Category Archives: Librarianship

8 Treasures That Are Too Precious To Display In Museums (PHOTOS) | Molly Oldfield | HuffPo

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I traveled the globe to the world’s most interesting museums, bypassing the main galleries in favor of the things you can’t usually see. The things I found were astounding; in the basement of the Royal Society in London, I put my eye to Newton’s telescope, just as he did centuries ago in his lab in the Tower of London; in Edinburgh I pored over the original draft of Auld Lang Syne, now sung all over the world at New Year; at the New York Public Library I held a letter opener which belonged to Dickens — the handle was made the paw of his beloved cat Bob; and in the Vatican observatory in the countryside outside Rome, I marveled at pieces of Mars.

Two years of adventures later I had written the stories of sixty objects, their hidden location and the curators who care for them. These tales of hidden treasures make up The Secret Museum. It’s impossible to pick a favorite because I love them all, but here’s a taster to get you started. Hopefully you’ll dip into your own copy and find personal favorite treasures to enjoy.

See them all: 8 Treasures That Are Too Precious To Display In Museums (PHOTOS) | Molly Oldfield.

Flag from the Battle of Trafalgar

News: Education & Technology, Librarianship

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Education & Technology

With MakerBot Academy, the 3-D Printing Movement Aims for Schools | AllThingsD
The company announced on Tuesday an initiative to begin seeding its Replicator 3-D printing machines inside of K-12 schools across the U.S. The effort comes in partnership with DonorsChoose.org, a site that allows public school teachers to make online requests for classroom projects, which are then backed by a Kickstarter-like funding drive.

Twitter goes for the masses with new storytelling feature | CNET
Twitter excels in capturing the “moment” as events happen, but it isn’t great at telling a story. With custom timelines, the company hopes to lure a broader audience by giving it coherent narratives rather than just the raw materials.

Librarianship

How Iran Uses Wikipedia To Censor The Internet | BuzzFeed
A new study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School claims that Wikipedia might hold the key to understanding how Iran censors, and controls, the internet. The answer, in four words: with a heavy hand.

News: Books & Publishing, Music & Film

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Books & Publishing

Music & Film

The Ultimate Guide to the Invisible Web | OEDB.org

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Search engines are, in a sense, the heartbeat of the internet; “googling” has become a part of everyday speech and is even recognized by Merriam-Webster as a grammatically correct verb. It’s a common misconception, however, that googling a search term will reveal every site out there that addresses your search. In fact, typical search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing actually access only a tiny fraction – estimated at 0.03% – of the internet. The sites that traditional searches yield are part of what’s known as the Surface Web, which is comprised of indexed pages that a search engine’s web crawlers are programmed to retrieve.

So where’s the rest? The vast majority of the Internet lies in the Deep Web, sometimes referred to as the Invisible Web. The actual size of the Deep Web is impossible to measure, but many experts estimate it is about 500 times the size of the web as we know it.

Deep Web pages operate just like any other site online, but they are constructed so that their existence is invisible to Web crawlers. While recent news, such as the bust of the infamous Silk Road drug-dealing site and Edward Snowden’s NSA shenanigans, have spotlighted the Deep Web’s existence, it’s still largely misunderstood.

Read more: The Ultimate Guide to the Invisible Web | OEDB.org.

Eye-opening and informative post. Topics discussed:

  • Search Engines and the Surface Web
  • How is the Deep Web Invisible to Search Engines?
  • How to Access and Search for Invisible Content
  • Invisible Web Search Tools

News: Books & Publishing, Music & Film

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Books & Publishing

‘City on Fire,’ a Debut Novel, Fetches Nearly $2 Million | TNYT
Donna Tartt’s novel “The Goldfinch” has 771 pages. “The Luminaries” by Eleanor Catton, winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize, is 834 pages long. And then there is “City on Fire,” the 900-page debut novel that took the publishing industry by storm last week. It was even more evidence that the long novel is experiencing a resurgence, as a dozen publishers competed for the rights to release the book, set in New York City in the 1970s.

Music & Film

Hey MPAA, Why Are PG-13 Movies More Violent Than R-Rated Ones? | Flavorwire
A new study from the Annenberg Public Policy Center finds something more disturbing: though initial PG-13 films contained about as much gun violence as G or PG-rated pictures, “since 2009, PG-13-rated films have contained as much or more violence as R-rated films” (emphasis mine). And hey, funny story, that rise matches gun violence off-screen too.

News: Education & Technology, Librarianship

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Education & Technology

The LA Times Trolls Innocent Teachers | TechCrunch
The once-respectable LA Times is leveraging its dwindling platform to attack individual teachers under the guise of data transparency. The editorial board won a court case allowing them to use a highly contentious, self-designed algorithm to rank the best and worst teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Neither the suicide of one of the shamed teachers, nor the widespread criticism of the statistical methods have aroused the editorial board’s better judgment.

Google Earth Tour Builder lets you tell stories through maps | Engadget
Google has used Earth and Maps to tell tales of unfolding tragedies and soldiers fighting for our country. Now its opening up those tools to the public, allowing users to build what they’re calling “Tours” through Google Earth. Tour Builder was released in honor of Veterans Day and it allows users to create narratives tied to points on a map. More Google news: Google Quick Actions Let Users Act on Emails Without Opening Them | Mashable, Your Face and Name Will Appear in Google Ads Starting Today | Gizmodo and Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won | theguardian

Librarianship

Community Is Key to Successful Library Maker Spaces | The Digital Shift

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The most important resource for creating a successful library maker space—whether in a school or public library—is one’s own community, according to librarians Justin Hoenke, Amy Koester, and Michelle Cooper. Strong relationships and community involvement, not big budgets and high-tech gadgetry, are key to reaching children and teens, the trio of makers say.

The experts shared details of their programming for kids and their top maker strategies during “The Community Joins In: Library Maker Spaces,” a midday session of The Digital Shift: Reinventing Libraries (#TDS13) webcast on October 16, moderated by Hoenke, the new teen librarian at the Chattanooga (TN) Public Library and 2013 Library Journal Mover &  Shaker. And since the event, the trio has created a Pinterest page filled with maker space advice, links, and takeaways.

Read more: Community Is Key to Successful Library Maker Spaces | The Digital Shift.

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A Genius of Book Design Creates a Tome With No Ink | Wired.com

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A Genius of Book Design Creates a Tome With No Ink | Wired Design | Wired.com

Irma Boom designed a book for the perfume Chanel No. 5. Image: Jonathan Leijonhufvud

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Irma Boom has designed some of the coolest books ever put on a bookshelf. Throughout her career, the Amsterdam-based designer has made more than 250 volumes, and a staggering 20 percent have found a home in a permanent collection at MoMA. They really are works of art, though Boom herself is vehemently against calling them so. “I do not consider and approach my work as art. I do push the boundaries of bookmaking, but it is never art,” she says. “Books are not unique—it is commissioned work, it is a reproduction.”

Ok, so maybe art isn’t quite the right word, but what Boom creates is often more than just a book as we typically know it. A book by Boom is an experience, an object to be appreciated in its own right, even when its technically just a vehicle for another artist. Most recently, she completed a book commissioned by Chanel, the Parisian fashion house, for its Chanel No. 5 perfume. And in classic Boom style, it’s not what you’d expect. The 300-page book has no ink—each of the crisp white pages is embossed with a drawing or quotation that helps the story of Gabrielle Chanel unfold. It’s clean, understated and ephemeral, and somehow still totally engrossing.

Read more: A Genius of Book Design Creates a Tome With No Ink | Wired Design | Wired.com.

Have Your Mac Read A Book To You In Mavericks And iBooks [OS X Tips] | Cult of Mac

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Have Your Mac Read A Book To You In Mavericks And iBooks [OS X Tips] | Cult of Mac

For those of you who might want to listen to a book via iBooks, one option is to load an iBook on your iPhone or iPad and turn on VoiceOver.

That can change the way your iOS device works, though, so it can be tricky to the uninitiated.

Now that iBooks is on Mavericks, however, you have another option: get your Mac to read your iBook to you.

If you’ve upgraded to Mavericks (and you should, it’s free and optimized for older machines), you have a copy of iBooks on your Mac. Launch it with a double click to the iBooks icon in the Dock or the Applications folder, and then double click one of your iBooks to open it.

Click your mouse in front of where you’d like your MAc to start reading to you, and then head up to the Edit menu. Select the Speech option in the menu, and then choose “Start Speaking.” Your Mac will read to you in the voice that’s chosen in the System Preferences Dictation & Speech preference pane.

Your Mac will keep reading the book until you choose Stop Speaking in the same Edit > Speech menu, though it won’t turn pages when it gets to a new page. If you want to follow along while it reads (a great option for folks with print or other reading disabilities), you’ll need to click the arrow keys or swipe along your trackpad as you go.

If you just want to have your Mac read a selection of text to you, simply click and drag to highlight that section, and then choose Start Speaking from the Edit menu, or right-click and choose Start Speaking from the More option in the contextual menu.

via Have Your Mac Read A Book To You In Mavericks And iBooks [OS X Tips] | Cult of Mac.

Pakistani schools ban teenage activist Malala’s book from libraries | The Globe and Mail

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Officials say they have banned teenage education activist Malala Yousafzai’s book from private schools across Pakistan, calling her a tool of the West.

Malala attracted global attention last year when the Taliban shot her in the head northwest Pakistan for criticizing the group. She released a memoir in October, “I Am Malala,” that was co-written with British journalist Christina Lamb.

Adeeb Javedani, president of the All Pakistan Private Schools Management Association, said Sunday his group banned Malala’s book from the libraries of its 40,000 affiliated schools. He said Malala was representing the West, not Pakistan.

Malala has become an international hero for opposing the Taliban and standing up for girls’ education. But conspiracy theories have flourished in Pakistan that her shooting was staged to create a hero for the West.

via Pakistani schools ban teenage activist Malala’s book from libraries | The Globe and Mail.