I would love to visit a library that looked like this.
(via Reddit)
- JH
Archive for November, 2007
Friday Fun Link - The Most Unusual Books of the World & Fifteen Word Illusions (Nov 23, 2007)
A couple fun visual sites…
The Most Unusual Books of the World
And a bonus deep thought for the day: “As a librarian, you can be idealistic. As a manager, you must be pragmatic.”
- JH
Friday Fun Link - Canadian Police No Longer Targeting File Sharing For Personal Use (Nov 16, 2007)
“The Canadian police announced that it will stop targeting people who download copyrighted material for personal use. Their priority will be to focus on organized crime and copyright theft that affects the health and safety of consumers instead of the cash flow of large corporations.“
My French isn’t good enough to know if a Le Devoir article linked from this TorrentFreak post is saying that this is a national policy of the GRC (er, RCMP) or one that only applies in Quebec. But either way, this is a pretty rational stance from the police and it makes me happy to hear that I can download to my heart’s content exercise greater freedom in my choice of online activities.
On a semi-related note, the Writers Guild of America is on strike with appropriate compensation for sales from electronic media being one of the major issues. (Writers in Canada dealt with a similar situation a few years back - as new technology that no one foresaw when initial contracts were written came into being, corporations tried to put up works (reviews, essays, articles, etc.) without additional compensation. Needless to say, writers wanted to be compensated for the reproduction of their work, no matter the form it appeared in. I can’t remember how this resolved itself - anybody? Bueller? Bueller?)
Anyhow, if you’re missing “The Daily Show, one of show’s writers did this update from the picket lines:
- JH
Friday Fun Link - Lazy Librarian (Nov 9, 2007)
Lazy Library is a website dedicated to recommending books that are no longer than 200 pages, on any subject, to help those that find reading to be “time consuming”.
Like Michelle, I think it’s not as dumb of an idea as it sounds at first and might have some utility in today’s culture. (I had a lengthy conversation with the person who buys the majority of the fiction at our library system recently about how so many of the most popular books today tend to be the ones with short, snappy chapters. “The Da Vinci Code” is the penultimate example of this but even something like “The Road” which won the Pulitzer Prize fits this description. And have I mentioned how highly I recommend this book? So good.)
My only criticism of the site is that it could really use a browse feature to go with its search function.
(via Yarns From M)
- JH
Friday Fun Link - Free Rice (Nov 2, 2007)
Play a fun word game and donate rice to help end world hunger with every correct answer at FreeRice.com.
Or, if you don’t feel like playing the game, why not just visit HungerSite.ccom?
(Thanks to Gillian W. for the tip)
- JH