November 2015

A public library is set to open next year in a polygamous town on the Utah-Arizona border that hasn’t had one for decades because of controlling sect leaders who try to limit followers’ exposure to the outside world.

The library is expected to open in March 2016, Washington County Library System director Joel Tucker said. The plan is to put the library in an old schoolhouse the center of town, near the public school and town hall in Hildale, Utah.

The community is dominated by a polygamous sect led by jailed leader Warren Jeffs. He and other sect leaders try to limit members’ exposure to the outside world by prohibiting Internet and books.

From Public library set to open in polygamous community in Utah | The Salt Lake Tribune

But that might be what it takes for these stores to thrive. What happens when Amazon slowly but surely competes more and more with physical locations? The company’s already expanding its grocery business, for instance, and is reducing the amount of time it takes to ship items to customers with multiple services. Amazon Books — if it’s successful — could easily become an Amazon Market. There are other advantages, too. If an item on the shelf is sold out, retail stores could provide incentives for people to pull out their phones and have the item shipped to their home later on. Surely that’s better than just losing the customer.

From Amazon Books should be the future of brick-and-mortar retail chains | Gigaom

Saeed Book Bank is an institution in Islamabad, displaying 200,000 titles, mostly in English, and stocking more than four million books in its five warehouses

From A Storied Bookstore and Its Late Oracle Leave an Imprint on Islamabad – The New York Times

The incentive structure of a scientist’s life is increasingly mimicking economic principles. While intensely criticized, the journal impact factor (JIF) has taken a role as the new currency for scientists. Successful goal-directed behavior in academia thus requires knowledge about the JIF. Using functional neuroimaging we examined how the JIF, as a powerful incentive in academia, has shaped the behavior of scientists and the reward signal in the striatum. We demonstrate that the reward signal in the nucleus accumbens increases with higher JIF during the anticipation of a publication and found a positive correlation with the personal publication record (pJIF) supporting the notion that scientists have incorporated the predominant reward principle of the scientific community in their reward system. The implications of this behavioral adaptation within the ecological niche of the scientist’s habitat remain unknown, but may also have effects which were not intended by the community.

From PLOS ONE: Journal Impact Factor Shapes Scientists’ Reward Signal in the Prospect of Publication

What if, in response to the terrorist attacks in Paris, or cybersecurity attacks on companies and government agencies, the FBI had come to the American people and said: In order to keep you safe, we need you to remove all the locks on your doors and windows and replace them with weaker ones. It’s because, if you were a terrorist and we needed to get to your house, your locks might slow us down or block us entirely.  So Americans, remove your locks! And American companies: stop making good locks!

From Stronger Locks, Better Security | Electronic Frontier Foundation

The organization once banked on the millions that Google paid for search traffic from the Firefox browser. Now it relies on Yahoo, Baidu and others, and it expects revenue to grow.

From Firefox maker Mozilla: We don’t need Google’s money anymore – CNET

Privacy, as we understand it, is only about 150 years old.
Humans do have an instinctual desire for privacy. However, for 3,000 years, cultures have nearly always prioritized convenience and wealth over privacy.
Section II will show how cutting edge health technology will force people to choose between an early, costly death and a world without any semblance of privacy. Given historical trends, the most likely outcome is that we will forgo privacy and return to our traditional, transparent existence.

From The Birth And Death Of Privacy: 3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images — The Ferenstein Wire — Medium

Some of these libraries offer hidden treasures in the form of rare or out-of-print books, pamphlets and other documents.

“Our library probably runs like most church libraries of this size. It’s on an honor system,” said The Rev. Paul Moore, rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Silver City. “I filter incoming books to ensure that they contain material that is consonant with our mission and ministry. People usually read them while they are here, or if they take them home, bring them back when they’re done.”

From Church libraries offer spiritual, uplifting books

The big question, of course, is whether libraries will have the resources to do the things they need to do. If they can’t find alternative sources of funding, probably from the private sector, they’re going to be stuck. Crowdfunding and social lending are strong and growing possibilities, as Kickstarter has shown. But, as the report says, they may need to provide “a wider range of public and commercial services” as well.

From The Future Of Libraries Is Collaborative, Robotic, And Participatory

Sari Feldman, president of the American Library Association, sees a coming transformation of academic libraries thanks to technology. She says they are taking on greater roles in creating teaching materials and scholarship — and preserving tweets as well as books.

From Video: Campus Libraries Rethink Focus as Materials Go Digital – The Chronicle of Higher Education