Archives for category: Amazing News!

DIYD... the second D is for Doomsday!

Homebrew science took a little bit of a hit today.

From the Toronto Star:

A Swedish man who was arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen said Wednesday he was only doing it as a hobby.

Richard Handl told the Associated Press that he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment in southern Sweden when police showed up and arrested him on charges of unauthorized possession of nuclear material.

The 31-year-old Handl said he had tried for months to set up a nuclear reactor at home and kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove.

Only later did he realize it might not be legal and sent a question to Sweden’s Radiation Authority, which answered by sending the police.

“I have always been interested in physics and chemistry,” Handl said, adding he just wanted to “see if it’s possible to split atoms at home.”

The police raid took place in late July, but police have refused to comment. If convicted, Handl could face fines or up to two years in prison.

Although he says police didn’t detect dangerous levels of radiation in his apartment, he now acknowledges the project wasn’t such a good idea.

“From now on, I will stick to the theory,” he said.[source]

Well… yeah.

Anyways, no library themed post this week. I’m wrapping up stuff at my old job… because… I’m starting a new job next week. Hooray! More to come on this, I suppose.

Just like Johnny Mnemonic... look at him!

People have been murmuring  that the Internet is “ruining”  our memory for a while. Ruin? I don’t know. Recent studies have shown that since the advent of the Internet our memory practices have been evolving and that this is also reversible.

Whether you think it’s a bad (Luddites!) or a good thing (non-Luddites! or normal people or “norms”), there is a change taking place in how Internet users combine their brains with the information on the web.

From Scientific American:

Led by Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow, the researchers conducted a series of experiments whose results suggest that when people are faced with difficult questions, they are likely to think that the Internet will help them find the answers. In fact, those who expect to able to search for answers to difficult questions online are less likely to commit the information to memory. People tend to memorize answers if they believe that it is the only way they will have access to that information in the future. Regardless of whether they remember the facts, however, people tend to recall the Web sites that hold the answers they seek.

In this way, the Internet has become a primary form of external or “transactive” memory (a term coined by Sparrow’s one-time academic advisor, social psychologist Daniel Wegner), where information is stored collectively outside the brain. This is not so different from the pre-Internet past, when people relied on books, libraries and one another—such as using a “lifeline” on the game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?—for information. Now, however, besides oral and printed sources of information, a lion’s share of our collective and institutional knowledge bases reside online and in data storage…

And if our gadgets were to fail due to a planet-wide electromagnetic pulse tomorrow, we would still be all right. People may rely on their mobile phones to remember friends’ and family members’ phone numbers, for example, but the part of the brain responsible for such memorization has not been atrophied, she says. “It’s not like we’ve lost the ability to do it.[source]

Neat, right? The world is catching up with librarians in this respect. We’ve been using our collections, catalogues and reference tools (digital or physical) as prosthetic memory contraptions since always. The Internet for some is a revolutionary change in how people remember and access information. For LIS professionals it’s one new step in an ongoing evolution.

Read the rest of this entry »


From the Guardian UK:

They are a long way from the iconic pop art for which he is best known but a set of illustrations for a children’s book series by Andy Warhol are set to go up for auction in New York next month.

Warhol’s pictures illustrate the story of the little red hen, a folk tale about the value of team work, and show a perky little red hen happily sowing her grains of wheat, as a lazy cat, mouse and dog – who is reading the paper – look on. They were drawn by Warhol early in his career, between 1957 and 1959, for the Doubleday Book Club’s popular series Best in Children’s Books.

The Warhol illustrations will be auctioned on 9 December as part of Bloomsbury Auctions’s sale of 365 original illustrations and books, alongside a host of pictures and letters from 19th-century fairytale illustrator Arthur Rackham, a privately printed edition of Beatrix Potter’s The Tailor of Gloucester, rare Oz books by L Frank Baum and the artistic estate of award-winning African American children’s illustrator Tom Feelings.[source]

Cool, right? I love when artists chip in for children’s lit., even if it’s just for the cover. Anyways, here’s some info on the A. Warhol kid’s book opus.

Also, I’m jealous and want to break my watercolours out!

We tend to see social media companies as perpetually growing, people getting machines. But, this isn’t really case. In actuality they’re something a little more tidal. For instance, in Canada there seems to be a plateau for Facebook users.

From the Toronto Star

The head of Facebook Canada believes there’s still plenty of room for the social networking giant to grow north of the border, but some new numbers suggest that may not be the case.

A report from Inside Facebook, which tracks usage and trends on Facebook, suggests the website is nearing another big user milestone, and is just 13 million users shy of hitting 700 million monthly active users.

But the report also says it’s growth outside of North America that’s fuelling the latest surge of Facebook use.

The number of Canadians using Facebook has recently dropped by about 1.52 million to 16.6 million, according to Inside Facebook.

The number of active Canadian Facebook users has fluctuated in the 16- to 18-million range over the past year, the report notes.

Canada’s numbers reflect a global trend suggesting that the number of Facebook users in a country seems to plateau when 50 per cent of the population is signed up.[source]

Despite Facebook’s perceived ubiquity, it seems like achieving a 100% user rate has to be damned near impossible. Google has come pretty close, but that’s after years of marketing and carving out its turf among a smaller batch of competitors.

There is some thought that social media is primed to peak over the next few years – there is a finite number of users after all. And, there is a lot of competition from  rising stars, fading giants, and other stable fiefdoms. If Canada’s Facebook plateau is an indicator, after meteoric growth, sowing up a market is going to be a tough slog for companies seeking universal power over our free time.

I will be here.

I’m going to New York City for the first time ever for any reason this weekend. And, let me tell you I am gosh darn excited (and a little nervous. It is a huge, dense, epically mythic metropolis, after all. It is bigger than anything this Canadian boy has every seen before.)

Of all the things to see, my heart is set on the NYPL’s Map Room. Oh yes. Maps! I’ve wanted to go there since I was a little kid watching PBS in the 80s. There’s more! It’s a great time for a bibliothequeophile to visit since the NYPL is turning 100 and is really working that angle.

So besides sight-seeing, shopping, and whatever else I can find in a city like New York, I will be seriously geeking out. Apologies to my travel companions, in advance.

Also, here’s a cool video of New York’s the collective digital (un)consciousness.

Pastiche—A Collective Composition of New York City, by Ivan Safrin & Christian Marc Schmidt from Christian Marc Schmidt on Vimeo.

From Gizmodo:

Gone is the frustration of not finding the book that the system swears is exactly where you are looking. Gone is the having to sneak through dark corners of stacks and walk all over the library to find a single tome. However, also gone are the serendipitous encounters with texts surrounding the one you were looking for, guiding your research and interests in new directions.
Which is a shame, for sure. But even then, maybe you can still make your way to that fortuitous find but in a whole new way. And without that librarian glowering at you. [University of Chicago Libraries via Geekosystem, Big Think]

OK, let’s put aside the regressive librarian stereotyping and look at what they’re showing us. It seems like a pretty complex and expensive solution. When it breaks, how catastrophic is it to services? I don’t know if this is something will necessarily take off except as a show piece.

I’d say it’s a little analogous to the infamous Zip drive. The Zip drive was an OK innovation that ended up being a huge waste of money for people who bought one and then immediately had to abandon them for the CD-R/W drives – which were way more flexible for data storage.  I think elaborate robot libraries will probably lose out to eLibraries made up mostly of eBooks, online journals, etc. The tipping point will be when when eReaders improve in flexibility, quality and price (as they will, inevitably).

Also, it is easy to say this sort of set up would render librarians obsolete. But really, it’ll be the clerks and pages who would be replaced – likely by a crew of oil stained, retro-engineer types (like below) . Think about it, the look of the thing reminds me of Babbage’s Difference Engine. In such a case, steampunk fans would be happy.

Stephen Harper & cat, Cheddar

I’ll state up front: the Conservative Party is not my favourite, not by a long shot. But in the interest of fairness, I’ll put up their platform points on the internet and copyright:

In spring 2011, the Conservatives will announce and begin implementing a Digital Economy Strategy, focused on the following five priorities:
* Building world-class digital infrastructure;
* Encouraging businesses to adopt digital technologies;
* Supporting digital skills development;
* Fostering the growth of Canadian companies supplying digital technologies to global markets; and
* Creating made-in-Canada content across all platforms, to bring Canada to the world.[source: CLA platform analysis]

This reads pretty much like the other parties. But, given the CPC’s six years in power, you can bet the primary beneficiaries will be large corporations. And, there will be a wanton lack of transparency, accessibility, and probably unrestrained rising costs that tax payers will have to pay (cf. the F-35 fiasco or the pork barrel spending around the G8/G20).

But wait, there’s more: “A Stephen Harper-led majority Government will also reintroduce and
pass the Copyright Modernization Act, a key pillar in our commitment to make Canada a leader in the global digital economy.”[source] That sounds nice. If this is anything like Bill C-32, it will not be a great boon for librarians already pinched by tight DRM rules and licence agreements.

In my opinion,  I can’t imagine a party whose attitude and behaviour are so far removed from those at the core of Librarianship: fairness, access, transparency, generally being nice and helpful, etc. etc.

***Find out More***

Party websites:
www.liberal.ca
www.conservative.ca
www.blocquebecois.org
www.ndp.ca
www.greenparty.ca

Register to Vote:
www.elections.ca

Apathy is Boring

May at a whistle stop.

May and her Green Party have pluck, you have to give them that.  As a new party, there are a lot of issues about which they need to get the word out. Still, their platform has a few planks that relate to libraries and library related things:

*Ensure that copyright policy allows students to properly conduct and create research in a manner that is consistent with a thriving information commons, fair dealing principles, and moral rights.
* Ensure network neutrality by supporting the principles of fair use, consumer information privacy, communications market competition, and rationalization of the statutory damages provision.
* Recognize that access to high-speed internet connections is now a critical aspect of infrastructure and work to expand access to address the digital divide.[source: CLA platform analysis]

The Green Party is also a vocal supporter of Vote for the Internet and Open Media, an organization that strives to “make media and telecommunications more transparent, with broader and more representative public participation. Our job is to shine a spotlight on key media policy developments, and provide essential tools and information for citizen engagement.”[source]

May’s comment on the subject: “The internet is critical for modern day citizen engagement and an integral part of our economic competitiveness. The Greens pledge to adhere to OpenMedia’s Stop the Meter campaign on Internet access. We are committed to enhancing broadband access, competition, transparency and choice.”[source]

In this area, I think the Greens, bless their hearts, have more optimism than specifics. This comes with being a new voice on the national stage. But, they are a rising alternative.

***Find out More***

Party websites:
www.liberal.ca
www.conservative.ca
www.blocquebecois.org
www.ndp.ca
www.greenparty.ca

Register to Vote:
www.elections.ca

Apathy is Boring

G.S. Irish, Photographer - Reflection in a Gazing Ball

From @PhotosOfThePast comes a link to an amazing collection of early photography and pre/proto-photography pictures and tech (like a set of neat pics of a camera obscura kit). Totally worth the time spent browsing. Thanks to Beverly(and her husband) for putting this together.

Muldoon and Miller - Wrestlers - Carte-de-visite

Happily, every Nancy Drew title is an innuendo.

A librarian is in the news. Not because of budget cuts, literacy or eBooks, but for something much more fun – some good ol’fashioned mystery:

A former Brown University museum librarian who once examined a Tiffany-silver sword now at the center of an ownership duel between the Ivy league school and a Virginia collector says in an affidavit “there is no doubt” university drawings match photos of the sword located last year in a Virginia museum.
The affidavit by John H. Stanley is among supporting documents in Brown’s filing. Brown has asked a judge to reject a motion by the lawyer for Donald R. and Toni M. Tharpe, of Williamsburg, Va., to dismiss the university’s lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Brown wants what it says is its long-missing sword returned. A Sept. 7 trial is scheduled.
At issue is a sword presented in 1863 to Col. Rush C. Hawkins, of a New York Civil War regiment. It was later part of the Annmary Brown Memorial at Brown in memory of Hawkins’ wife, who was a granddaughter of a founder of the university.[read full article]

This story also requires: an abandoned library building, some people who seem creepily yet appear innocent (at first), and a shaky flashlight chase down a dark secret tunnel. The heart races, no?