"I just wrote a memo to a group of budget people explaining (again) why it takes library staff with good technical skills, time, and lots of patience to make sure that when you click on a button in a library database to find an article, you actually find the article. Since it’s all online, now, it’s much less work, right?" -- Barbara Fister, Library Babel Fish, 6/29/12
99 Favorite Reads, Picked by Teens
"This list resulted from conversations I’ve been having with my teenage friends, former students, girls I know from where I volunteer as a visiting writer, Skypes with classes and teen book groups, library visits, nieces and nephews, my kids and their friends, and teens who contact me about Birthmarked. I love hearing about what people are reading, and I’m interested in the difference between what I find teens are reading and what people think they’re reading or think they should be reading." -- Caragh O'Brien, MacKids Blog, 6/28/12
Grazing in the Stacks of Academe
"The heat comes quickly in the summer. By early June, working at home with no air-conditioning, I have no concentration. Everything feels close and impolite and loud. So I go to Butler Library, on the southern end of Columbia’s campus in Morningside Heights. What began as a diversion has become a self-preserving summer thing: not just Butler, but the Butler stacks, the stillness capital of my imagination." -- Ben Ratliff, New York Times: Arts, 6/27/12
Lawn Boy: the College Years
"We’re on the road, my son Crawford and I. It’s time to visit colleges, and our schedule is brutal. Hot car, blinding sun, 12 colleges in 10 days, Ann Arbor to Sewanee. Onward we drive, Zevon on the stereo, afternoon into night, our mission fueled by gas-station coffee and Doritos. When we stop, it is for college admissions tours, barbecue, and, on one occasion, a broken alternator belt. I don’t even like to think about how far we have traveled." -- Carl Elliot, Brainstorm, The Chronicle, 6/27/12
"A serious problem seems to be emerging in regards to Pinterest and a violation of the legal rights of content creators and their intellectual property. The problem lies in the fact that you can use the work of others to build your own brand without attributing their work to them or compensating them. Just as with posting photographs on your blog without permission, using copyright images for promotional postcards, or stealing another's article and attaching your own name, new light has emerged that reveals pinning photographs as illegal." -- Tara Hornor, Social Media Today, 6/26/12
A Look at Internet Use on Moblie Phones
"17% of cell phone owners do most of their online browsing on their phone, rather than a computer or other device. Most do so for convenience, but for some their phone is their only option for online access." -- Aaron Smith, Pew Research Center Publications, 6/26/12
