May 2016

The book worm has turned.

Local libraries are making noise about eBook prices, saying that they pay multinational publishers up to five times more than average consumers do for the same titles.

And libraries — including ones in Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax and Vancouver — say they’d like things to change, so that they can pay according to their size and needs, rather than using the current one-size-fits-all model.

From Libraries feel the eBook pinch | Toronto Star

The book worm has turned.

Local libraries are making noise about eBook prices, saying that they pay multinational publishers up to five times more than average consumers do for the same titles.

And libraries — including ones in Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax and Vancouver — say they’d like things to change, so that they can pay according to their size and needs, rather than using the current one-size-fits-all model.

From Libraries feel the eBook pinch | Toronto Star

Alexie tells NPR’s David Greene that he found inspiration for the book in a surprising place: his own father’s funeral. “As they lowered the coffin into the grave, his tombstone came into view and on the tombstone is Sherman Alexie — his name, my name,” Alexie says. “And I’d always struggled with being named after him, but the existential weight of being named after your father really, really becomes clear when you’re looking at a tombstone with your name on it.”

From Sherman Alexie On His New Kids’ Book (‘Thunder Boy Jr.’) And The Angst Of Being A ‘Jr.’ : NPR

Alexie tells NPR’s David Greene that he found inspiration for the book in a surprising place: his own father’s funeral. “As they lowered the coffin into the grave, his tombstone came into view and on the tombstone is Sherman Alexie — his name, my name,” Alexie says. “And I’d always struggled with being named after him, but the existential weight of being named after your father really, really becomes clear when you’re looking at a tombstone with your name on it.”

From Sherman Alexie On His New Kids’ Book (‘Thunder Boy Jr.’) And The Angst Of Being A ‘Jr.’ : NPR

Indeed, China’s Firewall is far more sophisticated and multi-tiered than a simple on-off switch: It is an attempt to bridge one of the country’s most fundamental contradictions — to have an economy intricately connected to the outside world but a political culture closed off from such “Western values” as free speech and democracy.

From China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works. – The Washington Post

Indeed, China’s Firewall is far more sophisticated and multi-tiered than a simple on-off switch: It is an attempt to bridge one of the country’s most fundamental contradictions — to have an economy intricately connected to the outside world but a political culture closed off from such “Western values” as free speech and democracy.

From China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works. – The Washington Post

…but censorship using the DMCA is common online. The act allows web hosts a certain amount of immunity from claims of copyright infringement through what is known as the “safe harbour” rules: in essence, a host isn’t responsible for hosting infringing material provided they didn’t know about it when it went up, and took it down as soon as they were told about it.

In practice, however, this means that web hosts (and the term is broadly interpreted, meaning sites like YouTube, Twitter and Google count) are forced to develop a hair-trigger over claims of copyright infringement, assuming guilt and asking the accused to prove their innocence.

From Revealed: How copyright law is being misused to remove material from the internet | Technology | The Guardian

Over the weekend, I decided to try to quantify the extent of privacy leakage in public-facing library services by studying the search services of the 123 ARL libraries. These are the best funded and most prestigious libraries in North America, and we should expect them to positively represent libraries. I went to each library’s on-line search facility and did a search for a book whose title might suggest to an advertiser that I might be pregnant. (I’m not!) I checked to see whether the default search linked to by the library’s home page (as listed on the ARL website) was delivered over a secure connection (HTTPS). I checked for privacy leakage of referer headers from cover images by using Chrome developer tools (the sources tab). I used Ghostery to see if the library’s online search used Google Analytics or not. I also noted whether advertising network “web beacons” were placed by the search session.

From Go To Hellman: 97% of Research Library Searches Leak Privacy… and Other Disappointing Statistics.

Braydon Beaulieu stares intently at a screen as he plays a game on the Nintendo Entertainment System inside the U of C library. The 27-year-old PhD student wasn’t even born when the system was released in 1983.

“These things are like ancient artifacts to me, something I would expect to see in a museum, so it is really fun to play them.” 

From Retro video games invade space at university libraries – Calgary – CBC News

Blume doesn’t have to write because, at 78, she has embarked on a new career: she’s an independent bookseller. Together with her husband, George Cooper, she has opened a small, nonprofit bookshop in Key West, Florida, where she’s working almost every day. And she’s loving it. She had planned “to take a gap year” after she finished writing and promoting her last novel, In the Unlikely Event. “I was going to relax and read and have this whole time with no pressure. And then bingo – the chance comes along to open a bookshop, and there you go. I guess I like that in my life … To learn something new like this, at 78, makes it all the more exciting.”

From ‘People are hungry for real bookstores’: Judy Blume on why US indie booksellers are thriving | Books | The Guardian

Called the medina, neighborhood streets lined with domes and archways take you back through the history of the dynasties and occupiers that ruled Morocco from the 9th century on. At the center of the square is the Qarawiyyin Library, founded more than a millennium ago.

From The Delicate Task Of Restoring One Of The World’s Oldest Libraries : Parallels : NPR

Called the medina, neighborhood streets lined with domes and archways take you back through the history of the dynasties and occupiers that ruled Morocco from the 9th century on. At the center of the square is the Qarawiyyin Library, founded more than a millennium ago.

From The Delicate Task Of Restoring One Of The World’s Oldest Libraries : Parallels : NPR

Meet Jessamyn West, the radical librarian. She just got a big award from the Vermont Library Association for her role in the selection process for the next Librarian of Congress. She’s behind one of the first librarian blogs, she’s annoyed the FBI, and she’s a crusader for keeping both sides of the digital divide in mind as we move further into the information age. Cory Doctorow of “Boing Boing” has called her an “internet folk hero.”

From Renegade Librarian Jessamyn West On Information, Access And Democracy | Vermont Public Radio

Meet Jessamyn West, the radical librarian. She just got a big award from the Vermont Library Association for her role in the selection process for the next Librarian of Congress. She’s behind one of the first librarian blogs, she’s annoyed the FBI, and she’s a crusader for keeping both sides of the digital divide in mind as we move further into the information age. Cory Doctorow of “Boing Boing” has called her an “internet folk hero.”

From Renegade Librarian Jessamyn West On Information, Access And Democracy | Vermont Public Radio

The data produced by SSRN is not terribly sophisticated stuff: number of papers and authors, number of downloads, number of citations, per paper and per author. Lots of other companies and services attempt to collect the same kind of data. But what makes SSRN specific is that it is a well known node in the network—we might say, in the discourse or mind-space—of social science.

From It’s the Data, Stupid: What Elsevier’s purchase of SSRN also means | Savage Minds

The data produced by SSRN is not terribly sophisticated stuff: number of papers and authors, number of downloads, number of citations, per paper and per author. Lots of other companies and services attempt to collect the same kind of data. But what makes SSRN specific is that it is a well known node in the network—we might say, in the discourse or mind-space—of social science.

From It’s the Data, Stupid: What Elsevier’s purchase of SSRN also means | Savage Minds