Starting this fall, the 220-member library cooperative Califa Library Group will begin rolling out a $325,000 project with the goal of buying from the smaller publishing companies thousands of e-books that the libraries will own forever. San Francisco and most other libraries lease their collection through OverDrive, a digital distribution company.
August 2012
The fight for school libraries in D.C.
The fight for school libraries in D.C.
“There is a strong statistical correlation,” said Peter MacPherson, of CHPSPO, while acknowledging the presence of a librarian may not be the sole factor. “But, it matters in a significant way.”
The organization’s findings seem to contradict Henderson’s assertion earlier this year that the school system had not received sufficient return on its investment in librarians.
“They are remarkably clueless,” said MacPherson, adding that while the chancellor is hunting for various and unproven approaches to enhance student achievement, she has ignored “known successful strategies.”
Putting An End To The Biggest Lie On The Internet
TechCrunch sure knows how to write a headline. They cover a bit on a new project called TOS;DR. The site aims to give more power to users by summarizing terms of service, flagging potential issues and rating apps on a scale from A (the best) to E (the worst).
Trust me, I’m a Librarian.
A survey (conducted by Public Libraries Information Offer, hmmm) says, “Internet users trust library staff more than most other providers of online support and information, and public library staff are second only to doctors in terms of the trust placed in them by seekers of information.”
Between You and Me This Isn’t Private
If most websites can’t get password storage right, you can also bet they can’t get storage of the actual content you are trusting them with right, either. The private documents that you stored with your favorite cloud service are probably not encrypted in a way that only your account can decrypt, if they’re encrypted at all. The mobile app or website you use to access those documents may send your password and your files “in the clear,” enabling that shady-looking person on the other side of the café to snoop on you. They may advertise that they use encrypted connections but then disable verification in the mobile app so as to “not complicate the interface.” Someone could hijack your connection and the app would never notify you of the error. I have seen all of these problems in real-world cloud apps used by thousands of people.
The Rise of the Virtual-Plagiarist
The Rise of the Virtual-Plagiarist
With that, I have found a new genre of copying that I would like to call virtual-plagiarism. Virtual-plagiarism is where a book is sold with the appearance that it is for the most part original content; yet the buyer often doesn’t know or realize they are buying free content.
Wikipedia and other open source providers have made the world a better place with their free content. But with all that beneficence, there are those who have found a way to misappropriate it.
Survey says: People do care about their privacy
Conclusions
Here are the researcher’s conclusions:
•The market has produced few realistic, privacy-protective alternatives to the dominant privacy-invasive online services.
•Greater transparency and consent requirements could help, but only if consumers can make decisions that align with their preferences.
•The gulf between private-sector information demands and consumer preferences suggest that better disclosures and choice mechanisms will only preserve the status quo.
•Aggressive interventions are necessary to create incentives for firms to reduce collection of personal information.
•Privacy tradeoffs are not clear; consumers need the ability to change their minds and walk away from a service.
The Death of the Book Through the Ages
The Death of the Book Through the Ages: “Writers foresaw space travel, time travel, virtual reality and, endlessly, the book’s demise; what they never seem to have imagined was that the libraries housing those dying volumes might themselves disappear. After a year in which 2,600 public library branches cut back their hours, some readers will need to walk a lot farther than the length of a street. I’m still waiting for the public library aeroplane. “
Where does a mofro have to go in a library to simply read or quietly study without incessant noise and distractions?
My new favorite letter to the editor!
“In a digital age where everyone from age 5 to 90 is suckling from an electronic teet of one kind or another all day long, the library offers no respite. Fine, media changes. Downstairs is where most of the digital media is kept, aside from the computers that take up much of the space on the main floor. Audio-visual machines with headphones are available, so you’d think perhaps the study desks there would be a good place to study. You’d think wrong, because loud tutoring occurs throughout the day both upstairs and downstairs. A meeting room is where readings and performances for adults and exuberant children are held. I’m absolutely in favor of these and all educational experiences. But where does a mofro have to go in a library to simply read or quietly study without incessant noise and distractions? Seriously! Respectful silence is the most honored and rudimentary rule of every library in the world since the dawn of time. Why does Aspen get it so wrong?”
14 brilliant quotes on remixing
Art cannot be created or destroyed — only remixed. In a convincing talk from TEDGlobal 2012, director Kirby Ferguson explores the challenges of originality and freshness in a world where creativity takes root in what has come before. Without previous inventions we would not have the iPhone, the Model T Ford, Star Wars, Warhol’s soup cans, or the electronic musician Girl Talk. Ferguson highlights that remixing, referencing and reproducing previous innovations allows artists to engage in a cultural dialogue and allows art, technology and society to continue evolving.
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