December 2014

Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia printing shop made plaster molds from pressed sage leaves to create metal stamps for marking foliage patterns on Colonial currency. The distinctive contours of leaf spines, stems and veins were meant to thwart counterfeiters, and Franklin’s workers managed to keep the casting technique a secret that has puzzled modern scholars, too.

James N. Green, the librarian at the Library Company of Philadelphia (founded by Franklin in 1731), had wondered for the last two decades if any of Franklin’s actual metal leaf-printing blocks for the bills survived. He had concluded that if one of these castings ever did emerge, it would be “a really sensational discovery,” he said in an interview last month. And since that time…

…such a discovery has been made in a vault at the Delaware County Institute of Science in Media, PA.

From The New York Times:

On Friday, Dec. 12, 1902, Andrew Carnegie moved into his just-finished home at 91st Street and Fifth Avenue, with his wife, Louise, and his 5-year-old daughter, Margaret, to whom he handed the key. Carnegie lived there until his death in 1919; Louise until hers in 1946. Margaret was married there but moved next door. When she died in 1990, her childhood home had long since become headquarters for the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Lovely slideshow on the renovation by Gluckman Mayner Architects which include a new, wide-open gallery space, a cafe and a raft of be-your-own-designer digital enhancements.

via Pub-Lib:

StoryCorps, in partnership with the American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office, is accepting applications from public libraries and library systems interested in hosting StoryCorps @ your library programs.

Funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS),= StoryCorps @ your library will bring StoryCorps’ popular interview methods= to libraries while developing a replicable model of oral history programming.

Program guidelines and the online application are available at apply.ala.or= g/storycorps. The application deadline is Feb. 6.

Ten selected sites will receive:

* a $2,500 stipend for project-related expenses;
* portable recording equipment;
* a two-day, in-person training on interview collection, digital recording
techniques and archiving on April 8-9, 2014, led byStoryCorps staff in Brooklyn, New York
* two two-hour planning meetings to develop a program and outreach strategy with
StoryCorps staff in March 2015;
* promotional materials and technical and outreach support;
* access to and use of StoryCorps’ proprietary interview database.

Each library will be expected to record at least 40 interviews during the six-month interview collection period (May-October 2015). In addition, each library must plan at least one public program inspired by the interviews they collect. Local libraries will retain copies of all interviews and preser= vation copies will also be deposited with the Library of Congress.

This StoryCorps @ your library grant offering represents the second phase of the StoryCorps @ your library project, following a pilot program in 2013-14. Read more at StoryCorps and StoryCorps @ your library.

From Curbed:

The planned library will cost $190M to complete, which should happen by 2018. It will be comprised of 210,000 square-feet of space and utilize a robotic text-retrieval system. Basically, students order the book and robotic arms poke through the stacks to deliver it.

A green roof and cafe space are also in the plans for the new library. The old Paley Library will be will be retooled as a welcome center, with a cafe, classrooms, and gathering spaces.

From ABC News:

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing, who died last year, spent her early years in Zimbabwe. She is still giving back to the country whose former white rulers banished her for speaking against racial discrimination.

The bulk of Lessing’s book collection was handed over to the Harare City Library (at the corner of Rotten Row and Pennyfeather), which will catalogue the more than 3,000 books. The donation complements the author’s role in opening libraries in Zimbabwe, to make books available to rural people.

“For us she continues to live,” said 42-year-old Kempson Mudenda, who worked with Lessing when she established the Africa Community Publishing and Development Trust.

“The libraries she helped set up are giving life to village children who would otherwise be doomed,” said Mudenda, who said he used to trudge bush paths daily to reach remote villages with books.

Lessing’s trust started libraries in thatched mud huts and under trees after the author was allowed to return to Zimbabwe following independence in 1980.

In September of last year, Chinese authorities announced an unorthodox standard to help them decide whether to punish people for posting online comments that are false, defamatory, or otherwise harmful: Was a message popular enough to attract five hundred reposts or five thousand views? It was a striking example of how sophisticated the Chinese government has become, in recent years, in restricting Internet communication—going well beyond crude measures like restricting access to particular Web sites or censoring online comments that use certain keywords. Madeline Earp, a research analyst at Freedom House, the Washington-based nongovernmental organization, suggested a phrase to describe the approach: “strategic, timely censorship.” She told me, “It’s about allowing a surprising amount of open discussion, as long as you’re not the kind of person who can really use that discussion to organize people.”

Full article – The World Cracks Down on the Internet

Post at Publishing Perspectives.

A theoretical plan for saving bookstores and making libraries more robust.

Full piece here:

Happy, uh Holidays? Story via <a href=”http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/12/05/boston-woman-on-mission-to-get-menorah-at-public-library/”>CBS Boston</a>.

Are you a card carrying member? Then you can do more than just borrow books at three branches of the Brooklyn Public Library, you can borrow a car.

As a BPL member, you can join Zipcar now and get $25 in free driving.

We bow to the inventors of this whole sharing thing. The library. They got it way before the rest of us. Borrow it. Use it. Return it. Then it’s someone else’s turn. Genius.

You don’t need that book collecting dust on the shelf. So you let someone else use it. You don’t need a car in Brooklyn all the time, so why pay for it all time? With Zipcar, you share cars with the folks in your neighborhood. You reserve it when you need it and put it back when you’re done.

It’s easy. Just join, reserve, unlock and drive! (Gas & insurance are included)

A blog post about a very unique gift inscription in a book.