An electronic textbook Web site is launching a smelly e-book after finding college students like to be able to smell their books.
A survey of 600 college students conducted by pollster Zogby International found that 43 percent of students identified smell, either a new or old smell, as the quality they most liked about books as physical objects.
Eric Schnell asks Does the Medici Effect Work for Libraries? “Libraries looking to become more innovative can do so by intentionally creating an environment/organization in the Medici Effect can occur. This can be accomplished very simply by strategic reassignment of staff in key areas as the candidate did.”
There are many places to love in the city, but for Mario Toneguzzi, writing in the Calgary Herald “the library is the best. For me, the library has always been a sanctuary. Somewhere I could go to explore new worlds and new ideas. Somewhere to be entertained as well as to be informed. Somewhere I could grow as an individual.”
On the occasion of its birthday celebration, the library is collecting stories from patrons and visitors on their website . You could even win a prize for contributing your story of 150 words or less.
In response to the revelations about White House e-mail practices, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have introduced the Electronic Communications Preservation Act. The bill would direct the Archivist of the United States to issue regulations that require federal agencies to preserve electronic records — especially e-mail messages — in an electronic format.
Current National Archives and Records Administration regulations permit agencies to preserve electronic records by storing them in an electronic format or printing them on paper and saving the paper. Agencies almost universally choose the paper option if they preserve their electronic records at all.
After five years of storage in a Baghdad home and a U.S. government facility, millions of records from Saddam Hussein’s regime may soon be available for review at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
The Iraq Memory Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based group that collected about 7 million documents from Hussein’s Baath Party headquarters just after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, is entrusting the records to Hoover, which has agreed to hold the documents for five years and then help arrange their return to Iraq.
Parts of the collection—which promise insight into how Hussein ran his dictatorship—may be open by the end of the summer, said Richard Sousa, Hoover’s senior associate director.
The Safelibraries Guy gleefully sent over a more colorful headline for This News from Ohio, where Lakewood Public Library Director Kenneth Warren wants you to know there’s nothing private about the 60 public access computers at the main branch. Every 15 minutes, a staff member takes a stroll around the center to make sure library patrons are not looking at pornography, engaging in illegal gambling or visiting other questionable Web sites.
Now the library, which recently opened a new technology center, might expand its monitoring policy by using free software, called virtual network computing, that allows librarians to remotely monitor what a patron is viewing on a computer screen.
Live in or near Knox County IL? Have a couple of old bridesmaid dresses or other formalwear in the back of your closet? The Galesburg Public Library wants them, and plans on loaning them out to teens headed to the prom and other dress-up affairs.
San Diego’s longtime library director, Anna Tatár, is retiring next month after 36 years with the department, 11 in the top spot. She will be replaced by Deborah Barrow, Sunnyvale’s library director and former head of the Watsonville Public Library. Sign on San Diego.
Von Totanes sent this one over: “LCSH, SKOS and lcsh.info: the entire LCSH has recently been uploaded at lcsh.info, which is an experimental service that aims to “encourage experimentation and use of LCSH on the web.”
It’s far from being an ebook that non-techies like me can use easily, but if you understand what Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is all about, you might be able to make it work for you and develop
new ways of using LCSH online in non-traditional ways, aside from not having to buy a new set every few years. More…
A reprieve and a new owner for the feminist bookstore in Minneapolis; Ruta Skujins, a St. Paul native with 33 years in the corporate world who had always dreamed of owning a bookstore, now does. She’s drawing down her IRA to invest in the 38-year-old business, which has a national reputation as a feminist icon and as a survivor. “That’s how much I believe the store can be turned around and returned to its glory days,” said Skujins, 56, who now lives in Minneapolis.
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