“Maciej Szpunar, advocate general to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), said in an opinion published (PDF) Thursday morning that public libraries should be allowed to lend e-books so long as the author is fairly compensated.”
Category: words
Spelling In English Is A Ridiculous Mess, And We Need To Reform It
“Etymologist and poet Anatoly Liberman, author of Word Origins and How We Know Them, says English is one of the most difficult languages to spell. But we can change that.” (podcast)
Is It Harder To Be Immersed In A Book As We Age?
“Like everything else, the way we read changes with time and age. The books I find engrossing now still have the power to make the world around me vanish. But I can’t inhabit them as I did with my childhood favorites.”
Remember Microfiche?
Ernie Smith offers tidbits from the history of those little sheets and their coiled cousin, microfilm – from the invention of the process for making and reading them back in the mid-19th century to when carrier pigeons transported microfilmed documents across enemy lines to the adoption of microfilm and -fiche by libraries to the thing the medium is still well-suited for today.
New Robot Can Find Misshelved Library Books
“Misplaced library books frustrate patrons and give librarians migraines. The whole system relies on books being precisely in their proper location. … [Researchers in Singapore] have created an autonomous shelf-scanning robot called AuRoSS that can tell which books are missing or out of place … and instruct librarians how to get the books back in order when they arrive in the morning.”
New Technologies Allow Researchers To Look Inside Ancient Manuscripts Without Damaging Them
“Until now, the knowledge that ancient manuscripts were used to make cartonnage has presented an ethical quandary to scholars. Books and other artifacts have been destroyed in the hopes of discovering something more precious hidden inside. The stakes are even higher when it comes to Egyptian mummy masks because there are comparably few ancient manuscripts, and certain texts—Plato, the Bible, and Homer—are culturally and financially viable to Westerners.”
Seattle Has Spent Millions Upgrading Its Libraries (So Why Are Fewer People Going?)
“Between 2011 and 2014, our booming city gained 50,000 residents. But in that period, total branch visits to the Seattle Public Library (SPL) declined by 150,000, or 2.3 percent — even with a significant increase in branch hours.”
Have Our Book Critics Gone Soft? (What Happens When “Every” Book Is Worth Reading?)
“Nearly all of the more than 100 books graded by Book Marks seem to be worth reading, which renders it somewhat useless as a recommendation resource, which wasn’t lost on many of its early readers. But that’s not how Lit Hub editor-in-chief Jonny Diamond pitches the site anyway.”
Pittsburgh: Literary Metropolis (Yes, For Real)
“For years the city was a Rust Belt punch line to those too ill-informed to experience the tough beauty of the place. And yet economics can be destiny, which is why it’s heartening, surprising, and in some sense worrying to see Pittsburgh discovered now by national magazines and newspapers which are always looking for the next location, a new Portland or Austin where arty people with expendable cash can drink craft beer and go to pop-up art galleries.”
Where Would Writers Be Without Muhammed Ali?
“David Hirshey, the senior vice president and executive editor of HarperCollins, called Ali ‘the perfect prism through which to view sports, race, religion, politics, celebrity, comedy, tragedy.'”