June 2015

Review of a new book entitled Biblio TECH on how to keep libraries relevant in the digital age. John Palfrey’s lucid, passionate account of the state of American libraries reminds us both how important public libraries are to a healthy democracy and how close they are to going the way of the dodo bird. The author is the Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover.

We are in the midst of a tectonic societal shift from print to digital and without a concerted effort to transform the library into its 21st century equivalent we just might lose these hubs of democracy for good.

The disconnect is huge; survey after survey remind us how important libraries are to their communities while in budget after budget funding for libraries continues to get slashed.

…right in the library. Misfiled.

The items were found during an eight-week search of the stacks. Fourteen library workers searched through 180,000 of the print stacks’ 320,000 items — about 60 percent of the inventory, the statement said.

Amy Ryan is still resigning as President of the Library.

From the New York Times.

The president of the Boston Public Library resigned Wednesday amid a federal investigation into the disappearance of two artworks from the library’s collection, a Rembrandt and a Durer. Amy Ryan, who became the president of the library system in 2008, stepped down hours after announcing new security measures for the system’s holdings.

…a peregrine falcon chick that is.

MassLive reports that a baby chick has hatched on the rooftop of the W. E. B. DuBois Library at the U of Mass. There appear to be a few more still incubating.

The hatching was announced on Twitter, with photos taken from the library’s falcon webcam . Enjoy!

By one measure, the search engine now executes a record one out of every five searches made on desktop computers in the US, a milestone Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella touted last month in a meeting with Wall Street analysts. But Bing’s standing internationally, and in fast-growing mobile search, is a fraction of that.

Still, executives and outside observers say Bing has gone from the butt of jokes and awkward product placement in movies to a tool comparable to Google’s in terms of its technology. The calls to shelve the business or sell it to a competitor have quieted. Microsoft has integrated Bing’s underlying data-crunching technology into its other software, and plans to tie it closely to its upcoming Windows 10 operating system.

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/bing-no-longer-a-search-engine-blip/