Group items tagged

In a report released today, Tuesday 6 November 2012, the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee says that some local authorities, under considerable pressure to quickly find cost savings, have drawn up plans without taking proper account of local needs for library services and the variety of options available to provide them, and are therefore in danger of failing in their statutory duty to provide a 'comprehensive and efficient' library service. Other councils, however, have found innovative and cost-effective ways of continuing to supply - and in some cases improve - their library service.

The Rolling Stones legend, 69, owes 3,000 pounds for books he borrowed and failed to return to his local public library in Dartford, Kent, when he was a teenager.

An interesting case heard before the Supreme Court about whether genes can be patented, with the according debate about how much of a human genome can thus be regulated or controlled.

An interesting article about how the Warsaw Ghetto in World War Two was carefully documented and stored in metal milk cans in the foundations of buildings; the largest cache of which still has not been found.

The librarians of Mali are doing as much to conserve literature as to save their heritage. A vast majority of manuscripts have not been transcribed and remain in their original form, with some dating back to the 13th century. Timbutku is known for it's manuscript libraries, with several publicly accessible collections and at least 24 private collections.

Interesting idea. I wonder who okays the books they can read.

Yeah, I think that might backfire a la "Shawshank Redemption": Dufresne: (in response to another inmate's discovery of "The Count of Monte Cristo") You know what it's about? You'll like it. It's about a prison break. Red: We oughta file that under "Educational" too, oughten we?

The benefits of this are pretty clear, and allow some realistic limits, letting prisoners read up to 12 books to take 48 days off of their sentence each year.

Not necessarily related to anything library-ish, but still pretty cool.  It's easy to forget that the amazing, "invisible" things we can do with technology actually do take up physical space.

Ancient books in a historic library in the Lebanese city of Tripoli have been torched by Islamist, after a pamphlet purportedly insulting religion was found inside one of the books. Security sources say that up to 78,000 books, many irreplaceable ancient Muslim and Christian texts and manuscripts, are now unsalvageable, according to Agence France Press.

Ancient books in a historic library in the Lebanese city of Tripoli have been torched by Islamist, after a pamphlet purportedly insulting religion was found inside one of the books. Security sources say that up to 78,000 books, many irreplaceable ancient Muslim and Christian texts and manuscripts, are now unsalvageable, according to Agence France Press.

Some of the examples of how literary fiction can end up as libel cases; three of the aspects for libel is the statement has to cause harm to someone, it should be obvious to the reader who it is, and the statement need to be untrue. The examples include people who resemble someone in a story, either intentionally or in the case of one author someone he'd met only briefly and likely the character similarities were unintentional. Several questions are raised, especially in how much a real person can be portrayed in fiction, specially if that portrayal is one interpretation of that person, and what to do if the resemblances are coincidental.

India has shut down it's telegram service, which ran continuously from 1851 until now. I 1985 the service sent 600,000 telegrams a day and as recently as 2008 had 22,000 employees. At the shutdown it had a staff of 968 in 75 offices handling maybe 5,000 a day.

An interesting idea, as much of the third world is skipping traditional infrastructure for things like wireless, and material produced by by and targeted to local interests and history would sell well.

An interesting about the unique environment in Iceland where writing is very popular and 1 our of 10 people will publish a book.