June 2012

The causes of dyslexia—the disorder that makes reading excruciatingly difficult for about one in twenty school-aged children—have remained frustratingly elusive, as has anything resembling a cure. Training programs for dyslexics have proven effective at improving certain parts of the reading process, such as phonological awareness and auditory perception.

Once these skills have been brought up to speed, however, there still remains what one group of researchers calls a “vicious circle”: the most effective way to get better at reading is to read more. So scientists have turned their attention to a new question: Are there ways to make reading easier for dyslexics?

Surprisingly, the answer appears to be yes, and the methods experts are using to ease the act of reading are remarkably simple and concrete.

Full piece

Digital-book publishers and retailers now know more about their readers than ever before. How that’s changing the experience of reading.

Full article in the WSJ

Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques
There are plenty of Google search cheat sheets floating around. But it’s not often you get to hear advice directly from someone at Google who offers you his favorite search tools, methods and perspectives to help you find the impossible.

Here are some of my favorite tips shared by Russell at the 2012 Investigative Reporters and Editors conference. Some of these techniques are powerful but obscure; others are well-known but not fully understood by everyone.

A mother of five was put into handcuffs and hauled off to jail for neglecting to return her library book.

Story from the LA Times Jacket Copy. The incarcerated woman, who borrowed the book from the Portales NM Library, plans to sue.

Jenica Rogers, on her blog Attempting Elegance, has a compelling essay today entitled “Killing Fear, Part 1: The Problem.” After discussing the changing expectations of students, the changing attitudes of librarians, and the undeniable policy and service shifts in academic libraries, she discusses revealing findings about what faculty still think it is a library should be doing. It boils down to teaching and facilitating information seeking behavior vs buying and archiving materials. 

Her conclusion:

Put simply, there’s a contradiction between these faculty expectations and emergent and clearly evident trends in information, libraries, and our future. This particular stakeholder group seems to want the very traditional services and roles that others are pointing out are now part of a legacy model.

An interesting read, and I look forward to the presumed Part 2.

 (Updated to fix link to original article. – aw)

If you noticed news organizations trying to interpret and analyze the health care case this morning here is one reason why that was hard to do on the fly. The opinion is 193 pages long.

At the Supreme Court site under slip opinions they do not have a link up yet. But the opinion is on the website here.

Here is the story from one news source if you had not heard about this yet: Health Law Survives With Roberts’ Vote

Eventually the opinion should show on this page: 2011 Term Opinions of the Court

Salon asked which books you think kids should never have to read in school.

Piece at Salon.com

Barry H. Landau, the once-esteemed collector of presidential memorabilia, was sentenced seven years in federal prison Wednesday for stealing thousands of historic documents from archives and libraries in Baltimore and up the East Coast.

The 64-year-old was also ordered to pay roughly $46,000 in restitution. No sentencing date is yet set for his 25-year-old accomplice, Jason James Savedoff, who, like Landau, has pleaded guilty to theft of major artwork and conspiracy charges.

Full article

From the article:

The creator of the hit animated series “Family Guy” has donated a vast trove of the late astronomer Carl Sagan’s papers to the Library of Congress, officials announced today (June 27).

Writer, producer and director Seth MacFarlane gave the U.S. Library of Congress — the largest library in the world — about 800 boxes of material documenting Sagan’s life and work. The papers include book drafts, “idea files” on various subjects and Sagan’s extensive correspondence.

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