June 2017

The Librarian Who Guarded the Manhattan Project’s Secrets

Her appointment was a victory for the women on the Hill. Though women were integral to the success of the Manhattan Project—scientists like Leona Woods and Mary Lucy Miller played central roles in the creation of the bomb—none occupied leadership positions.

In this respect, Serber stood alone. As the head of the scientific library, she became the Manhattan Project’s de facto keeper of secrets, a position that soon saw her targeted for an FBI probe—and almost ended in her being fired from the project.

From The Librarian Who Guarded the Manhattan Project’s Secrets – Atlas Obscura

Survival of the smallest: the contested history of the English short story

While bitter experience has shown poetry exactly where it stands in the marketplace, and the novel has shrugged off multiple reports of its death and maintained pre-eminence, the short story is continually characterised as the neglected form that will be great again. The funny thing is, when you explore its history you find the perception of a distant golden age, an undistinguished present and a return to glory has always been around: the short story has a problem with reality.

From Survival of the smallest: the contested history of the English short story

Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?

The core of Elsevier’s operation is in scientific journals, the weekly or monthly publications in which scientists share their results. Despite the narrow audience, scientific publishing is a remarkably big business. With total global revenues of more than £19bn, it weighs in somewhere between the recording and the film industries in size, but it is far more profitable. In 2010, Elsevier’s scientific publishing arm reported profits of £724m on just over £2bn in revenue. It was a 36% margin – higher than Apple, Google, or Amazon posted that year.

From Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? | Science | The Guardian

What do protests about Harry Potter books teach us?

According to scholar Christine Jenkins, people who try to censor texts often hold a set of false assumptions about how reading works.

One of those assumptions is that particular literary content (like positive portrayals of witchcraft) will invariably produce particular effects (more witches in real life). Another is that reactions to a particular text are likely to be consistent across readers. In other words, if one reader finds a passage scary, funny or offensive, the assumption is that other readers invariably will do so as well.

From What do protests about Harry Potter books teach us? – Salon.com

Company removed LNG pipeline documents from Oregon public libraries

“In my position as reference librarian, I’m completely bipartisan and can’t take sides. My job is to make public information available to my community. It is my job to serve Jordan Cove and the anti-LNG community. We represent all viewpoints,” he said. “What I’m most upset about is the unprofessional way the materials were taken.”

From Pamplin Media Group – Company removed LNG pipeline documents from public libraries

Future of Libraries in the Digital Age | Architectural Digest

To that end, when designing for the future, perhaps the most important feature of all is not an architectural element, but the site itself. In recent years, both the NYPL and the Brooklyn Public Library have addressed funding shortages by selling off branches in pricey neighborhoods and replacing them with smaller, partially subterranean libraries in the base of the towers that take their place. The new 53rd Street library, for example, which New York architecture critic Justin Davidson referred to as “a sleek but shrunken pit” may have many clever elements, but lacks the light and space of its predecessor.

From Future of Libraries in the Digital Age | Architectural Digest

Bear is a novel about a lonely librarian in who enters into a sexual relationship with a bear

Bear is a novel by Canadian author Marian Engel, published in 1976. It won the Governor General’s Literary Award the same year. It is Engel’s fifth novel, and her most famous. The story tells of a lonely librarian in northern Ontario who enters into a sexual relationship with a bear. The book has been called “the most controversial novel ever written in Canada”.[1]

From Bear (novel) – Wikipedia

1979 Computer Store Manager Predicts Future

I recently found this interview in my archives. I was shooting a documentary called “The Information Society” in 1979 and filmed this in Cedar Rapids Iowa. Compushop had just begun selling the Apple II and this guy had a keen sense of what was coming.