November 2010

Bush=war criminal? RT @oblongirl: Whoa. Just found DECISION POINTS moved into fiction by a customer and found this inside.

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis will include a replica of his writing studio, his typewriter, an unopened box of his Pall Mall cigarettes, and some rejection letters from publishers. He got lots of rejection letters.

Full article in the NYT

Just ahead of the holiday shopping season, Amazon has enabled a new feature in its Kindle store: e-book gift giving. Amazon’s customers will now be able to give Kindle books to anybody with an e-mail address, whether they are existing Kindle users or not. According to Amazon, the Kindle store is “the first major bookstore to offer eBook gifting,” though as we reported yesterday, the Kobo store now also allows its users to purchase e-books as gifts.

Full article

Book created in HTML5 by the Google Chrome team. See it here.

If you were designing a law firm today, would you even have a library? I think many, including me, would answer, “Probably not.” As long as the Internet exists, information that was in a law library will be available online. So why bother, right?

Full article in the ABA Journal

Former President George W. Bush basked in the glow of a friendly audience Tuesday as former Vice President Dick Cheney and others praised his legacy during a groundbreaking ceremony at the site of his future library in Dallas.

Former President George W. Bush breaks ground for his library with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice , Laura Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney. An invitation-only crowd of 3,000 witnessed the event. [ed- love the shovels]

Cheney, slimmed down and walking with a cane, said public sentiment is already starting to shift on Bush’s eight years in the White House.

“When times have been tough and the critics have been loud, you’ve always said you had faith in history’s judgment, and history is beginning to come around,” Cheney told Bush during an hourlong program at SMU Tuesday morning. Dallas News.

The Rainforest Action Network has issued a report and consumer guide aimed at encouraging holiday shoppers to buy children’s books from publishers that have paper policies that commit them to phase out buying Indonesian paper and pulp from controversial suppliers.

Full article here

Rangeview, CO Anythink library system, which The Times profiled as part of its “Future of Reading” series is one of five U.S. libraries to win the 2010 National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation’s highest honor for libraries. Here’s the story from the LA Times.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services, which awards the medal each year, praised the winners for “serving their communities with innovative and creative new approaches to lifelong learning.”

Rangeview appeared in a Times story last Friday that detailed its maverick attitude toward many traditional features of libraries: The district got rid of the Dewey Decimal System, overdue-book fines and reference desks and put in game rooms, big-screen TVs and cafes.

“It’s a departure from books,” Pam Sandlian-Smith, Anythink’s director, said this past summer. “Our emphasis is on creative activity between people and information — we connect people with ideas.”

A few years ago, Rangeview had the worst-funded urban library system in Colorado. Its drab branches were poorly lighted, crumbling and crammed with obsolete books. Less than 10% of the community’s population had library cards. If not for a last-minute measure to raise ­property taxes, its libraries were in danger of being shut down.

Rangeview, CO Anythink library system, which The Times profiled as part of its “Future of Reading” series is one of five U.S. libraries to win the 2010 National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation’s highest honor for libraries. Here’s the story from the LA Times.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services, which awards the medal each year, praised the winners for “serving their communities with innovative and creative new approaches to lifelong learning.”

Rangeview appeared in a Times story last Friday that detailed its maverick attitude toward many traditional features of libraries: The district got rid of the Dewey Decimal System, overdue-book fines and reference desks and put in game rooms, big-screen TVs and cafes.

“It’s a departure from books,” Pam Sandlian-Smith, Anythink’s director, said this past summer. “Our emphasis is on creative activity between people and information — we connect people with ideas.”

A few years ago, Rangeview had the worst-funded urban library system in Colorado. Its drab branches were poorly lighted, crumbling and crammed with obsolete books. Less than 10% of the community’s population had library cards. If not for a last-minute measure to raise ­property taxes, its libraries were in danger of being shut down.

All of this year’s winners are listed on the IMLS 2010 Medals webpages

Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches
A history of the humanities in the 20th century could be chronicled in “isms” — formalism, Freudianism, structuralism, postcolonialism — grand intellectual cathedrals from which assorted interpretations of literature, politics and culture spread. The next big idea in language, history and the arts? Data.

Via the New Yorker’s BookBench…a new Web site lets would-be readers explain their decision to buy or not buy certain e-books: Lost Book Sales.