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A very interesting article about a former mainstream academic who had taken to developing his own press, and sued a librarian because of blog posts he had made that were critical of the press. The Wikipedia entry on the press shows the press has also sued a magazine and a website.

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 that mentions slightly over half of Americans 16 or over have visited a library in the past year, and that the proportions of patrons who felt collections should be moved to make way for tech centers and cultural events was less than those who wanted to keep books. Some interesting ideas libraries have started to use include Redbox style lending machines and Rokus with accounts for Internet streaming video services already on them.

This is really big news for the publishing world.

"Either the books must go, or they must swallow us up. I calculate that, take the whole world over, from eighty to one hundred thousand books appear every year; at an average of a thousand copies, this makes more than a hundred millions of books, the majority of which contain only the wildest extravagances or the most chimerical follies, and propagate only prejudice and error. Our social condition forces us to hear many stupid things every day. A few more or less do not amount to very great suffering in the end; but what happiness not to be obliged to read them, and to be able at last to close our eyes upon the annihilation of printed things!"

And why would they do it?  Probably because as it stands, it doesn't work as intended. As people realize that what they're doing isn't buying content so much as leasing it, it's interesting to see how their attitudes have changed towards DRM. 

Here is another article that touches on topics that can help one better facilitate meetings. It is a little pie-in-the-sky, but one thing I've learned in my albeit very short professional life: genuine enthusiasm can take you and your ideas a long way.

A New York times article that covers Kopimism in death.

Normally I'd link to the article itself but the comments on the slashdot page are worth a read. "Will they ban 3D printers?" "Knowing our congress they'll try to ban teaching Geometry in schools... you can't print illegal shapes if you don't know shapes!" Sad but true. These are really the kinds of discussions that we will have to have as a society in the very near term. Libraries should be at the forefront of this discussion - they've always had to fight to protects peoples rights to access information. If they have public access 3D printers it's only a matter of time before the government comes knocking wanting to see the shape files that their patrons have been printing just like they do with circulation records and internet history.

Earlier this week the ALA sent a strongly worded open letter to publishers about the need to figure out way for publishers to sell libraries e-books for "equitable use at a reasonable price."

In the final books of The Wheel Of Time series, a few of the characters seemed to behave a bit differently than they had in the previous entries. Some fans responded that they were happy to see emotional complexity added and flowery descriptions give way to salient plot.

I'm not sure how I feel about Kindle Worlds. I some how seems wrong to capitalize on fan fiction. I blame 50 Shades of Grey.