January 2018

As local-news outlets disappear in America, some libraries are gaining new relevance.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/libraries-local-news/551594/

Oct 21, 1929 – Jan 22, 2018

Ursula K. Le Guin accepts the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 65th National Book Awards on November 19, 2014.

Birdie posted this story first. I cannot make the link work so I am posting a link here. My apologies if the link problem was only with my computer.
Full story here.

Gerald Winters’ bookstore, which specializes in rare and limited edition copies of King’s books, was among the handful of businesses damaged by flooding from the broken pipe in front of 46 Main St.

“I’m horrified. As a book lover, my heart goes out to him,” King told the Bangor Daily News on Wednesday. “I will eventually reach out and see if I can help in any way.”

From Stephen King ‘horrified’ by loss of his manuscripts in bookstore flooding — Arts & Culture — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine

Petosky’s McLean and Eakin Booksellers have borrowed a phrase from the Commander in Chief to promote the reading of books from Haiti and Africa. They are continuing to take suggestions.

In the fall semester of 2018, a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab will be accessible to all University of Rhode Island students on the first floor of the Robert L. Carothers Library. Funded by a $143,065 grant from The Champlin Foundation, the AI Lab is believed to be the first in the nation to be located in a library.

From Artificial Intelligence Lab to be Accessible to All URI Students

The Altadena CA Library has a page of useful resources for mudslide information and assistance here.

They created a list of “learning-related” values and checked to see how often the books promoted them. The values included setting a goal to achieve something difficult, putting in a lot effort to complete the task and generally viewing intelligence as a trait that can be acquired through hard work rather than a quality that you’re born with.

The results — published in the Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology: The storybooks from China stress those values about twice as frequently as the books from the U.S. and Mexico.

From Life Lessons From Chinese Children’s Books Differ From Those In The U.S. : Goats and Soda : NPR

The Dutch publishing giant Elsevier has granted uninterrupted access to its paywalled journals for researchers at around 200 German universities and research institutes that had refused to renew their individual subscriptions at the end of 2017. 

From Germany vs Elsevier: universities win temporary journal access after refusing to pay fees

The rationale is that the pages of books provide a more neutral backdrop than those pesky spines, which detract from the look that the designers are going for, which seems to be a bland uniformity.

A quick search revealed that there are a number of designers who think this is a good idea.

From The illiteracy-promoting interior design abomination called “backwards books” – The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century