Walter Betts writes “The Dallas Morning News reports that ‘eight Irving school librarians dropped their challenge to a policy requiring middle school students to get written permission from their parents to check out a book about a teenage boy’s recovery after being kidnapped and sexually abused by a man.'”
Amke
Budget cut at Health Canada gut research libraries
Cabot writes “CBC is reporting that Canada’s top medical researchers may be left scrambling to find research journals as Health Canada slashes the department’s library staff and scientific journals by more than half.
Health Canada plans to cut the science library budget by 50 per cent and reduce staff members from 26 to 10 at the department’s six libraries over the next three years. Four of the libraries are located in the Ottawa area.”
Librarian as Game-Show Winner
Filipino Librarian writes “Congratulations to Aldric Gaerlan! He just won 500,000 PHP (approximately 9,500 USD) along with his partner this afternoon on a noontime show. More…”
Gates & Rockefeller – Owning to Saving the World
http://search-engines-web.com/ writes to share this interesting New York magazine piece, “Bill Gates and J. D. Rockefeller Similarities…
Rockefeller’s life traces essentially the same arc on which Gates appears to be traveling.
Gates’s consolation is that his opportunity to be a transformational figure isn’t lost with Microsoft’s abeyance. This is not a trivial thing. Gates has already changed the world once; now, through his foundation – which is not only disgorging a gusher of funds but inventing a new model for philanthropy, driven by statistics, leverage, and an insistance on accountability – he has a chance to do it again.
By the time of his death, in 1937, Rockefeller had attained an image in the public mind of a kind of secular saint. Today he’s remembered as much for his acts of charity as for his earlier acts of commercial treachery.”
NSA spying on Americans…60 Mins transcript.
mdoneil writes “Cryptome, has posted a transcript of a 60 Minutes show involving the NSA spying on US citizens inside the US without a warrant!
The transcript shows that not only were telecommunications such as telephone calls, mobile phone calls and computer data transmitted over the Internet monitored, but such innocuous things as baby monitors are being used to spy on average Americans.
See the entire transcript on this chilling revalation here“
British Librarian finds Byron manuscript
Suzanne writes “The only known manuscript of a poem by Lord Byron has been found within the archives of University College London.
Librarian Susan Stead stumbled across the original, which had been assumed lost, in an 1810 edition of The Pleasures of Memory by Samuel Rogers.
“I knew Byron and Rogers were acquainted so thought it probably was authentic,” she said.
The poem’s manuscript, which talks of friendship and memory, was dated 12 April, 1812.
It appeared in print four years later in a volume of collected poems.
BBC opens 50 Year News Archives for Free Downloads
http://search-engines-web.com/ writes “For the first time in its history BBC News is opening its archives to the UK public for a trial period. You can download nearly 80 news reports covering iconic events of the past 50 years including the fall of the Berlin Wall, crowds ejecting soldiers from Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and behind-the-scenes footage of the England team prior to their victory over West Germany in 1966.
You are welcome to download the clips, watch them, and use them to create something unique
http://www.bbc.co.uk/calc/news/“
Book Destroyer
An Anonymous Patron writes “Burning the American or other flags is sometimes done to make a point and exercise free speech principles. The blog Book Destroyer (http://members.cox.net/bookdestroyer/) does the same but with books. The site argues that sometimes it is a good idea to destroy books. Sometimes the books are wrong and sometimes the destruction of the book makes an important point.”
LISWiki Breaks 1,000 Entries
John writes “Thanks in no small part to the donation of a ‘library lingo’ glossary, LISWiki now has over 1,000 articles. Does this mean that it now holds a candle to the wealth and caliber of information found in printed LIS encyclopedias? No way. Most of these records are basic definitions, and still other category structures are not developed at all.
But already, several LISWiki pages—such as the collectively-built list of chat reference libraries and a beefed-up piece on metadata—have shown the promise of a general LIS wiki. Library wikis have the potential to grow beyond a beyond a proof-of-concept and become useful resources… if enough people add information.
So if you have some time over the holidays, why not give the gift of your own knowledge, and contribute? Whether it’s a paper you have collecting dust or information on a webpage that could be shared, now’s the chance to show off your smarts.”
A new way to recycle old library books
Star Reporter writes “It’s a depressing sight.
Hundreds of books gathering dust on the ‘de-commissioned’ bookshelf, just waiting for someone to buy them at an absurd, knockdown price.
Meanwhile, libraries find their resources for buying new books stretched to the limit.
What if you could use the old books to bring in the new?
A simple idea – the kind that makes you think: why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?
Well it turns out someone has. Or rather, a website has.
It’s called ReadItSwapIt and it’s a 100 per cent free book exchange website based in the UK.
It allows users to swap old books for those sought-after popular titles.
There are over two thousand books available and 500 users to swap with.
It’s a great way to recycle old books, help the environment and get a bargain.
The site was the first of its kind and remains the only book swap site
that is completely free. It was invented two years ago by two young
British entrepreneurs, Neil Ferguson and Andrew Bathgate, in the hope
that it would encourage book swapping and giving in the UK.
Despite incurring costs running the site, they do not charge members
anything and now boast over 500 users.
“We wanted to create a site that would enable people to gain access to
hundreds of books, without having to spend any money,” said 26
year-old Read It Swap It co-founder Neil Ferguson, a computer
programmer who set up the site in his spare time.
He is hoping that the site will attract a new kind of ethical bookshopper this Christmas.
“Christmas is about giving, not spending money, and that’s really what
Read It Swap It is all about,” he added.
The site is also a great resource for book clubs – instead of buying a new book every month they can swap last month’s title on the site, free of charge.
The site URL is http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/ – please show your support for the book sharing community and build a link to us on your links page.”
Star Reporter writes “It’s a depressing sight.
Hundreds of books gathering dust on the ‘de-commissioned’ bookshelf, just waiting for someone to buy them at an absurd, knockdown price.
Meanwhile, libraries find their resources for buying new books stretched to the limit.
What if you could use the old books to bring in the new?
A simple idea – the kind that makes you think: why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?
Well it turns out someone has. Or rather, a website has.
It’s called ReadItSwapIt and it’s a 100 per cent free book exchange website based in the UK.
It allows users to swap old books for those sought-after popular titles.
There are over two thousand books available and 500 users to swap with.
It’s a great way to recycle old books, help the environment and get a bargain.
The site was the first of its kind and remains the only book swap site
that is completely free. It was invented two years ago by two young
British entrepreneurs, Neil Ferguson and Andrew Bathgate, in the hope
that it would encourage book swapping and giving in the UK.
Despite incurring costs running the site, they do not charge members
anything and now boast over 500 users.
“We wanted to create a site that would enable people to gain access to
hundreds of books, without having to spend any money,” said 26
year-old Read It Swap It co-founder Neil Ferguson, a computer
programmer who set up the site in his spare time.
He is hoping that the site will attract a new kind of ethical bookshopper this Christmas.
“Christmas is about giving, not spending money, and that’s really what
Read It Swap It is all about,” he added.
The site is also a great resource for book clubs – instead of buying a new book every month they can swap last month’s title on the site, free of charge.
The site URL is http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/ – please show your support for the book sharing community and build a link to us on your links page.”Well, there are some other sites similar to this one and this just seems like a library but online in terms of borrowing and returning books and it is interesting for one-on-one swaps, but probably not useful for real library collection development. Just my thoughts.
Recent Comments