June 2012

For enlightening summer reading, students should read nonfiction.

Full piece

A 451 Internet error code? Digital Trends has the details:

“Government-imposed online censorship has become increasingly prevalent over the past few years…When censorship does happen, we need a sign that clearly tells us that that’s the reason for a site’s inaccessibility.

Enter Tim Bray, a software developer at Google who has proposed a solution: a “451? error code that displays anytime you visit a site blocked by the government. The number 451 is in honor of late author Ray Bradbury, whose science fiction classic Fahrenheit 451, first published in 1950, warned of a dystopian world defined by government-imposed censorship (in the form of burning any house that contains books).”

Stoop Stories: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn With Librarian Rita Meade
It’s one thing to work or live in a community. It’s another to really be a part of it. Rita Meade, the children’s librarian at the New Utrecht Library at 1743 86th Street, doesn’t just occupy her daytime hours there; she really loves and gives to her branch and community.

She is a member of Community Board 10 and speaks at Board 10 meetings in order to secure support for the local libraries, plays in an all-librarian rock band and encourages our youth to read novels like War and Peace. All in all, she’s pretty cool.

Check out this week’s Stoop Stories and after, go and support your local libraries!

From the New York Times: Yonkers, NY library worker embezzled late fees over a period of seven years and now faces jail time.

Margo Reed, who earned about $43,000 a year and was described as a conscientious, trusted and well-liked longtime employee, was responsible for taking $163,582 in library fines collected by the three public library branches in Yonkers. It was her job to collect fines — 10 cents for most books, 50 cents for new seven-day ones — and turn them over to the city for deposit.

According to her guilty plea, from July 7, 2004, to Dec. 7, 2010, she would regularly alter the collection paperwork to reflect a lower amount of fees and pocket the difference after taking money out of the library deposit bag. Stephen Force, the Yonkers Library director, said officials discovered that she regularly used correction fluid to alter the receipt sent to her and then entered the new number on the paperwork she filed when she sent the money to the city. The difference between what she received and what she reported was usually $100 or more, he said.

It’s summer, it’s a Friday, why not get way over-invested in arguing over a list?

The Library of Congress, the world’s largest repository of knowledge and information, began a multiyear “Celebration of the Book” with an exhibition on “Books That Shaped America.” The initial books in the exhibition are displayed below.

“This list is a starting point,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. “It is not a register of the ‘best’ American books – although many of them fit that description. Rather, the list is intended to spark a national conversation on books written by Americans that have influenced our lives, whether they appear on this initial list or not.”

My initial reactions:

• Why only one book after 1987?
• Where is Dr. Atkins’s diet book? Think of the influence that one diet book, originally published in the 1970s, had and still has about how America eats.

Two pieces on censoring science information:

Journal Publishes Details On Contagious Bird Flu Created In Lab

Bird Flu Research Illustrates Dual-Use Issues

I may not agree with what you say but

Libraries Cut E-Book Deal With Penguin

If successful at the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library—two of the country’s largest library systems—Penguin said it could offer similar deals to libraries across the U.S., including school and university libraries. And the deal could prompt other major publishers that currently don’t sell e-books to libraries to soften their stances, said Matt Tempelis, global business manager for the 3M Cloud Library.

Is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we’ve gained?

Watch Digital Nation on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Rocket scientist Robert Goddard’s Uncle Spud gave him a copy of The War of the Worlds in 1898. More than a hundred years later, it passed into the hands of essayist Amanda Katz.

Full piece on NPR