March 2015

I wonder if the data collected by platforms will at some point become more transparent, and at what cost or contextual shift. Will my daughter be able to sift through my dark data profiles and learn about the egregious number of times I looked at someone else’s profile? Will there be a new round of data mausoleums, offering to sell us peeks at the past? Is data like defaulted debt, ready to be bought and sold at a fraction of the price and subject to a secondary market?

From The Collection and the Cloud – The New Inquiry

It is a library like no other in Europe—in its cross-disciplinary reference, its peculiarities, its originality, its strange depths and unexpected shallows. Magic and science, evil eyes and saints’ lives: these things repose side by side in a labyrinth of imagery and icons and memory. Dan Brown’s hero Robert Langdon supposedly teaches “symbology” at Harvard. There is no such field, but if there were, and if Professor Langdon wanted to study it before making love to mysterious Frenchwomen and nimbly avoiding Opus Dei hit men, this is where he would come to study.

From The World’s Weirdest Library – The New Yorker

Reading and literacy are high priorities for the urban school district, as proficiency rates for its poorest students dwell below the averages for major cities. But the District dedicates no annual funding for school-library collections, instead relying on the largesse of parents or the kindness of strangers to stock its shelves through donations.

As a result, an unequal system has developed.

From Unequal shelves in D.C. school libraries benefit wealthier students – The Washington Post

This morning, Patterson announced his plan to give away $1.25 million to school libraries. In partnership with children’s publisher Scholastic, he will make individual donations of $1,000 to $10,000. The money can be used for books, reading programs or even technology and repairs. Scholastic Reading Club has pledged to match each grant with bonus points that can be used for books and classroom materials.

From James Patterson pledges $1.25 million to school libraries – The Washington Post

The Kids & Family Reading Report is a national survey of children ages 6–17 and their parents exploring attitudes and behaviors around reading books for fun. It is a biannual report with 2015 unveiling the fifth edition in the series.

From Kids and Family Reading Report | Scholastic Inc.

Mayor Nutter’s budget address to city council this past week featured a deja-vu moment.
He apologized for trying to close libraries back in 2008, even though he had delivered the very same apology in his budget address last year.
It was on March 6, 2014 that Mayor Nutter, delivering his budget to City Council, ad libbed a surprising apology for trying to close 11 library branches.

From Mayor Nutter Apologizes Again For Trying To Close Libraries « CBS Philly

So why aren’t people more excited about an increase in multicultural materials for children?

The numbers of African-American books don’t show steady growth, for one thing. 2013 was a very low year. So 2014 looks better, but it actually recorded only 7 books more than in 2008. And in 2001, there were more books about African-Americans: 201.

From Diversity in kids’ books grew (some) last year : 77-square

Clean Reader — available for free from the Apple store or Google Play — is the brainchild of Jared and Kirsten Maughan in Twin Falls, Idaho. He works in R&D at a dairy processor; she’s a dietitian who’s currently staying home to take care of their four children. The idea came to them when they were trying to find books for their precocious fourth grade daughter. “In order to challenge her as a reader,” Jared says, “we had to present her with books that were a little bit older.” But after starting a book she had checked out of the library, she told her parents, “It had some pretty significant swear words in it.”

From This freaking app can sanitize the [heck] out of any book – The Washington Post

Open credentialing systems allow people to control information about themselves — what they learned in college, and what they learned everywhere else — and present that data directly to employers. In a world where people increasingly interact over distances, electronically, the ability to control your online educational identity is crucial.

From Here’s What Will Truly Change Higher Education: Online Degrees That Are Seen as Official – NYTimes.com

I’ve been away at a job with an employer that is in the middle of a crisis. The crisis has been getting worse and frankly I have not been keeping on top of much of anything. When alternative download formats for podcasts were being rolled out, Archive.org was used for storage. Essentially that acts as our backup. Since the iTunes Music Store has dropped the podcast listing for the time being, users looking for old episodes can visit Archive.org to find more.

As to rebooting the podcast(s), we need to take things one step at a time. I need to ride out the crisis with my current employer as it is. Whether or not my current employer survives the crisis is thankfully not up to me.