This clever video is from New Zealand and reflects the trend of turning books into other, 3 dimensional, objects. This time it is paper cut-outs.
Thanks to Cory Doctorow for this, via John, Your Computer Concierge
Coming soon! Wireless Networking!
The Providence Athenaeum is a 19th century library–the look, the feel, the collections–but how do we, at the same time, remain contemporary and relevant? We thought a wireless network might let us dabble in 21st century technology. The installation is almost complete. For those of you who care about such things, we are segmenting the network, one side for guests and the other, a private side for the organization. It will be secure, ubiquitous, and invisible. If you don’t want anything to do with the 21st century you can still ignore it when you come here. The best of both worlds. Athena would be proud.
More book titles…
Two Detroit Librarians host a blog called Awful Library Books. These are books that have been weeded from various libraries. Last week they appeared on national television to discuss their books. It’s a funny segment.
How Books Got Their Titles
People make blogs on everything, here’s one that is quite clever. Gary Dexter chooses books and plays and he writes little vignettes on how they got their titles. He cites the resources he consults and generally does a good job.
He recently posted an index to his blog that links to all the titles he’s reviewed thus far. Oh, he also has an analog version titled: 
Thanks John for all the tidbits you send me!
Protection or censorship?
Librarians are against censorship. This concept is found in the ALA Bill of Rights, it is discussed at conferences, it has been our issue for hundreds of years. That is why the case in Kentucky caught my eye. Two library workers were fired for keeping an eleven year old from borrowing a sexually explicit graphic novel. The Lexington Herald Leader article tells the whole tale.
Most of the time libraries find themselves fighting challenges to their collections from outside the library building, not from the inside.
Concord Free Press
Here’s a unique publishing concept–give the books away for free. The catch is you have to pay-it-forward, give a donation to the charity of your choice, and pass the book on to the next person with the same stipulation. The latest title is The Next Queen of Heaven: 
My question is how will the publisher stay in business? How will they make money? That is a question Concord Free Press answers regularly, check out their business model. Who says idealism is dead?
In Honor of Halloween…
An encore performance of Poe’s The Raven by Vincent Price. (This is a 10 minute video so sit back, make it full screen, and enjoy!)
I love YouTube.
OED Thesaurus published after 40 years
BBC News reported the publication of a thesaurus that has been under construction at Glasgow University, since the mid-1960’s. They write:
The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary has nearly 800,000 meanings, organised into more than 236,000 categories and subcategories. Its 4,500 pages are published in two volumes by Oxford University Press.
Amazon will be selling it in early November for over $300. I doubt we’ll buy it.
What is MIT doing?
MIT appears to be automating pop-up books. I have to ask, why? Pop-ups are already clever and everyone loves them. Take a look:
Question: does the brain like ebooks?
The New York Times blog called Room for Debate posed this question recently and the academic responses are interesting. They asked an English professor, a professor of child development, a computer scientist, an author with a book on the brain, and a professor of informatics. Most of them see a place in the future for the traditional book. None of them are under 25 years of age.
