For one thing, he was ruthless. Or, if that’s too strong a word, let’s just say he did not coddle his readers, young or old (and as for what he wrote for grown-ups, he is surely the only successful children’s book author to ever get away with writing stories and novels for adults that are often, as my aunt would have said, prurient, and often just this side of pornographic).
From Was Roald Dahl the Best Children’s Author of All Time? – The Daily Beast
W14 – IT Security 101
1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Tracy Z Maleeff, Principal, Sherpa Intelligence LLC
Blake Carver, Senior Systems Administrator, LYRASIS
We all know we should use good passwords, keep everything updated, and follow other basic precautions online. Understanding the reasons behind these rules is critical to help us convince ourselves and others that the extra work is indeed worth it. Who are the bad guys? What tools are they using? What are they after? Where are they working? How are they doing it? Why are we all targets? Experienced workshop leaders discuss how to stay safe at the library and at home. They share ways to keep precious data safe inside the library and out—securing your network, website, and PCs—and tools you can teach to patrons in computer classes. They tackle security myths, passwords, tracking, malware, and more. They share a range of tools and techniques, making this session ideal for any library staff.
From Internet Librarian Program for Sunday, October 16, 2016
The proceedings for the first ALA Conference can be found in the November 30, 1876, issue of the Library Journal, which is available online in HathiTrust.
Dennis Thomison, A History of the American Library Association 1876-1972, (Chicago, 1978), p. 5.
Smith, Lloyd P., “The Qualifications of a Librarian,” American Library Journal 1: 70 (1876/1877).
“The Proceedings,” American Library Journal 1: 140 (1876/1877).
Ibid, 141
Ibid, 143
From “Call for a Library Conference”: The 1876 ALA Conference
Located in Fez, Morocco, the al-Qarawiyyin library is part of the world’s oldest continually operating university, al-Qarawiyyin University, which opened in 859. The library got several small additions and renovations over its millennium-long existence, but it wasn’t until 2012 that Canadian-Moroccan architect Aziza Chaouni decided to give it a total face lift.
From Inside al-Qarawiyyin, the oldest library in the world – Tech Insider
“Libraries are really gathering places,” says Jon Voss, the strategic partnerships director of Historypin. The global nonprofit is one of 14 winners of the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge on Libraries. “In popular thought or literature, we think of them as storehouses for materials, but that’s really changed in the past 20 years at least.”
In February, the Knight Foundation challenged people to reimagine libraries to fit the information needs of the 21st century. More than 600 groups submitted proposals, including some that would turn libraries into environmental monitoring hubs and spaces for children to interact with incarcerated parents. The winners will share a $1.6 million grant to realize their visions.
When a big-box store skips town for wider asphalt prairies, it leaves behind a great, empty space, waiting to be snatched up by a similarly large replacement. If, like me, you hope for a good use for these spaces, these libraries built in old big-box stores will blow your mind.
From These Libraries Built In Old Big-Box Stores Will Blow Your Mind | Bustle
In the early to mid twentieth century, the majority of the city’s libraries had live-in superintendents. Like the superintendents who still live in many of the city’s residential buildings, these caretakers both worked and lived in the buildings for which they were responsible. This meant that for decades, behind the stacks, meals were cooked, baths and showers were taken, and bedtime stories were read. And yes, families living in the city’s libraries typically did have access to the stacks at night—an added bonus if they happened to need a new bedtime book after hours.
From Life Behind the Stacks: The Secret Apartments of New York Libraries | 6sqft
The last decade has seen an enormous increase in the number of peer-reviewed open access research journals in which authors whose articles are accepted for publication pay a fee to have them made freely available on the Internet. Could this popularity of open access publishing be a bad thing? Is it actually imperiling the future of science? In this commentary, I argue that it is. Drawing upon research literature, I explain why it is almost always best to publish in society journals (i.e., those sponsored by research societies such as Journal of Wildlife Management) and not nearly as good to publish in commercial academic journals, and worst—to the point it should normally be opposed—to publish in open access journals (e.g., PLOS ONE). I compare the operating plans of society journals and open access journals based on 2 features: the quality of peer review they provide and the quality of debate the articles they publish receive. On both features, the quality is generally high for society journals but unacceptably low for open access journals, to such an extent that open access publishing threatens to pollute science with false findings. Moreover, its popularity threatens to attract researchers’ allegiance to it and away from society journals, making it difficult for them to achieve their traditionally high standards of peer reviewing and of furthering debate. I prove that the commonly claimed benefits to science of open access publishing are nonexistent or much overestimated. I challenge the notion that journal impact factors should be a key consideration in selecting journals in which to publish. I suggest ways to strengthen the Journal and keep it strong.
Information overload is something that’s been plaguing me for a while. It was only recently that I decided to take the time to understand why my brain doesn’t work the way it used to. I needed to do this to understand myself. The first step in admitting you have a problem is understanding that problem. I have an information problem. This is a millennial’s quest to understand information overload while struggling against it. Here’s everything I’ve learned.
The best indicator of high intelligence on Facebook is apparently liking a page for curly fries. At least, that’s according to computer scientist Jennifer Golbeck (TED Talk: The curly fry conundrum), whose job is to figure out what we reveal about ourselves through what we say — and don’t say — online. Of course, the lines between online and “real” are increasingly blurred, but as Golbeck and privacy economist Alessandro Acquisti (TED Talk: Why privacy matters) both agree, that’s no reason to stop paying attention. TED got the two together to discuss what the web knows about you, and what we can do about the things we’d rather it forgot. An edited version of the conversation follows.
From What are you revealing online? Much more than you think |
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