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Issue 2 of Google’s Newsletter for Librarians is available, including:

“Beyond Algorithms: A Librarian’s Guide to Finding Web Sites You Can Trust”,
Karen G. Schneider, Director, Librarians’ Internet Index

Okay, so your favorite search engine has turned up thousands of web sites on the topic of your choosing. Which ones should you trust?

“How Does Google Determine Which Web Sites Are the Most ‘Trusted’?”, Matt Cutts, Software Engineer, Google

In the debut issue of the Google Librarian newsletter, we published an article by quality engineer Matt Cutts explaining how Google collects and ranks search results. The most common question we heard in response was “How does Google determine which web sites are the most ‘trusted’?” Here, his reply…

The Free University of Berlin’s recently completed Philology Library is a tour de force of green architecture:

Wrapped in a structure reminiscent of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, the building combines a concrete structural mass with a curved translucent skin that diffuses daylight and naturally ventilates the space. [Architect] Stefan Behling compares the membrane to sitting with a white umbrella under a tree and watching leaves cast shadows to create a play of light and pattern: “In the library, if you are reading and look up from your book, you actually notice how clouds move over the building because the light changes on that surface. It’s like a natural light projection screen.”

More from We Make Money Not Art via robot wisdom.

Libraries411.com “combines location info (and more) about more than 20,000 public libraries in the US and Canada and then merges the data on to maps from either Google or Yahoo. Search by name, Zip Code or Postal Code. Maps contain location markers. Click on the marker to get precise location info, web url and in some cases hours and library size. Narrow results to central libraries, branch libraries, and/or bookmobiles.” Via Resource Shelf.

From The Guardian:

While visits to public libraries increased by over three million last year, statistics released today show that the number of active borrowers and the number of books issued continue to fall.

Figures from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy showed that in 2004/05, visits to public libraries rose for the third year running, with the number of visits up by a total of 17m since 2001/02. However, the fact that the number of books borrowed is on the decline appears to suggest that visitors are using their local libraries for research or for multimedia facilities rather than for their traditional purpose of book lending. Commenting on the findings, John Dolan, head of library policy at the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), said: “These figures are a welcome spotlight on library performance and their timely release means that public libraries services can start the year knowing that more people are visiting and also with a clear set of goals for the future.”

Complete article.

As experienced employees retire at the National Archives, a $300 million digital boondoggle looms:

As a young historian visiting the National Archives more than four decades ago, Allen Weinstein met an employee named Mr. Taylor who seemed to know the whereabouts of every document – from the Declaration of Independence to the latest Bureau of Mines report – in the entire block-long neoclassical complex. Mr. Taylor was still working there last February when Weinstein was sworn in as the ninth archivist of the United States.

Weinstein has a lot to say about the 84-year-old civil servant when I meet him in his vast office, furnished mostly in the generic colonial-federalist style favored by embassies and bed-and-breakfasts. It doesn’t matter that I’ve come to talk about the new Electronic Records Archives project, which Lockheed-Martin will build at a cost of $308 million over the next six years. “What are your hopes for ERA?” I ask the nation’s archivist. “What are your
concerns?”

“I worry about losing Mr. Taylor,” he mumbles, his voice barely audible.

Complete article from Wired via robot wisdom.

National Public Radio reports on Vietnam’s telephone operators, who are offering a type of reference service
in addition to looking up numbers:

In Vietnam, few people have phones and the telecommunications infrastructure is still being developed. But the country offers a unique directory assistance program where callers can get sports scores, weather forecasts and advice for the lovelorn.

Russell Baker reviews Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentano’s The World on Sunday: Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer’s Newspaper (1898-1911), touching on Baker’s beef with librarians along the way:

Baker himself is a warrior in the struggle against America’s throwaway culture, specializing in bookish matters. He has strongly criticized libraries for replacing their card-file indexes with electronic blips and for miniaturizing original documents and papers on inch-and-a-half-wide strips of microfilm. Microfilm enables them to clear shelves of a lot of cumbersome stuff after shrinking it to fit on plastic strips. Since librarians are among the world’s most civilized people (who else does such priceless work so cheerfully for such rotten pay?), most of them probably dislike the carnage as much as Baker does, but they are prisoners of a society that is running out of storage space. As every suburban homeowner knows, America’s astonishing plenty threatens to overflow every last crevice and cranny, every hallway and closet, attic and cellar, garage and crawl space, and finally overwhelm everyone too sentimental to pack grandmother’s wedding pictures off to the dump. America’s astonishing credit cards make us all victims of the sorcerer’s apprentice. No wonder libraries settle for lifeless little plastic photos.

Complete article from the New York Review of Books.

Robert J. Stein, a former Coalition Provisional Authority comptroller and financial officer, has been charged with receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks:

Along with a web of other conspirators who have not yet been named, Mr. Stein and his wife received “bribes, kickbacks and gratuities amounting to at least $200,000 per month” to steer lucrative construction contracts to companies run by another American, Philip H. Bloom …

Much of this money was intended for Iraqi construction projects like building a new police academy in the ancient city of Babylon and rehabilitating the library in Karbala, the southern city that is among the holiest sites for Shiite Muslims.

After Mr. Stein awarded contracts for this work to Mr. Bloom, who eventually received at least $3.5 million himself, according to the complaint, the work often was not performed or was done shoddily, the prosecutors say.

Stein was hired by the C.P.A. despite having despite having served prison time for felony fraud in the 1990s. More from the New York Times (registration required).

Via the venerable wood s lot, an illustrated description of the “wooden library” held by the library of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences:

The wooden library, or xylothek (from the Greek words for tree, xylon, and storing place, theke) consists of 217 volumes describing 213 different species or varieties of trees and shrubs …

Each “book” describes a certain tree species and is made out of the actual wood (the “covers”). The spine is covered by the bark, where mosses and lichens from the same tree are arranged. “Books” of shrubs are covered with mosses with split branches on both covers and spines.

A charming 2003 profile (Real Audio required) of librarian Dorothy Metcalfe, who has been driving the bookmobile around Nidderdale in North Yorkshire in the UK for the last 34 years. From the excellent BBC program Home Truths, and introduced by the late, great John Peel.