February 2016

Congress Starts to Get Serious About Online Privacy

Congress could soon vote on a bill that would require law enforcement agencies to get a search warrant from a judge to obtain emails, photographs and other documents Americans have stored online. This important legislation would update the law to reflect how people use the Internet today.

Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, government agents need a warrant if they want access to email stored on the servers of companies like Google and Yahoo, but only if the messages are less than 180 days old. For older messages and other digital files, law enforcement officials can issue subpoenas to technology companies without going to a judge.

From Congress Starts to Get Serious About Online Privacy – The New York Times

Help EveryLibrary Meet This Matching Contribution Challenge for Libraries

ByWater Solutions has generously made a commitment to donate $1,500 to our VoteLibraries project if we can get $1,500 in matching donations. If we succeed in matching this donation we will have the resources to put ads about voting for libraries in front of 300 thousand Americans through online adspace duringthe primaries. If only 100 people make a donation of just $15-25 donation we can really make a difference. Please donate here today.

From ByWater Solution’s Matching Donation Challenge – EveryLibrary

A look inside Harvard’s Undergraduate House libraries

Each of Harvard’s 12 undergraduate residential Houses has a library, and despite their rich histories and outward grandeur, these are intimate spaces. Students spend long stretches clicking away on laptops or fall asleep draped over books during all-night study sessions.

For Taylor Carol ’17, who lives in Cabot House, “home base” is a corner desk in Eliot Hall Library, two floors below his dorm room.

From A look inside: Undergraduate House libraries | Harvard Gazette

Google opens an online store for ‘books that can’t be printed

“Welcome to our bookstore,” reads the blurb for Google’s new Editions at Play initiative. “We sell books that cannot be printed.”

It’s a simple manifesto that marks an interesting foray into the digital arts for Google. Editions at Play is all about exploring the idea of “digital books” — not just ebooks, but books that simply can’t exist on static, printed paper. The project launched last week with a pair of new titles: Entrances & Exits by Reif Larsen, and The Truth About Cats & Dogs by Sam Riviere and Joe Dunthorne. The first is essentially a point-and-click adventure game in Google Street View, while the second is a “failed collaboration” consisting of Riviere’s and Dunthorne’s diaries which readers can switch back and forth between.

From Google opens an online store for ‘books that can’t be printed’ | The Verge

How to Read a Book a Week

So how can we read a book or more a week? It turns out that what works best for me is following some advice I got while I was still in college. Michael Jimenez, a professor of Latin American history, was one of the best professors I ever had. One day I told him that I was struggling with the reading load.

From How to Read a Book a Week

‘Master of the River’: A 71-year-old librarian’s 15 years of water commutes

Today, the head of the law cataloguing section of the Library of Congress has retirement on his mind. Later this month , he’ll leave his job managing the inflow of 20,000 books annually, and his more than a decade of cross-river commutes will cease.

From his home in Cheverly, he embarks on a 15-minute bike ride to Bladensburg Waterfront Park. There, he climbs into his fiberglass rowing shell, which he navigates about five miles downriver to the Anacostia Community Boathouse. At the boathouse he climbs onto another bike, whisking through downtown Washington and arriving at the Library of Congress about 90 minutes after leaving home.

From ‘Master of the River’: A 71-year-old librarian’s 15 years of water commutes – The Washington Post

The Reinvention of America’s Libraries – The Atlantic

We’re still going! I have written detailed posts about many of them for TheAtlantic.com.  I’m still writing!

Here are links to the previous posts, which represent a large cross-section of towns around the country, from Maine to Mississippi to Oregon.  To me, each library showed a particular strength and focus, each one reflecting the wants or needs of the different towns.  Here they are, with links from each city’s name to the original post:

From The Reinvention of America’s Libraries – The Atlantic