August 2016

Conclusions from the International Summer School on the Digital Library

Fundamental changes are occurring in society, education, technology and publishing. If academic/research libraries want to survive, they must also change. Libraries should, of course:

Provide electronic access to scholarly material;
Customize and personalize information services.
But, more importantly, they should:

Experiment on distribution and business models together with publishers (preferably via library consortia, which should be more than just buying groups);
Support universities and research communities to develop document servers and open archives for their own scientific output;
Stimulate universities to change their cost allocation models in such a way that the library budget is centralized, and decisions about scientific information are no longer made by individual faculties.

From A Challenging Future Awaits Libraries Able to Change: Highlights of the International Summer School on the Digital Library

One common thread in Borden literature examines how the police and the courts handled the case. Over the years, writers have explored the investigation and trial to critique both the American justice system and the effects of the press on that system. The coverage of the Fall River murders demonstrates that, even as true crime evolves throughout the centuries, it continuously engages with the culture that surrounds it. Since the early modern murder pamphlet, true crime has asked us to consider how we, as a society, both contribute to and learn from the most shocking acts of our age.

From The Bloody History of the True Crime Genre | JSTOR Daily

Welcome to Academic Torrents!
Making 15.47TB of research data available.

We’ve designed a distributed system for sharing enormous datasets – for researchers, by researchers. The result is a scalable, secure, and fault-tolerant repository for data, with blazing fast download speeds.

From Academic Torrents

I think about this connection between churches and libraries as I walk down the hall to my office every morning — a new church in an old library. The smell is still more new paint rather than old book, but give it time. It has great potential. Already we have received our first gift of that old smell: books from a retired pastor that wait in the hallway, ready to find new hands.

From Libraries and churches | Local News | daltondailycitizen.com

Inspired by the success of Pokemon Go, a Belgian primary school headmaster has developed an online game for people to search for books instead of cartoon monsters, attracting tens of thousands of players in weeks.

While with Pokemon Go, players use a mobile device’s GPS and camera to track virtual creatures around town, Aveline Gregoire’s version is played through a Facebook group called “Chasseurs de livres” (“Book hunters”).

From Belgians are hunting books, instead of Pokemon | Reuters

“The library was a means [for the kings] to show off their wealth, their power, and mostly to show that they were the rightful heirs of Alexander the Great,” says Gaëlle Coqueugniot, an ancient history research associate at the University of Exeter.

From The Fierce, Forgotten Library Wars of the Ancient World | Atlas Obscura

Revisited is a series in which writers look back on a work of art they first encountered long ago.

Alan Watts, Bonnie Nadzam, Emma Straub,Max Porter, Sloane Crosley and others look back on a work of art they first encountered long ago.

From Revisited | The Paris Review

The days of musty books on shelves, bound journals, card catalogs, long tables and rules governing behavior are gone. Now many campus libraries have cafes, group study areas, where talking is permitted, and sofas designed for taking a short nap. Some are even open 24-hours a day.

From US College Libraries in a Digital Age

This piece of advice forms the antidote to the abovementioned instruction for cleaning books: conflicting advice across the centuries.

Undecided on the issue I will, however, continue to make sure my hands are clean as I continue through manuscripts with recipes, especially the alchemical ones. You never know what may have left that stain in the margin.

From Of Dirty Books and Bread | The Recipes Project

Changes at campus libraries are a result of a failed library fee proposal, as well as a 5 percent cut in MU’s general operating funds. The proposal would have implemented a fee per credit hour that would have begun at $5 per credit hour and slowly increased to $15 per credit hour by 2022. Last year, 54 percent of MU students who voted on the fee voted against the proposal.

From Failed fee and budget cuts cause changes at MU Libraries – The Maneater