Recommended Reading, Links Galore, Plentiful Screenshots, Occasional Commentary, and Color-Coordinated PowerPoint Slides on the Topics of Libraries, Publishing, Technology, Politics, Social Issues, and Much More
She still loves a good deal — last year she spent a couple of thousand dollars on markdowns that day, the Friday after Thanksgiving — but Ms. Nyberg says that she does not want retailers to ruin the holiday for her or their own employees. [My emphasis]
11/11/11. A seriously silly day in the pages of the New York Times.
Just out of curiosity, I thought I'd search what's going on in other states. (I can't vouch that this is a comprehensive list, but you can certainly see the trend that is developing. A number of states have gone beyond efforts to reduce the number of paper forms ordered by libraries.)
Arizona. From the Chandler Public Library website. Due to budget constraints, the Arizona Department of Revenue is no longer accepting orders for tax forms.
Iowa. From the Urbandale Public Library website. The library will no longer have paper copies of Iowa tax forms or instruction booklets. With the continued growth of electronic filing, the Iowa Department of Revenue (IDR) is no longer providing paper income tax forms and instruction booklets to libraries beginning with tax year 2011.
Kansas. From the Arkansas City, Kansas, website. Kansas and Oklahoma no longer send paper copies of the forms to the Library.
New Hampshire State Tax Form Update. From Manchester City Library website, 3/7/2011. Wondering where the state tax forms are? Here’s the scoop. They will no longer be sent to the library in paper format.
"This will also include a new senior center facility. As for what else will be included in the community center, that's being planned," Belongia said.
The project is slated to break ground in 2014 with an estimated cost of $7.5 million. It will be built on the grounds of the existing library and senior center.
Excerpt: Larry Barish’s first Blue Book was a little unusual. The cover of the 1987-88 edition was essentially glued on inside out.
His final book will be unique as well. The 2011-12 Blue Book is thicker than normal, requiring a curved spine that will stick out on any bookshelf stocked with biennial editions of what's been dubbed the Bible of Wisconsin government.
Barish is retiring later this year from the Legislature Reference Bureau after 41 years, including the past 24 as the Blue Book editor. And though he modestly calls it “an acceptable book,” the new edition will go down in state publishing history as one to remember.
For one thing, its publication was delayed to include the Senate recall elections this past summer. And, the new edition includes color photos of Capitol protests.
The first noticeable difference is the size. Even though at 971 pages it’s 14 pages shorter than the previous edition -- the books are statutorily limited to 1,000 pages or less -- it’s almost a quarter-inch wider.
Excerpt: Mt. Lebanon annually devotes about $37 in local taxes per resident to its library.
That number for the city of Pittsburgh this year was 13 cents. Tuesday's landslide vote means the city finally will put serious money where its books are.
Some 72 percent of city voters said "yes" to devoting a thin slice of property taxes to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and I don't think many thought too long about it. The vote was more like that final scene in "It's a Wonderful Life," where the townspeople just show up at George Bailey's house to drop donations on the table. [My emphasis.]
Excerpt: Supporters of the laws, mostly Republicans, say they help prevent fraudulent practices such as casting ballots under the names of dead people. [My emphasis.]
Excerpt: Some One residents says the contract workers are vilified unfairly. “Care is predicated on compassion and empathy,” said Harold Sundberg, a World War II Navy veteran, not “a union label.”
Excerpt:A spokeswoman for Coca-Cola Refreshments USA, Susan Stribling, said the company would rather help address the plastic litter problem by increasing the availability of recycling programs. “Banning anything is never the right answer,” she said. “If you do that, you don’t necessarily address the problem.” She also characterized the bottle ban as limiting personal choice. “You’re not allowing people to decide what they want to eat and drink and consume,” she said.
Photos by Retiring Guy (March 1997)
Congratulations, Susan. You're a winner of this Steely Dan album.
Excerpt: Dana is learning the familiar lesson that the famous are not forever so; names slip from collective memory, to be replaced by other names also destined for the tip of our tongues, and then gone. Who remembers, say, Wheeler and Woolsey, the wacky comedy team of the 1930s;
or Irvin S. Cobb, a cigar-chomping humorist as well known as Will Rogers in his day;
or the Dionne quintuplets, international sensations.
But Ernie Pyle was not just famous; he mattered.
Pyle was a slight man of uncommon empathy who gained some fame as a roving national columnist for the Scripps Howard news service. His popularity then skyrocketed during World War II, thanks to plainly worded dispatches from overseas that put readers in the mud beside exhausted, homesick G.I.’s, bracing for the next burst of combat.
Shall we roast of couple of these ideas over the fire?
Your point #3. Perry is cannier than you think he is. Perry revels in political plays that are initially misunderstood by the press and his critics.
Perhaps endearing and disarming in Texas, but off-putting and disconcerting on the national stage.
I think Nate Silver has something to say about this, too. (Is Perry Toast? The New York Times, 11/9/2011)
Almost immediately after what will probably be remembered as the Bill Buckner moment of primary debates, when Texas Gov. Rick Perry literally forgot which governmental agencies he would cut and concluded his answer with a sheepish “Oops,” Mr. Perry’s stock on the betting market Intrade [see screenshot below] dropped in half. Tabbed as having about a 9 percent chance of winning the Republican nomination before the debate, the market revised his odds downward to 4 percent just moments after the gaffe.
Note the precipitous decline from what looks to be late September.
Your point #8. Don’t discount the luck factor. It is uncanny how often good fortune has been in Perry’s corner throughout his political career.
Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson was also blessed with a bounty of good fortune, which he attempted to parlay into a run for the Presidency. And we all know how that ended up, neighboring Iowans stopping him dead in his tracks.. Some politicians just don't translate well outside of their home state. Tim Pawlenty and George Pataki join Thompson as members of this club. Now we can add Rick Perry.
And as for Perry's good fortune, right now he's is about as lucky this Hollywood bomb.
Excerpt: Poynette village President Jerry Burke said the library is just part of the larger discussion about Main Street.
"The value (of the library) to the village is to create a magnet on Main Street," he said. "So that if there is a significant cost to us doing this, the value in it is, is what it generates on Main Street because we did it. The value isn't just the building, it's what it engenders, it's what it creates. And that value exceeds what you would spend on it."
Excerpt:A number of school systems nationwide are cutting out cursive, according to K-12 handwriting instruction expert Steve Graham. But Racine County schools are not among those dropping the flowing writing form. Taking into account technology and time, local educators have chosen to keep cursive in the classroom.
“Our philosophy is this: Even with the oncoming level of technology that children and adults are using, handwriting still has a basic place in the way humans communicate with one another,”said Diana Lesnjak, principal of Racine’s St. Rita School, 4433 Douglas Ave.
Still a great song, from a time, 50 years ago, when the above Palmer Method chart was prominently displayed in every grade school classroom.
Excerpt:As the closing of the Central Library looms, many library users are prepared to deal with slight inconveniences, knowing that a larger, more vibrant building will soon take its place.
Until then, however, Downtown patrons will have to go a few weeks without any library at all, followed by a year and a half in a temporary facility much smaller than what exists now. Patrons will only be able to browse the main collection online, and seating will be at a premium.
"It will be a challenge in terms of people who like to sit and read," said Carol Froistad, community services manager for the Central Library, which closes its doors at 6 p.m. Friday.
Excerpt: As social media use has become pervasive in the lives of American teens, a new study finds that 69% of the teenagers who use social networking sites say their peers are mostly kind to one another on such sites. Still, 88% of these teens say they have witnessed people being mean and cruel to another person on the sites, and 15% report that they have been the target of mean or cruel behavior on social network sites.
Techshops. Hackerspaces. Makerspaces. (All three words -- no surprise -- are underlined in red as I compose this post.) All new vocabulary to me. Definitely need to drill down on this topic.
Excerpt: Earlier this year, MAKE Magazine’s Phillip Torrone wrote a provocative article asking “Is it time to rebuild and retool libraries and make ‘techshops’?” In other words, should libraries join some of the other new community centers that are being created (such as General Assembly which we covered yesterday) and become “hackerspaces” or “makerspaces”?
“Yes!”, says librarian Lauren Smedley, who is in the process of creating what might just be the first maker-space within a U.S. public library. The Fayetteville Free Library where Smedley works is building a Fab Lab — short for fabrication laboratory — that will provide free public access to machines and software for manufacturing and making things.
So far, the Fab Lab is equipped with a MakerBot, a 3D printer that lets you “print” plastic pieces of your own design. The potential for 3D printers to revolutionize manufacturing as we know it is huge: imagine being able to design and then manufacture — or “print” — whatever you want. Moreoever, imagine the tools of manufacturing being in the hands of everyone, not just giant factories (and remember, since this is a public library, this is really putting the technology in the hands of everyone, not just those that can afford a membership at a traditional hackerspace).
Excerpt:The reorganization plan Olson introduced to his colleagues would result in a similar staff reduction and has several key assumptions including:
» The removal of deputy department head positions;
Excerpt: Marathon County Administrator Brad Karger described the county's proposed 2012 budget as the "no, no, no budget" -- no tax increase, no service cuts and no employee layoffs -- at a Tuesday night public hearing on the plan.
Despite state budget cuts of more than $1.1 million, the three "no's" were only possible because of a controversial state law passed this year, which sharply limits public employee unions' collective bargaining abilities.
But several members of the County Board argued that balancing the budget by increasing employee contributions toward insurance premiums and other savings connected to employee benefits was unfair.
5-Star reviews notwithstanding, "Assassin of Secrets" gets the hook
Harriet Klausner on Wikipedia.According to her self-reported online profiles, Harriet grew up in the Bronx and her father was an employee of McGraw-Hill. [2] She reports being a former librarian with a master's degree in library science[2] who is proficient in speed-reading.
Then there's this head-scratcher she shares on Books & Bytes. Ultimately we moved to Georgia where we currently live. There I have worked with the library and found an acquisition job in a bookstore.
The library? You mean there's just 1 in Georgia. I guess the lights have gone out for good down there.
Excerpt:Three Dane County Board members on Tuesday proposed a $20 annual registration fee on motor vehicles as a way to stop proposed cuts to human services and to beef up the county's reserve fund.
The proposal faces an uphill battle because many board members don't want to add a taxes or fees when so many of their constituents are being hurt by the recession, but proposed cuts to social services for the county's most vulnerable residents are a worse alternative, said Sup. Kyle Richmond, 27th District, a leading proponent of the fee.
"It's less than half the cost of a tank of gas," Richmond said. "We are the fastest-growing county in the state. If we're going to have acceptable quality of life here we have to find a way to fund basic services."
