Inspired by the success of Pokemon Go, a Belgian primary school headmaster has developed an online game for people to search for books instead of cartoon monsters, attracting tens of thousands of players in weeks.
While with Pokemon Go, players use a mobile device’s GPS and camera to track virtual creatures around town, Aveline Gregoire’s version is played through a Facebook group called “Chasseurs de livres” (“Book hunters”).
From Belgians are hunting books, instead of Pokemon | Reuters
Richardson’s system actually works: they’re using it in NYPL and many affiliated libraries. It makes reading ebooks from the library one trillion times better, and it lets anyone improve it, at anywhere in the stack — it lets commercial suppliers play, too, but prevents them from locking libraries, publishers or readers in. It is a model of how mission-driven public agencies and nonprofits can be truly game-changing in online ecosystems that have been dominated by a single, monolithic corporation.
From How the New York Public Library made ebooks open, and thus one trillion times better / Boing Boing
As users browse the web, their browsing behavior may be observed and aggregated by third-party websites (“trackers”) that they don’t visit directly. These trackers are generally embedded by host websites in the form of advertisements, social media widgets (e.g., the Facebook “Like” button), or web analytics platforms (e.g., Google Analytics).
Though web tracking and its privacy implications have received much attention in recent years, that attention has come relatively recently in the history of the web and lacks full historical context. In this work, we conduct a longitudinal archaeological study of tracking on the web from 1996 to 2016. Our key insight: that the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine enables a retrospective analysis of properties of the web, even though researchers did not anticipate in advance the need to study these properties over time. We evaluate the potential and limitations of the Wayback Machine for this purpose and offer strategies to overcome several challenges we encountered in relation to using its data to study tracking.
From Tracking Excavator
Now, three new e-books set in the fantastical world are reportedly set to be release. While Rowling hasn’t officially announced the releases, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Apple’s US iBook store have all listed three E-Books, written by the author about the world of Harry Potter.
From Harry Potter: Three new e-books written by JK Rowling appear on multiple bookseller websites
All summer, kids have been hanging out in front of the Morris Park Library in the Bronx, before opening hours and after closing. They bring their computers to pick up the Wi-Fi signal that is leaking out of the building, because they can’t afford internet access at home. They’re there during the school year, too, even during the winter — it’s the only way they can complete their online math homework.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/12/opinion/too-poor-to-afford-the-internet.html?_r=0
Writers from all over the world are donating books to the Greenville Junior/Senior High School Library, which is located 90 miles North East of Chico. Students have been unable to check out books there for over 10 years because budget cuts and staffing issues left the book shelves out dated.
Local writer Margaret Garcia had a dream of re-opening the library, so she posted the school’s situation on her blog. Once the post went viral, writers from all over the world started mailing books to the school.
From Internet post leads to truck loads of library books | ABC10.com
Researcher uses Microsoft’s Bing Knowledge Graph to query content from the internet and then pull it straight into Word. Microsoft has a curated list of trusted sources and reference materials which the company plans to expand upon over time. If you add source material, it will even automatically create the citation in your bibliography as part of your research paper. If you’re a student using Office 365 then Researcher is available immediately, and Microsoft is planning to bring the feature to mobile variants of Office in the future.
From Microsoft just made it way easier to write a research paper with Word | The Verge
Story here from FCW.
The Library of Congress was the target of a denial-of-service attack that has knocked out Congress.gov and the U.S. Copyright Office website, and caused outages at other sites hosted by the library.
Library spokesperson Gayle Osterberg told FCW that the DNS attack was launched July 17 and continues to affect library operations, including internal websites and employee email. “The Library is working to maintain access to its online services while ensuring security,” Osterberg said.
There was no information on the source of the attack, which comes just a few days after Carla Hayden was confirmed by the Senate as the Librarian of Congress.
To create a national picture of “book deserts,” the new study, funded by JetBlue, examined access to children’s books in six urban neighborhoods across the United States, representing the Northeast (Washington, D.C.), Midwest (Detroit), and West (Los Angeles). In each of the three cities, the researchers analyzed two neighborhoods: a high-poverty area (with a poverty rate of 40 percent and above) and a borderline community (with a roughly 18 to 40 percent poverty rate).
Going street by street in each neighborhood, the researchers counted and categorized what kinds of print resources—including books, magazines, and newspapers—were available to purchase in stores. (While online book sales have grown in recent years, three out of four children’s books are still bought in brick and mortar stores.)
“How do they justify giving (library) director Rose Vespa a 7.3 per cent salary increase the same year we got .5 per cent,” asked librarian and CUPE Local 1989 president Laura Kaminker, after a strike Monday shut down all 18 public libraries in Mississauga.
Contract negotiations between the city and the union representing about 390 members who work in the libraries broke down over the weekend, with no immediate plans to resume talks.
Late fees won’t be applied while the shutdown continues, and online services are not impacted by the strike.
From Mississauga workers’ strike shuts down 18 public libraries | Toronto Star
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