Whose Information Is it?

Have you heard about Aaron Swartz?  On July 19, he was indicted for “allegedly stealing approximately 4.8 million articles from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the JSTOR journal archive.”

The indictment lists this overview of offenses:

Between September 24, 2010, and January 6, 2011, Swartz contrived to:

1. break into a restricted computer wiring closet at MIT;
2. access MIT’s network without authorization from a switch within that closet;
3. connect to JSTOR’s archive of digitized journal articles through MIT’s computer network;
4. use this access to download a major portion of JSTOR’s archive onto his computers and computer hard drives;
5. avoid MIT’s and JSTOR’s efforts to prevent this massive copying, measures which were directed at users generally and at Swartz’s illicit conduct specifically; and
6. elude detection and identification;

all with the purpose of distributing a significant proportion of JSTOR’s archive through one or more file-sharing sites.

To read the complete article from Library Journal, click here.

Well Said! Reading Is What Matters

“It’s not print vs. digital.  It’s reading vs. all the other stuff we can do.” 

— Michael Serbinis, Kobo CEO

About Kobo

Kobo is a global eBook retailer backed by Indigo Books & Music, Borders, REDgroup Retail, Cheung Kong Holdings, and other leaders in technology and retail. Kobo believes consumers should be able to read any book, anytime, anywhere, and on the device of their choice.

 

Floods – Maybe More than You Want to Know

We’ve just added some downloadable ebooks on flooding to our Beyond Library Walls Digital Collection, including:

• Disaster! A History of Earthquakes, Floods, Plagues, and Other Catastrophes by John Withington
• Flood: a Saga by B. F. Oswald
• Flood Damaged Property by David G. Proverbs
• The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World without Ice Caps by Peter D. Ward
• Rising Waters: the Causes and Consequences of Rising Water in the United States by Samuel D. Brody 

Of course, you can also find print titles on this subject via the ODIN library catalog as well as magazine and journal articles through our other databases.  

Check them out!  If you need help, ask us.  Questions are our thing!

 

Reception for Judy Price Cook – Thursday, July 21

Who:  YOU
What: Reception for Judy Price Cook, author of If This Land Could Talk and BSC alumna (Class of 1966)
When: Thursday, July 21, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Where: BSC Library

Cook will be speaking  to BSC English and history classes earlier in the day through the Association’s “Alumni in the Classroom” program.  Her book will also be available for purchase and signing.

About the Book
If This Land Could Talk is a compilation of meticulous research, personal experiences and stories passed down through her family, who homesteaded and farmed in North Dakota’s Kidder County. The story begins around 1900 with introductions of Cook’s grandparents arriving in North Dakota, followed by descriptions of their daily lives, challenges, joys and intrigues.

With anecdotes, dialogue and the context of historical events, she brings her four grandparents and parents to life in a book that could be “a model for writing family histories,” wrote a reviewer with ForeWord Clarion Review in Michigan. Cook also recounts how growing up on the same land during the 1950s shaped her life.

About the Author 
Visit the website at www.judyrcook.com

Finding the Future: Inside NYPL’s All-Night Scavenger Hunt

Remember the postings about crowdsourcing and the “Finding the Future” game at the New York Public Library?  Find out more about it in this Library Journal ** story. 

Finding the Future: Inside NYPL’s All-Night Scavenger Hunt  

PLAY THE GAME – VIRTUAL VERSION
For the remainder of 2011, both app and website will remain freely available for anyone interested in playing. Visitors to NYPL can bring their smartphones along on their own leisurely hunt. Visitors to findthefuture.nypl.org can partake in a virtual version of the game, write their own essays, and read any already submitted.

 ** [A side note: Did you know that Heather McCormack, daughter of BSC’s own Mike McCormack, is the Managing Editor, Book Review for Library Journal?  She is also a BSC alum.]

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Library Break Room – Spinning Spaces

Check out this video about the spin of the Library break room.  Better yet, stop by and see it in person!  Special thanks to Carolyn Twingley, Laura Kalvoda, and Stephanie Borud for their work on this project.  

What Makes a Library a Library?

Tim Newcomb, a Time correspondent and freelance journalist based in the Pacific Northwest, fields the question of what makes a library a library in his article: Is a Bookless Library Still a Library?  (Time U.S., July 11, 2011)

Norman Cousins (1915-1990), a well-known and respected editor and writer, said this about libraries: “The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one’s devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas – a place where history comes to life.”  (ALA Bulletin, Oct. 1954, p. 475)

How do you define library?

BSC Library – The Future?

What do you think?  Should a new BSC Library be like this?

Innovation Extravaganza

What’s new? 

Check out Innovation Extravanganza, a lighthearted look at innovations popping up around the world.

Write a Book Together – NYPL Crowdsourcing Project

New York Public Library’s Find the Future crowdsourcing project.