While straightening books today, I came across a very interesting title that I wanted to share. Coming of Age In Second Life, An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, by Tom Boellstorff. This guy is an actual anthropology prof and teaches it. He spent two years studying the people who populate Second Life, embedding himself there by ( Read more... )

This is really cool! Hernando Colón was a huge collector, he bought all sorts of books, not just Plato and high-brow stuff, so this will be quite an insight into books of the time. Obviously a lot of those books no longer exist, it will be interesting to see how many still do ( Read more... )

and that comes to an end next week. And I wanted to bake a batch of my oatmeal/chocolate chip/macadamia nut cookies to take in on Sunday, but that didn't happen. I get up Monday, start getting ready, and find an email that has a subject like 'water line break, we might have to close the campus'. The line in question is not on-campus, but the ( Read more... )

I'm doing an internship in our local university library through April, and my main task is scanning their annual 'Reports To The President', a précis of college activity sent up to main campus and bound in a book, usually hard-bound. The oldest book was 1965-66, the newest that I've seen thus far is '98-99. I believe there are newer already in ( Read more... )

It's one of my two last library classes to complete my degree. It's only an Associates in Library Science, which when coupled with $4.10, will get me a kid's meal at Burger King ( Read more... )

There's an interesting little exception in American copyright law that is being exploited: if a book published between 1923 and 1941 is out of print, a physical copy can be scanned and released into the commons. And it's being actively exploited in libraries across the country!

Hence, the Sonny Bono Memorial Collection! (link)

This is a ( Read more... )

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Very good piece, two things in particular stood out. First, he attended a talk about the American private prison industry and that they projected their future growth and need for cells based on the literacy rate of 10 and 11 year olds. Wow. Second, that English town councils have been closing libraries to save money, Gaiman talks about the penny ( Read more... )

Silveradept posted about this recently.  In Hudson Falls there was a library aide who had worked there for 28 years.  Enter a nine year old kid who, for the fifth year running, won the summer reading program.  The library director thought this discouraged kids from reading, and decided that the winner would be drawn from a hat of all the kids who read at ( Read more... )

No physical books. Period. 10,000 ebooks. LOTS of computers and you can check them out for use with your ebook reader.

I'd like to see this place if I ever get down around San Antonio.http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/