War and the Library

Looted Library, Reborn, Still in Peril

From The Guardian: In the three years since he took over the Iraqi National Library, Saad Eskander has repaired the damage from theft and arson, played detective and advised his employees on staying alive.

He has transformed the library, burned and looted in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003, into a symbol of hope in a country mired in sectarian violence, crime and political bickering.

Ms. Dewey

Ms. Dewey

A search engine presented by an 'interactive' sultry librarian called Ms. Dewey. Odd!

Useful sites

Good Reads
A social networking site that promotes reading; add your friends and read their book recommendations and reviews.

Library Thing
Catalogue your book collection online!

Brevity is the soul of wit.

To cut a long story short

Ernest Hemingway once said his best work was a story he wrote in just six words: 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.' We challenged some contemporary authors to be equally economical.

Culturepush held a contest recently with the same restrictions. The results here.

The ambitions of Google

Off the Shelf

Google has a plan to put books online - and an unlikely ally in the Bodleian Library. Bobbie Johnson and Oliver Burkeman report on the battle to control human knowledge .

I finally finished my course and am now a qualified librarian. Hoorah! Onwards and upwards.

Digitisation project

Legal victory for Google in library project

Google has won a crucial victory in a German court as it tries to persuade publishers that its drive to digitise library books to get at the information inside is not an attempt to smash copyright laws.

Sorry for the long break from this blog, been extremely busy with school and work.

Dealing With Antisocial Teenagers In The Library

Brought to book

Library earns top award for its groundbreaking work with antisocial teenagers

Airplane Library (well, not quite)

Library design from salvaged passenger jets

Judging a book by its cover

Allow us to judge a book by its cover

A beautiful book is a beautiful thing. I may not get too hung up on whether or not something is a first edition, but that doesn't mean I don't have taste.

I guess I'm with Wilde on this one: only shallow people don't judge by appearances.

Wikipedia

Another good article on Wikipedia

Wikipedia and other online databases provide a soupy morass of information, but where can we find the variety of views that leads to wisdom

gender-conscious novels

A tale of two genders: men choose novels of alienation, while women go for passion

I'm more 'male' in my reading habits...my most favourite books are from the 'male' list, like 'The Catcher in the Rye', 'High Fidelity', '1984' etc. Maybe I just have too much anger in me. None of the books in the 'female' lists spoke to me that much; I've never been a big fan of Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters.

Banned in the library

Librarians ban visible underwear

writing poetry on teacups

Return my work, says Guantánamo poet

Sad tale of a man who was accused of being a terrorist and spent his time in jail at Guantánamo Bay writing 25,000 lines of verse, which were not given back to him when he was released.

the third wave of feminism

The third wave - at a computer near you
Feminist blogs are booming. But are they globalising emancipation - or just playthings for the rich and well educated?

Some academic essays on feminism, gender and technology can be found here

web portal

Finally finished the web portal for my digital libraries class and handed it in yesterday after a few (very) late nights of staring at the computer screen. It's not assessed on design skills (phew) but on information retrieval and classification skills, so I have been trawling through the web for the most resourceful sites on architecture for students in the UK (who are the target audience I have chosen) and abstracting/summarising each site. Maybe one day if I buy server space again and have the time to expand on it further, I will upload it and hopefully it will be of some use to others.

public libraries

Outcry over loss of public libraries

Library overhauls to lure back adult readers

This is really shameful but I haven't been to a public library in this country. I use the academic one at school for research, work in a commerical library, used to volunteer at a NGO/charity one and have also stepped into a few other specialised and museum libraries for interviews, but not been to a public one *bows head in shame*...except for the Idea Store at Whitechapel briefly but that was just to admire the building. I must definitely, definitely get myself to the British Library soon.

wikipedia

Wikipedia study 'fatally flawed'
A study on the accuracy of the free online resource, Wikipedia, by the prestigious journal Nature has been described as 'fatally flawed'.

The previous study that was mentioned is this
Wikipedia survives research test
The free online resource Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopedia Britannica, a study shows.

No....I believed in the survey, I really did. I do adore Wikipedia though, despite its (occasional) inaccuracies and biases. One day I'm going to create a scholarly entry titled 'The pile of dirty clothes sitting on my room floor', or 'Cheryl's increasing addiction to ebay' and upload it on Wikipedia. Just you wait and see.

if robots could write novels

Creative sparks: The artistic lives of machines

"Creativity is fundamentally human", writes Ken McAllister, so what happens when we are relieved from our duty to create? (from the latest issue of Adbusters.)

top 1000 intellectual works in libraries

"Top 1000" titles owned by OCLC member libraries—the intellectual works that have been judged to be worth owning by the "purchase vote" of libraries around the globe

Ok, why is Garfield in there?

dorkfest

Dork Fest

A weekend gathering at the edge of art, science and uselessness. Dorkfest 2006 is a two day showcase of inventions and explorations into electricity and its (stranger) uses. The event will give the public an opportunity to see the creations from a global network of dorks. (Although others might call them artists, inventors, programmers and musicians.)

Possibly nerdier than a Star Trek convention. Yay!