October 2014

WESTERVILLE, Ohio – The deputy fiscal officer of the Westerville Public Library is being accused of embezzling funds.

Continued here:
http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2014/10/23/westerville-ohio-westerville-library-employee-accused-of-stealing-20k.html

Excerpt: The problem with Amazon’s market share isn’t just commercial, it is political. It is a legitimate topic of public concern. If Hachette chooses not to publish a book, even for political reasons, there are four other mammoth publishers and hundreds if not thousands of others that can bring it to the public. If Amazon chooses to bury a title, half the book buyers will not see it when they’re shopping for books. In my opinion, that’s not good for our democracy. I think this is a much more important question than how the pie is divided among author, publisher, and retailer.

Side note: If you are worried about Amazon censoring books be aware they are censoring monster erotica. Link to “On the Media” radio piece about this: http://www.onthemedia.org/story/amazons-war-bigfoot-erotica/

Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything

This is a book about everything. Or, to be precise, it explores how everything is connected from code to culture. We think we’re designing software, services, and experiences, but we’re not. We are intervening in ecosystems. Until we open our minds, we will forever repeat our mistakes. In this spirited tour of information architecture and systems thinking, Peter Morville connects the dots between authority, Buddhism, classification, synesthesia, quantum entanglement, and volleyball. In 1974 when Ted Nelson wrote “everything is deeply intertwingled,” he hoped we might realize the true potential of hypertext and cognition. This book follows naturally from that.

Reviews of the book at Goodreads

Online book retailer Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) said on Monday it has signed a multi-year deal with Simon & Schuster Inc, the second Big-Five book publisher, on the future price of e-books.

Amazon, which had been in talks with Simon & Schuster since July over pricing, confirmed the deal first reported by the Business Insider news blog that the two had reached an agreement.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/10/21/us-amazon-com-deals-idINKCN0I92A520141021

The October/November 2014 issue of Cites & Insights (14:10) is now available for downloading at http://citesandinsights.info/civ14i10.pdf

Full post here: https://lisnews.org/cites_insights_1410_octobernovember_2014_available

NYT Bits Blog

Excerpt: Compared with previous Kindles, text on the Kindle Voyage appears both sharper and in starker relief against the background. Graphics, like charts and graphs, look just as clear as they do in any black-and-white book.

The effect is beguiling. If you look at the new Kindle for any stretch of time, you don’t just forget that you’re reading an e-book; you forget that you’re using any kind of electronic device at all.

Amazon says the Voyage offers a better approximation of print than has ever been available on an e-reader, but for me, it’s far better than that. It offers the visual clarity of printed text with the flexibility of an electronic device.

Full article: Voyage, a High-End Amazon Kindle That Beats Hardcovers

Fifty years ago, Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.

http://www.onthemedia.org/story/medium-message-50/

The Omaha Mayor’s Office would like law enforcement officials to be able to access personal information from Omahans’ library cards in emergencies, setting off a debate over patrons’ privacy.

Mayor Jean Stothert’s chief of staff, Marty Bilek, appeared before the Omaha Public Library’s board Thursday to ask for a change in the library’s policy.

The request stemmed from an incident in which Metropolitan Community College police spent hours trying to identify a belli­gerent, drunk man at the South Omaha Library.

He refused to give his name, and the only form of identification he had was a library card. But under current policy, library staff couldn’t tell officers his name.

http://www.omaha.com/news/metro/mayor-s-office-proposes-letting-police-check-out-library-patron/article_0db6d234-f205-506e-be53-b74452c2d8df.html

In the new book and PBS series “How We Got to Now,” Steven Johnson presents six game-changing innovations and how they shaped the modern world. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Johnson about surprising connections between invention and American society.