From the “no duh!” files, the Library of Congress has come out officially as saying that Digital Rights Management is a serious obstacle to archiving materials.
But copyright law also hampers important work being done at places like
the Library of Congress, and a major new report on the issue from the
Library points out the problems with the current rules. One big issue
is the exemption for published works in a library's
collection; these can also be copied three times, but only to “replace
a work in their collections that is damaged, deteriorating, lost or
stolen or whose format has become obsolete.” In other words, librarians
can't backup or archive such works until destruction is well under way.
In a semi-related story, there are lots in the library and book world who aren't fans of e-books. But it's a lot more rare to hear a techie say the same thing.
We all know about the various struggles with DRM and electronic media in the recording industry. But here's a story of four mistakes that industry made *before* file sharing to kill their industry.
Finally, some sad news. Mr. Cranky, one of the funniest yet most insightful movie review sites on the Net, is apparently closing its doors. Go read some of the reviews while you still can. Comedy gold, all of them!
…you volunteered to write a government brief about the value of libraries in your province. What would you include? What approach would you take?
In this hypothetical example, let's say the sucker volunteer already has a draft with some statistics and facts relevant to libraries, both in general (the one from the 2004 Florida study that found libraries returned $6.50 for every dollar invested) and specific to what's happening in the province (er, things like this.)
Anybody have any kick ass ideas, facts or stats, especially from their days back at FIMS that they'd love to use more than just for that one paper that the prof read during the commercials of “Desperate Housewives” and gave you a B+ on? 
(I feel like I'm back at FIMS working on this and can't decide if that's a good or a bad thing!)
I've previously written about the 2.0-esque campaign that Barack Obama has run this year – embracing cutting-edge technology, bottom-up organizing, social networking, the wisdom of crowds and all that good stuff.
Here is a smaller scale example – a young IT professional in Kansas, partly inspired by Barack Obama, decides to run for State Legislature. He calculates the amount of money he would need to likely beat the incumbent and then, using all the technology tools at his disposal (including a take-off on the popular web-only XKCD comic strip), makes his appeal for 3000 people to donate about ten bucks each.
The election's not until November but the cool thing is that he managed to achieve this goal incredibly fast and is still raising money beyond what he initially hoped for.
(via MetaFilter which, in true 2.0 style, has a comment from the guy who's running for office in the thread about his campaign)
In the midst of a massive weeding project at work and I've come to a realization – you can have all the rules, guidelines and criteria you want. You can base your decisions on number of circulations in a given time frame, most recent circulation date, condition of the book, number of other copies in the system, potential for future use, current relevance of the material, value of the book, etc. etc. etc.
But sometimes, you will simply judge a book by its cover.
(Er, also by its title.)
Last December, I wrote about the announcement of Google Knol, a similar service to Wikipedia but with moderation of articles and the ubiquitous Google Ads.
The site has officially launched and with a few hundred articles to Wikipedia's 2.5 million, Jimmy Wales has nothing to fear…yet.
In other Google news, they're in serious talks to buy Digg as well.
No word yet on a buyout offer for every living soul on Earth but I'm sure that's coming soon too.
This is a shot of Pace up to no good at the Weyburn Public Library after watching Weldon the Wacky Wizard, our summer reading tour performer.
I have no idea how Shea (dark brown hair) and myself (medium brown hair) managed to have a kid with such blond hair. (Of course he was conceived somewhere around the time we went to the Fred Eaglesmith Picnic south of London – coincidence?)
I first became aware of the best-in-the-world ranking of Finnish schools in the excellent book, “Under Pressure: Rescuing Childhood from the Culture of Hyper Parenting” by Carl Honore. (This is probably one of the best books I've read so far this year and would highly recommend it, whether you are a parent or not. A lot of it applies to expectations of today's children in public settings like libraries for instance.)
This article explains some of the reasons why Finland is so far ahead of the curve including extended, high quality pre-school, delineated high school and free higher education.
From the section related to their first example:
In all three Scandinavian countries students begin formal schooling
only at age seven, two years after most American children begin school.
However, prior to entering school, all children have participated in a
high-quality government funded preschool program. As opposed to a focus
on getting a jump academically, these early-childhood programs focus on
self-reflection and social behavior. It is interesting to note that one
of the most notable attributes of Finnish children is their level of
personal responsibility. The early focus on self-reflection is seen as
a key component for developing that level of responsibility towards
learning.
I got 19/20 on this short quiz with a couple lucky guesses but missing one tricky question about the stock market (you'll know it when you see it.)
Of course, I'm a US news junkie too so would've been disappointed if I'd done much worse than that.
(via MetaFilter)
There are a number of resources online for lovers of fonts and typography.
FontStruct is a site that allows you to design a font directly on their web site for free.
There are also detailed step-by-step guides to the tools and steps needed to create a font locally on your own computer.
Finally, if do-it-yourself sounds too hard or too time consuming, you can pay $9 US and have a font based on your handwriting created automatically with Fontifier.
Somewhere along the line, Shea and I began a tradition of me going to a movie on my birthday. With one notable exception on the following list, I've enjoyed having a birthday right in the heart of summer blockbuster season ever since!
2001 – Cats & Dogs (I picked “Jurassic Park III” as my inaugural birthday movie during our first summer in Calgary but Shea thought it would be stupid and/or scary so I ended up going to a movie with talking dogs. And talking cats. And frankly, I'm surprised the tradition made it to year two, let alone is still going nearly a decade later!)
2002 – Austin Powers III
2003 – (can't remember)
2004 – Spiderman II
2005 – Batman Begins
2006 – An Inconvenient Truth (I wasn't going to a lot of movies while I was doing my Masters but this is one I was pretty excited to see and I know we went in summer 2006 so let's call it my birthday movie for that year.)
2007 – The Simpsons Movie
2008 – The Dark Knight
Not only am I as pumped for The Dark Knight as I've been since such mega-films as Spiderman The First and Star Wars the Third (or Sixth depending on your counting), Batman the Second/Sixth will be only the second movie Shea and I have seen in a theatre since…The Simpsons Movie at this time last year! Grandpa and Grandma Hammond are coming in to Regina to babysit so we might even do <gasp> supper AND a movie! Romance, baby!
