Library Stuff

Library of Congress Blog – “After a very long time in the planning stages, our “Gateway to Knowledge” traveling exhibition is finally becoming a reality.”

LA Times – “Young scholars face more demands, and more distractions, than their parents did. Reducing library hours doesn’t help.”

WSJ – “Hint: Not with gross-out books and video-game bribes”

Houston Chronicle – “When books are banned in schools, it’s usually because of sex. But profanity, violence, religion, politics, race — they get their face time, too. The same issues that spark hot tempers and raised voices between friends also pit First Amendment devotees against protective parents. Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of the freedom to read, begins Saturday. And for the 14th year, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas has compiled a report on books challenged and banned across the state.”

HeraldTribune – “The aroma of old books is thick in a back corner of the Sarasota County law library, where Nikki Clayton surrounds herself with reference guides and tomes of legal decisions from the past.”

USATODAY – “Now even print books are getting into the digital act. When The Search for WondLa, the start of a fantasy trilogy for kids starring a 12-year-old girl raised by a robot on an alien planet, is published today, it will include three symbols that link to digital maps of the girl’s quest for other humans. Readers with a webcam can see 3-D interactive maps of the girl’s search. Readers without a webcam but access to the Internet can link to a regular map and a video.”

Post Tech – “The Federal Communications Commission is set to reform an annual $2 billion E-Rate fund, aimed to bring faster and more affordable Internet connections to classrooms and libraries. The program has doled out more than $22 billion since it was launched in 1998, helping to bring Internet connections to nearly all classrooms in America. But the connections have been slow and costly, and the Government Accountabilty Office said last year the FCC hadn’t set clear goals for E-Rate.”

Boston Globe – “The strange afterlife of authors’ book collections”

Associated Press – “Stevie Wonder pressed global copyright overseers on Monday to help blind and visually impaired people access millions of science, history and other audiobooks, which they cannot read in electronic form. The blind singer told the U.N.’s 184-nation World Intellectual Property Organization that more than 300 million people who “live in the dark” want to “read their way into light,” and the current copyright system denies them an equal opportunity.”