So why go through all this trouble to provide access to pirated academic research? In a letter submitted to the New York district court where she was being sued, Elbakyan said her experience as a student in Kazakhstan drove her to set up the website. Paying upwards of 30 dollars to access a paper is “insane,” she wrote, when researchers regularly need to access tens or even hundreds of articles.
Elbakyan says free access to academic research also helps promote researchers’ independence. “Today, subscription prices are very high; an individual person cannot pay them,” she wrote to me in an email. “You need to join one of the few available research institutions, and for that you need to conform to … standards that suppress creativity.”
Blake
J.K. Rowling’s new play, ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,’ will be published as a book
When J.K. Rowling announced last October that her Harry Potter series would get a new story—in the form of a play that featured her beloved book characters as adults—fans greeted the news with mixed feelings. As I wrote at the time, it was exciting to see the author experiment with a new medium and a non-Harry-centric tale in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The play picks up the story 19 years after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and focuses on Harry’s relationship with his son, Albus Severus. The casting choices that were later announced—with a black actress, Noma Dumezweni, in the role of grown-up Hermione—were even more heartening.
Leading authors press for Supreme Court review of Google’s digitised library
The web giant’s digitisation of millions of books – many in copyright – faces a fresh legal challenge, backed by authors including Margaret Atwood, Peter Carey, Ursula Le Guin and Malcolm Gladwell
From Leading authors press for Supreme Court review of Google’s digitised library | Books | The Guardian
Congress Starts to Get Serious About Online Privacy
Congress could soon vote on a bill that would require law enforcement agencies to get a search warrant from a judge to obtain emails, photographs and other documents Americans have stored online. This important legislation would update the law to reflect how people use the Internet today.
Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, government agents need a warrant if they want access to email stored on the servers of companies like Google and Yahoo, but only if the messages are less than 180 days old. For older messages and other digital files, law enforcement officials can issue subpoenas to technology companies without going to a judge.
From Congress Starts to Get Serious About Online Privacy – The New York Times
Help EveryLibrary Meet This Matching Contribution Challenge for Libraries
ByWater Solutions has generously made a commitment to donate $1,500 to our VoteLibraries project if we can get $1,500 in matching donations. If we succeed in matching this donation we will have the resources to put ads about voting for libraries in front of 300 thousand Americans through online adspace duringthe primaries. If only 100 people make a donation of just $15-25 donation we can really make a difference. Please donate here today.
From ByWater Solution’s Matching Donation Challenge – EveryLibrary
A Review of the Amazon Books Store
In conclusion, I see a couple of strategic advantages in Amazon Books. Such stores offer to Amazon.com, what Apple Stores provide to Apple.com. Namely a showroom where customers can try products such as Amazon Echo, Kindle Fire, Fire TV, and whatever new products they might produce in the future.
A look inside Harvard’s Undergraduate House libraries
Each of Harvard’s 12 undergraduate residential Houses has a library, and despite their rich histories and outward grandeur, these are intimate spaces. Students spend long stretches clicking away on laptops or fall asleep draped over books during all-night study sessions.
For Taylor Carol ’17, who lives in Cabot House, “home base” is a corner desk in Eliot Hall Library, two floors below his dorm room.
From A look inside: Undergraduate House libraries | Harvard Gazette
Google opens an online store for ‘books that can’t be printed
“Welcome to our bookstore,” reads the blurb for Google’s new Editions at Play initiative. “We sell books that cannot be printed.”
It’s a simple manifesto that marks an interesting foray into the digital arts for Google. Editions at Play is all about exploring the idea of “digital books” — not just ebooks, but books that simply can’t exist on static, printed paper. The project launched last week with a pair of new titles: Entrances & Exits by Reif Larsen, and The Truth About Cats & Dogs by Sam Riviere and Joe Dunthorne. The first is essentially a point-and-click adventure game in Google Street View, while the second is a “failed collaboration” consisting of Riviere’s and Dunthorne’s diaries which readers can switch back and forth between.
From Google opens an online store for ‘books that can’t be printed’ | The Verge
How to Read a Book a Week
So how can we read a book or more a week? It turns out that what works best for me is following some advice I got while I was still in college. Michael Jimenez, a professor of Latin American history, was one of the best professors I ever had. One day I told him that I was struggling with the reading load.
‘Master of the River’: A 71-year-old librarian’s 15 years of water commutes
Today, the head of the law cataloguing section of the Library of Congress has retirement on his mind. Later this month , he’ll leave his job managing the inflow of 20,000 books annually, and his more than a decade of cross-river commutes will cease.
From his home in Cheverly, he embarks on a 15-minute bike ride to Bladensburg Waterfront Park. There, he climbs into his fiberglass rowing shell, which he navigates about five miles downriver to the Anacostia Community Boathouse. At the boathouse he climbs onto another bike, whisking through downtown Washington and arriving at the Library of Congress about 90 minutes after leaving home.
From ‘Master of the River’: A 71-year-old librarian’s 15 years of water commutes – The Washington Post
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