at http://search.yahoo.com/. Two other clean search pages are Ask.com and MSN Live. I am going to try to use a specific search engine, other than Google, consistently for a week to see if I feel like I am missing things or that my searches take longer.

I wanted to get a larger SD card for my digital camera. Currently I have a 512 MB card. Went online and found that now I can buy 2GB for $13. I paid $20 for the 512 MB card a little over a year ago. Amazes me how quick the prices for memory drops.

Kingston 2GB Secure Digital Memory Card (SD/2GB) $13

See news story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-britain-facebook.html?_r=1&ref=technology&ore...