March 2015

Art Project masterpieces from Google Cultural Institute in your browser tabs
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From Google Art Project – Chrome Web Store

A candidate in the race to be Kentucky’s next lieutenant governor was arrested Wednesday on charges apparently connected to an overdue library book.

Johnathan Masters, 33, a Democratic challenger for the office, was driving to Bowling Green for a TV interview when a Kentucky State Trooper pulled him over. “He said my tags were expired,” Masters told The Huffington Post. “I thought he was going to let me go because he was real friendly, but then he went back to his patrol car and was gone for about 15 minutes.

“When he came back, he asked me, ‘Did you take out a library book 11 years ago?'” Masters said. It seems Masters had a warrant out for his arrest on of the charge of “theft by failure to make required disposition of property,” a misdemeanor when the property is under $500.

“I started to laugh, but he said, ‘This is serious!’ and he took me to jail for three hours,” Masters said.

Masters was booked on the outstanding warrant and paid $100 bond to get out. He is scheduled to be arraigned March 30.

“I plan to fight the charges,” he said. “I’m going to request a jury trial.”

That’s what happened to University at Buffalo faculty member Philip Kiernan, who heard a rumor from a UB alumnus in 2010 that the UB Libraries housed the rare coins.

Three years later, Kiernan, an assistant professor of classics, channeled his inner Indiana Jones and journeyed to the depths of the UB archives to find them.   

From For 80 years, ancient gold treasure rested undisturbed in UB library – University at Buffalo

When we worry about the pace of change, Bell suggests, we’re focusing on the wrong variable. What is important is not that the pace of change is accelerating but that “the scale on which changes have taken place has widened, and changes in scale, as physicists and organization theorists have long known, requires essentially a change in form.” The question we should be asking is not what utterly unpredictable new things will turn up to annihilate our businesses but what form of organization is appropriate to capitalize on them. A knotty question to be sure, but not an impossible one.

From What We Know, Now, About the Internet’s Disruptive Power – HBR

He was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2007, but continued writing, completing his final book last summer.

The author died at home “with his cat sleeping on his bed, surrounded by his family,” Mr Finlay said.

“In over 70 books, Terry enriched the planet like few before him,” he added.

“As all who read him know, Discworld was his vehicle to satirize this world: He did so brilliantly, with great skill, enormous humour and constant invention.

From BBC News – Sir Terry Pratchett, renowned fantasy author, dies aged 66

How cool a job is this?

The game show institution that is Jeopardy! has much more going on behind the scenes than it might appear. Every time you look at that board full of categories and clues, a highly coordinated effort has taken place to make sure everything is just right—including dozens of things you probably never even considered. After all, someone has to make sure that “Who is Harriet Tubman?” isn’t the answer to more than one clue a game, or even more than one clue a week. Billy Wisse is the head writer for Jeopardy! He’s been there a while, because, as he says, there isn’t much turnover on the staff at his game show. And once you learn just what his job consists of, it’s not hard to understand why. Working for Jeopardy! sounds like one of the coolest gigs you could ever hope to land. Read on to find out how the clues get written, what kind of things Alex Trebek vetoes, and what the best question is that you will never, ever see on the show.

Story from AV Club. HT @helgagrace.

Charter schools are far less likely than traditional schools to have libraries or librarians, surveys show.

During the 2011–12 school year, 49 percent of public charter schools reported having a library media center compared to 93 percent of traditional public schools in the United States, according to a survey by the National Center on Education Statistics.

From Charter schools less likely to have libraries – The Washington Post

Remember FriendFeed? It used to be a live social media network popular with librarians. The Register reports that Facebook is killing it off in one month. As of April 9th the service will disappear and it appears that content posted to the service will not be transportable to other formats/networks.

The answer to the first question was “I love reading books,” but it was obvious that there was no career in reading for me. Then I remembered my library experiences as a student, and I wondered if there was such a thing as a master’s degree for librarians. Google told me there was such a thing, so I enrolled in 2002, finished my graduate degree in library and information science by 2004, took the board exam for librarians, got my license to practice, and eventually left for Canada to study for a PhD in book history.

From Why I became a librarian

Bill Watterson, that master of timing, waited decades to give a truly in-depth interview. As he did with his beloved strip, the “Calvin and Hobbes” creator knows when and how to aim for, and deliver, the exceptional. He was in the interviewer’s chair for one of the best cartoonist Q&A’s published last year (his sit-down with the “Cul de Sac” creator for “The Art of Richard Thompson” retrospective book).

From Bill Watterson talks: This is why you must read the new ‘Exploring Calvin and Hobbes’ book – The Washington Post