LISNews: Librarian News

"I bet you don’t know that librarians have, right from the start, been at the forefront of the digital information age. Librarians recognized the potential for providing even more information-based services with the advent of Internet based hypermedia. Libraries and librarians have also been stalwart in protecting the intellectual property of content creators and at the same advocating for ‘fair use’ of information all kinds. I’m pretty sure that a very important court decision slipped under your radar this week. So you’re hearing it first on Carpe Librum."

Seems Like A Bad Idea...

Principal of Madison Park Primary David Lawton said books would become a "thing of the past".

"The day has arrived - iPads are here ... look out books," Mr Lawton told the News Review Messenger.

"School library budgets are being lowered and our budgets for technology are higher, so it's only a matter of time before technology takes over from the traditional way of teaching.

It’s Genre. Not That There’s Anything Wrong With It! Read more
"What I’m trying to say is that “genre” is not a bad word, although perhaps the better word for novels that taxonomically register as genre is simply “commercial.” Born to sell, these novels stick to the trite-and-true, relying on stock characters whose thoughts spool out in Lifetime platitudes. There will be exceptions, as there are in every field, but, for the most part, the standard genre or commercial novel isn’t going to break the sea frozen inside us. If this sounds condescending, so be it. Commercial novels, in general, whether they’re thrillers or romance or science fiction, employ language that is at best undistinguished and at worst characterized by a jejune mentality and a tendency to state the obvious. Which is not to say that some literary novels, as more than a few readers pointed out to me, do not contain a surfeit of decorative description, elaborate psychologizing, and gleams of self-conscious irony. To which I say: so what? "

Digging through the clutter of the online world: A Q&A with TED Books author Jim Hornthal
The latest TED Book deals with an issue we all can relate too: the difficulty of finding answers to complex questions on the Internet when a simple search can lead you down a rabbit hole of impersonal data. In A Haystack Full of Needles: Cutting Through the Clutter of the Online World to Find a Place, Partner or President, Jim Hornthal explores groundbreaking new approaches to discovering the useful insights buried deep within our complex and noisy datasphere. Hornthal, a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, introduces us to innovators who are pushing the edges of data science and data visualization by applying the principles of pattern recognition to isolate relevant signals in the noise. Their efforts will have enormous implications for the way we practice medicine, discover music and movies, and even identify our romantic partners.

Curious to hear more about the ideas he explores in his e-book, the TED Blog asked Hornthal a few questions over email.