Library Stuff

Save New York City Libraries from vincentgentile on Vimeo.

NYT – “After 25 years of false starts, the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art has taken a step that will redefine the 80-year-old institution. It voted on Tuesday afternoon to begin construction on a building in the meatpacking district in Manhattan, to be completed by 2015, that will vastly increase the size and scope of the museum.”

Washington Post – “Hessler, 49, is one of the world’s leading experts in trying to decode the mysteries of the maps, and presented some of his dazzlingly intricate research at a Friday conference at the library, “Re-Examining the Portolan Chart: History, Navigation and Science.”

Carol County Times – “A Westminster man was held on $10,000 bail on charges he stole a pet tarantula from the Westminster branch of the Carroll County Public Library Wednesday.”

Times are tough for everyone.

ACLU – “The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of North Carolina today sent a letter to North Carolina Secretary of Revenue Kenneth Lay reiterating concern over a recent request by the state Department of Revenue (NCDOR) for the private records of Amazon.com customers. The letter informs Lay that the ACLU will take legal action on behalf of North Carolina residents who are Amazon.com customers if NCDOR persists in its demand for their constitutionally protected private information. Specifically, the letter says the ACLU and its clients will intervene in an existing lawsuit brought by Amazon.com to stop NCDOR from collecting individually identifiable information that could be linked to specific purchases made on Amazon.com.”

More here

Reuters – “Washington checked out the book from the New York Society Library at a time when the library shared a building with the federal government in lower Manhattan. The library said in a statement that its borrowing records, or charging ledger, showed Washington took out “The Law of Nations” by Emer de Vattel on October 5, 1789.”

British Library – “16 of Europe’s top Libraries, Archives, Universities and Technology Institutions collaborate to map the ‘Digital Genome’ – preserving the electronic building blocks required to unlock our digital heritage. Over the last decade the digital age has seen an explosion in the rate of data creation.Estimates from 2009 suggest that over 100 GB of data has already been created for every single individual on the planet ranging from holiday snaps to health records – that’s over 1 trillion CDs worth of data, equivalent to 24 tons of books per person!”

LA Times – “How things have changed. Years ago, “Sesame Street” was available to children only on television or in the library. But now they can read “Sesame Street” books online. The venerable franchise announced Thursday that a “Sesame Street” e-bookstore is now live. Children can choose from more than 100 books.The e-books include audio, animations and interactivity for kids to get more out of the experience of reading each title.”

Access the Ebook Store.

Mercury News – “DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am at a loss about what to say to our very nosy librarian. No matter what books you are checking out, she reads the titles (often out loud and at a high volume so everyone else in the library can hear) and then comments on your selections.”

Washington Post – “Many people think of the Internet Archive only as the home of the Wayback Machine, the site that lets you see what pages looked like years ago. But the archive is also of the real world, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that makes its home in a former church in the Richmond neighborhood here. Archive founder Brewster Kahle took an hour to show me around the place and talk about its work — an increasing amount of which has little to do with old Web pages.”