LISNews: Librarian News

Opinion piece in the NYT

Excerpt: EVERY day, those of us who live in the digital world give little bits of ourselves away. On Facebook and LinkedIn. To servers that store our e-mail, Google searches, online banking and shopping records. Does the fact that so many of us live our lives online mean we have given the government wide-open access to all that information?

Full opinion piece here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/in-the-gps-case-issues-of-privacy-and-techn...

Book review in the NYT of: The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith

Review: All-American Religion or Reason to Worry?
Subtitle of article: ‘The Mormon People,’ Matthew Bowman’s Timely Church History

George Washington's America: A Biography Through His Maps

From his teens until his death, the maps George Washington drew and purchased were always central to his work. After his death, many of the most important maps he had acquired were bound into an atlas. The atlas remained in his family for almost a century before it was sold and eventually ended up at Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library. -- Read More

New book from O'Reilly - The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption

Article on NPR about book: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/14/145101748/is-it-time-for-you-to-go-on-an-information-diet

New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009
See: http://libwire.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-york-diaries-1609-to-2009.html

The Craft of Research, Third Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

Book description: With more than 400,000 copies now in print, The Craft of Research is the unrivaled resource for researchers at every level, from first-year undergraduates to research reporters at corporations and government offices.

Seasoned researchers and educators Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams present an updated third edition of their classic handbook, whose first and second editions were written in collaboration with the late Wayne C. Booth. The Craft of Research explains how to build an argument that motivates readers to accept a claim; how to anticipate the reservations of readers and to respond to them appropriately; and how to create introductions and conclusions that answer that most demanding question, “So what?” -- Read More

Book: The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune

Chuck Feeney was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to a blue-collar Irish-American family during the Depression. After service in the Korean War, he made a fortune as founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world’s largest duty-free retail chain. By 1988, he was hailed by Forbes Magazine as the twenty-fourth richest American alive. But secretly Feeney had already transferred all his wealth to his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies. Only in 1997 when he sold his duty free interests, was he “outed” as one of the greatest and most mysterious American philanthropists in modern times. After going “underground” again, he emerged in 2005 to cooperate on a biography promoting giving while living. Now in his mid-seventies, Feeney is determined his foundation should spend down the remaining $4 billion in his lifetime.

Mr. Feeney is currently in the news for donating $350 million to build a science school in New York City.

Article: Cornell Alumnus Is Behind $350 Million Gift to Build Science School in City

NYT article by David Pogue: Fire Aside, Other Kindles Also Shine

Anyone here own a Kindle Touch? What do you think about it?

The next big shift is now, and it’s not what you think: Facebook is the new Windows; Google must be sacrificed. At TEDxSantaCruz, tech investor Roger McNamee presents 6 bold ways to prepare for the next internet.

Survey Says Library Users Are Your Best Customers
Groundbreaking new study shows value of libraries to the book—and the e-book—business

Story at Publisher's Weekly

The new rental rate will be $1.20 per day, instead of the current $1 daily rate. Redbox prices will remained unchanged for Blu-ray discs at $1.50 per day and video games at $2 per day.

See article in USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-10-27/redbox-dvd-rental-prices/50970590/1

Announcement at Redbox website:
http://www.redbox.com/pricechange

Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism

Americans honor the flag with a fervor seen in few other countries: The Stars and Stripes decorate American homes and businesses; wave over sports events and funerals; and embellish everything from politicians’ lapels to the surface of the moon.

But what does the flag mean? In Capture the Flag, historian Woden Teachout reveals that it has held vastly different meanings over time. It has been claimed by both the right and left; by racists and revolutionaries; by immigrants and nativists. In tracing the political history of the flag from its origins in the American Revolution through the present day, Teachout demonstrates that the shifting symbolism of the flag reveals a broader shift in the definition of American patriotism.

A story of a nation in search of itself, Capture the Flag offers a probing account of the flag that has become America’s icon.

Pilgrimage took Annie Leibovitz to places that she could explore with no agenda. She wasn’t on assignment. She chose the subjects simply because they meant something to her. The first place was Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts, which Leibovitz visited with a small digital camera. A few months later, she went with her three young children to Niagara Falls. “That’s when I started making lists,” she says. She added the houses of Virginia Woolf and Charles Darwin in the English countryside and Sigmund Freud’s final home, in London, but most of the places on the lists were American. The work became more ambitious as Leibovitz discovered that she wanted to photograph objects as well as rooms and landscapes. She began to use more sophisticated cameras and a tripod and to travel with an assistant, but the project remained personal. -- Read More

A Carpenter's Life as Told by Houses

From one of Fine Homebuilding’s best-loved authors, Larry Haun, comes a unique story that looks at American home building from the perspective of twelve houses he has known intimately. Part memoir, part cultural history, A Carpenter’s Life as Told by Houses takes the reader house by house over an arc of 100 years. Along with period photos, the author shows us the sod house in Nebraska where his mother was born, the frame house of his childhood, the production houses he built in the San Fernando Valley, and the Habitat for Humanity homes he devotes his time to now. It’s an engaging read written by a veteran builder with a thoughtful awareness of what was intrinsic to home building in the past and the many ways it has evolved. Builders and history lovers will appreciate his deep connection to the natural world, yearning for simplicity, respect for humanity, and evocative notion of what we mean by “home.”

See: A Carpenter's Life as Told by Houses

A biography says the Apple co-founder’s decision to put off surgery infuriated his family, friends and physicians.

Article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/technology/book-offers-new-details-of-...

The book: Steve Jobs

Story about Amazon lockers in NYC. These lockers allow for packages to be delivered to a locker. Buyer is given a code to open the locker. I assume these are for people that do not have a good drop off location at their apartment.

See article at engadget:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/17/amazon-lockers-come-to-nyc-no-more-getting-caught-by-ups-...

One thing the video shows is Kindle x-ray that is a feature people may not be aware of even if they are generally very knowledgeable about ebook readers.

Kindle Touch, Wi-Fi, 6" E Ink Display - includes Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers on Amazon

The company said it had decided to keep its DVD-by-mail and online streaming services together under one name.

Story in the NYT blog - Media Decoder

Lucid Food: Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life is the first library ebook that I checked out on my Kindle. The checkout process was smooth.

The only thing that is different is that you have to download via wi-fi vs. 3G. Amazon does not let you use 3G for library books. A friend has a Kindle 2 that does not have wi-fi. It has 3G only. To get library books on their Kindle they have to download the file and move it via USB to the Kindle. Not that big a deal but a step that needs to be done.

All the new Kindles have wi-fi so this will not be an issue for anyone that got a Kindle recently.