Library Stuff

Newsday – “Random House is loosening its purse strings with a $1 million donation to First Book, a nonprofit literacy organization. The gift, a multiyear commitment announced today, is the largest single philanthropic contribution ever made by the house, the world’s largest trade book publisher.”

I sense a READ poster in the works…

Scott Karp – “When you place a big bet on a new model, it’s always nice hear that smart people are thinking about the big trends that underlie that model. So it was great to hear Robert Scoble, Paul Graham, and Larry Kramer thinking about human-driven information filtering on the Web — and particularly the role of TRUSTED humans.” (via)

Brad Grier – “While other public and private organizations and corporations are analyzing, examining, testing and ignoring, the Edmonton Public Library soft-launched it Facebook application today.”

(Thanks Estelle)

WSJ – “Thanks to the avalanche of messages they receive every day, many professionals and office workers say they suffer from email overload. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

PCWorld – “University students may be encouraged to be critical but they don’t seem to question Google’s ranking system, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. The experiment involved 22 undergraduate students (with various majors) from Cornell University, USA. It found that overall, the students had an inherent trust in Google’s ability to rank results by their true relevance to the query.” (via)

I’m head over heals in love with Picnik, but I’m always on the watch for others. I’ll have to try out FotoFlexer when I get a chance. (via)

Christopher Harris – “The thing is, I am very happy with my job. Our department gets to work sort of like a startup company with flexibility to try new ideas that can later be transitioned into production in another part of the organization”

Shelf crash 1

Originally uploaded by library_mistress

More here.

Sarah Milstein – “It’s unfashionable to admit these days, but 14 years after getting my first account, I still like email. Of course, the volume is crushing, and so lately, I’ve been experimenting with email reduction. I’m getting good results with two key concepts that hardly anyone talks about and that focus on your sending habits rather than your inbox management.”