June 2017

Federal airport security officials have begun asking travelers to take books and food out of their carry-on luggage, prompting some fliers to complain about a further invasion of the limited privacy they have left at checkpoints.

Transportation Security Administration officials say they are taking the steps on a test basis at a handful of airports nationally mainly because carry-on bags are getting so stuffed that screening agents at x-ray machines are have a hard time seeing what’s in the bags.

From TSA tells travelers to take food, books out of carry-on bags | The Sacramento Bee

20/20 did a re-enactment of the Salt Lake City Public Library hostage incident

This is the hidden underside of the browsing experience. When you’re surfing the web, sitting alone at your computer or with your smartphone clutched in your hand, it feels private and ephemeral. You feel freed to look for the things that you’re too embarrassed or ashamed to ask another person. But increasingly, there is digital machinery at work turning your fleeting search whims into hard data trails.

The mining of secrets for profit is done invisibly, shrouded in the mystery of “confidential partnerships,” “big data,” and “proprietary technology.” People in databases don’t know that dossiers are being compiled on them, let alone have the chance to correct any mistakes in them.

From How a Company You’ve Never Heard of Sends You Letters about Your Medical Condition

One of the world’s largest science publishers, Elsevier, won a default legal judgement on 21 June against websites that provide illicit access to tens of millions of research papers and books. A New York district court awarded Elsevier US$15 million in damages for copyright infringement by Sci-Hub, the Library of Genesis (LibGen) project and related sites.

Full article at Nature.com

The alleged perp checked out a book and thus the staff was unable to give her the name of the driver.

Here’s the story from WSBTV in Atlanta. The woman whose car was hit feels as if she’s being unfairly discriminated against.

Interesting story from the New York Times last week.

MOSCOW — A Russian court on Monday sentenced a former director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow to a four-year suspended prison term for inciting hatred toward Russians and embezzling public funds, in a case that her lawyers described as an attack on cultural figures with ties to Ukraine.

The court ruled that Natalia G. Sharina (whose library has since been closed) purchased anti-Russian books and other materials and put them on the library’s shelves to help Ukrainian nationalists get a foothold in Moscow. Her lawyers said that they would appeal the sentence in Russian courts and also seek redress in the European Court of Human Rights.

…visit a library! Not only a feast for the mind but also for the eye.

New York Times has a lovely feature on Italian libraries and their treasures, inside and out.

The Missoulian has a report on the slashing of the budget for Talking Books in Montana libraries.

The proposed cuts merge the Talking Book Library and eliminate the program’s director and one of three reader’s advisers.

The museum dedicated to Theodor Geisel — who under the pen name Dr. Seuss wrote and illustrated dozens of rhyming children’s books including “The Cat in the Hat” and “Green Eggs and Ham” — features interactive exhibits, artwork never before displayed publicly and explains how his childhood experiences in the city about 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of Boston shaped his work.

Full article

On C-Span BookTV

Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) talked about his book The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis–and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance, in which he looks at how to engage adolescents and young adults to become independent, active, and engaged citizens. He was interviewed by Steven Olikara.
See video here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?428117-2/words-senator-ben-sasse