LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Data from over 1500 librarian RSS feeds is collected and output via different categories. This feed contains the latest headlines from the user generated query: Swedish Sweden Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:15:51 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://lisnews.org/recycling_old_book_covers_postcards Lifehacker: If you're looking for a clever way to reuse portions of books before sending them off to be recycled, turning the covers into postcards is a novel way to give them one last send off. Over at the home and craft blog Re-Nest they have a tutorial from Jason Thompson, author of Playing With Books: The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing, and Reimagining the Book. He writes: The idea for this project comes from a set of postcards I sent to a Swedish friend more than a decade ago. I mailed him a handmade postcard made from the paperback cover torn from a copy of Ian Fleming's Moonraker. He mailed back a postcard right away written on the back of Ian Fleming's Thunderball, and a tradition was created. (Source: LISNews.org) Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:03:12 +0100 821990 http://www.betabib.org/2010/02/25/ex-libris-technical-seminar/ Dear Ex Libris Customers, We invite you to join us at the Ex Libris 2010 Technical Seminar. This year’s Seminar is packed full of interesting, useful, and relevant sessions. We are making every effort to deliver knowledge you can use to get the most out of our products. Included in this year’s agenda are special workshops taught by user developers: Mark Dehmlow, University of Notre Dame Daniel Forsman, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden James Robinson, Tarrant County College David Walker, California State University System We are excited to add these guest trainers to our roster of product experts and presenters. Technical Seminar registration will open next week. (Source: betabib) Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:19:21 +0100 822286 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/02/23/you-had-me-at-nude-mice/ In one of the most anticipated and followed book contests of the year, United Kingdom based Bookseller magazine has announced its longlist for its 2009 Diagram Prize.  Yet another list of books for the harried reader to consider, you ask?  The beauty of the Diagram Prize is that the reader has to go no further than the cover: merit is awarded entirely on the oddity of title.  Hence, books such as The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling, Versailles: The View From Sweden or The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification can finally get their due recognition. The prize, the result of an especially boring afternoon at the Frankfurt Book Fair, was first claimed in 1978 by Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice. Since then, Bookseller has allowed the public to vote on the worthiest of titles.  Not surprisingly, winners have skewed towards the somewhat suggestive–If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs took a whopping 30% of the vote in 2007.  However, voters have given due to classics like Bombproof Your Horse and (my personal favorite) How to Avoid Huge Ships. This year’s longlist includes a well-known bestseller, but the inclusion of such titles as The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin reminds that such humor is relative–and that there truly is a book for every reader.  The Diagram’s award of a bottle of middling claret goes not to the author of the book, but to the original submittor.  Alas, most titles are too specific to be included in LINKCat, but it is never too early to begin thinking of next year.  Suggestions, anyone? (Source: MADreads) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:23:45 +0100 820810 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/22/few-professionals-keep-current-some-new-research-from-sweden/ From the Announcement: Researchers at the University of Gothenburg and the University of Borås have looked at how professionals in different occupational groups seek and use information and keep updated after finishing their education. The results show that teachers seek information they can use in their own teaching and that librarians focus on helping library users find information, while nurses just don’t have the time. [Snip] One thing the researchers looked at was which information sources the studied occupational groups use in work life compared to the groups’ information practices during education.The findings of the study are presented in the writing series Lärande och IT (Learning and IT), which comprises the final reports of the major research programme LearnIT at the University of Gothenburg. Teachers, nurses and librarians are all part of knowledge-intensive professions that require scientifically based higher education and their occupational practices are partly based on research. Yet, being information literate as a student does not automatically transfer to being information literate in work life. Teachers When a student graduates and starts teaching professionally, he or she starts seeking for information for different purposes than before. The focus changes from finding research based information to finding information that can be used as teaching material in the daily work with students. Teachers also spend time teaching students how to seek and use information. The interviewed teachers also said that they, as students, did not learn how to remain updated with the latest research as practicing teachers. [Snip] Librarians Librarians differ from teachers and nurses in that information seeking is essential to the profession. However, similar to the teachers, the interviewed librarians were never trained to stay current. ... Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:49:34 +0100 820457 http://southlakelibrary.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html#8496689106857665036 1400 Main Street, Suite 130Southlake, Texas 76092Phone: (817) 748-8243http://www.southlakelibrary.org/"Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush." ~Doug Larson, Olympic Gold Medalist in distance runningWe're not the only one's waiting for spring. Winter may be rearing his head one more time but soon it will be warm again. Come in and check out our nonfiction books and start planning your spring and summer!FICTION HARDCOVERBRAVA, VALENTINE, by Adriana Trigiani. (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.99.) An Italian-American shoemaker faces challenges at work, in her family and in love; the second book in a trilogy. Call #: F TRITHE MIDNIGHT HOUSE, by Alex Berenson. (Putnam, $25.95.) Who is killing members of a secret unit that interrogated terrorists? The C.I.A. agent John Wells is on the case. Call #: F BERPOOR LITTLE BITCH GIRL, by Jackie Collins. (St. Martin’s, $26.99.) Hollywood murder, three beautiful 20-something high school friends, a hot New York club owner. Call #: COLSECRETS OF EDEN, by Chris Bohjalian. (Shaye Areheart, $25.) Murder, domestic abuse, spirituality and secrets in a small Vermont town. Call #: F BOHWINTER GARDEN, by Kristin Hannah. (St. Martin’s, $26.99.) After their father’s death, two sisters must cooperate to run his apple orchard and care for their difficult mother. Call #: F HANWORST CASE, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) A New York detective raising 10 children alone investigates a string of kidnappings and killings of teenagers by a villain with unusual motives. Call #: F PATKISSER, by Stuart Woods. (Putnam, $25.95.) Stone Barrington, the New York cop turned lawyer, pursues a case of financial fraud on the Upper East Side. Call #: F WOOTHE SWAN THIEVES, by Elizabeth Kostova. (Little, Brown, $26.99.) A psychiatrist who treats a man who slashed a canvas in the National Gallery is drawn into the world of French Impressionism; from the author of “The Historian. ... Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 821469 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/TlzRxkX5Lis/ New Open Access Fund [SFU Library’] http://icio.us/uthzl3 # The BOAI is eight http://icio.us/fuf1aq # Google staunchly defends pact to digitize books http://icio.us/f0nywx # Google Argues for Approval of Book Search Settlements http://icio.us/cantx0 # The Google Books Settlement: Second Round Comments http://icio.us/lfxp4s # VU University Amsterdam backs Open Access and copyright for the researchers http://icio.us/2vpfc5 # RoMEO reaches 700 Publishers http://icio.us/sip4ri # Report on new ACRL Image Resources Interest Group (IRIG) http://icio.us/1ejas3 # Fantastic volunteer scanning project with National Archives–great example of crowdsourcing http://icio.us/lqamed # AIDA and repositories http://icio.us/trae3m # JSTOR Events at 2010 ALA Midwinter Meeting http://icio.us/tctd0t # Evergreen 1.6.0.1 and OpenSRF 1.2.2 released http://icio.us/xxrckh # Public Knowledge Statement on DoJ Intellectual Property Task Force http://icio.us/a3r235 # Google Book Search by the Numbers http://icio.us/ec44lz # Towards a Toolkit for Implementing Application Profiles http://icio.us/p10j4i # eBooks: Tipping or Vanishing Point?' http://icio.us/wrwhuz # Uncovering User Perceptions of Research Activity Data http://icio.us/r03a0o # Abstract Modelling of Digital Identifiers http://icio.us/gfuea1 # Fedora UK & Ireland / EU Joint User Group Meeting http://icio.us/npbjpr # Subject Repositories: European Collaboration in the International Context http://icio.us/io3cmr # Open-Access Journals Break Barriers to Academic Freedom http://icio.us/jzechc # Open Access and Libraries: Be my guest http://icio.us/3g1on4 # North Carolina State U. Gives Students Free Access to Physics Textbook Online http://icio.us/2e2adf # Culture Trumps Technology: The UC Berkeley Scholarly Communication Report http://icio.us/hux1bg # How to Find Free Public Domain Books from Google Book Search http://icio.us/yvsxvf # Royal Holloway embraces open access policy for all research http://icio. ... Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:00:00 +0100 820733 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/VsR0-KENz90/stieg-larsson-eva-gabrielsson The first film of the Swedish writer's work is about to open in Britain, his books are smashing sales records round the world, and an ex-colleague has written a book questioning his reputation. Now the woman who shared Larsson's life speaks of the grief she suffered, and her crusade to guard his flameIn April 2004, just as Sweden was emerging from another long, hard winter, Eva Gabrielsson's partner of 32 years, a moderately impoverished journalist called Stieg Larsson, sold his crime novel, the first book in what he hoped would be a long series, to a Stockholm publisher. The couple were glad about this, though modest in their ambitions for it. "We thought: if we're lucky it will sell in Scandinavia and Germany," says Gabrielsson. "Our plan was that the income from the first book would go to us, and that we would use it – depending on its size – to pay off our loans, and to get a summer cottage in the archipelago. The money from the next six or seven, we would donate to our causes."For both of them this was a happy time; a writer is perhaps never more light-hearted than in the weeks following the signing of a book deal, when his dreams have not yet been dented by bad reviews or poor sales. But for Gabrielsson it was also heavy with foreboding. "I thought: there will be a balance for this good fortune. There has to be. Something horrible will happen. I had an ill feeling all the time." What was her fear? "I thought it would be me, something would happen to me. I was travelling a lot for work. I thought I would fall under a train. So we had our little measures. I would phone him from the railway station; I would phone him when I got to my destination; I would phone as soon as I arrived in Stockholm four days later."But these telephone calls, such 21st-century amulets, were no good. The bad thing happened, and it led, domino-like, to more bad things: painful things that reverberate to this day. ... Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:48:00 +0100 820058 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/JlGuC_g_lis/oddest-book-title-worm-hunter-nazi-spoons Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter and Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich lead the shortlist for this year's Diagram prize for the oddest book titleAfterthoughts of a Worm Hunter, David Crompton's musings on his career as a parasitologist, is emerging as early favourite to take the Bookseller magazine's prize for the oddest title of the year after landing a place on the shortlist this morning.Crompton's competition for the annual Diagram award includes Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich, featuring spoons that "were once in the hands of the German history makers of the Third Reich era", children's book What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua? and Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots."Two other wormy tomes have made previous Diagram shortlists," said the prize's custodian Horace Bent. "New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers made the 81 shortlist, while Earthworms of Ontario missed out to Reusing Old Graves in 95. Crompton's Worms could wriggle a win."The shortlist is completed by The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, which informs its readers how to "crochet models of the hyperbolic plane, pseudosphere, and catenoid/helicoids", as well as exploring geometry and its historical connections with art, architecture, navigation and motion, and the history of crochet. It is the bestselling book on this year's shortlist, having sold 34 copies in the UK and 588 copies in the US, compared to zero for Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter, according to the Bookseller."Selecting a shortlist proved a Herculean task, as numerous books carried titles that furrowed the brow – not least I Stopped Sucking My Thumb ... Why Can't You Stop Drinking?" said Bent. "However, the vast number of submissions has, in my humble opinion, created one of the most competitive shortlists in the history of the prize." The winner will be decided by public vote at www. ... Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:22:01 +0100 819657 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NetbibWeblog/~3/HcrL3YgmhJE/ Im Vagabondages-Blog findet sich ein Hinweis auf schwedische Bibliotheks-Werbekampagne, die trotz der niedlichen Aufmachung einen ernsten Hintergrund hat: The Swedish Library Association is conducting a campaign which will last until the General Election of 2010 and whose aim is to increase political commitment to publicly financed libraries. Sweden is the only Nordic country that does not have a national library policy. Consequently, Swedes do not have access to the full potential to be derived from a world-leading library system. Die Kampagne ist unter www.librarylovers.se zu erreichen (hier eine englische Zusammenfassung) und hat auch eine Facebook-Seite. Es stehen verschiedene Informations- und Werbematerialen zur Verfügung; unterstützen kann man die Aktion auch durch den Kauf von Buttons, Pins und Kappen. (Source: netbib weblog) Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:12:31 +0100 818375 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/netbib/DFxV/~3/HcrL3YgmhJE/ Im Vagabondages-Blog findet sich ein Hinweis auf schwedische Bibliotheks-Werbekampagne, die trotz der niedlichen Aufmachung einen ernsten Hintergrund hat: The Swedish Library Association is conducting a campaign which will last until the General Election of 2010 and whose aim is to increase political commitment to publicly financed libraries. Sweden is the only Nordic country that does not have a national library policy. Consequently, Swedes do not have access to the full potential to be derived from a world-leading library system. Die Kampagne ist unter www.librarylovers.se zu erreichen (hier eine englische Zusammenfassung) und hat auch eine Facebook-Seite. Es stehen verschiedene Informations- und Werbematerialen zur Verfügung; unterstützen kann man die Aktion auch durch den Kauf von Buttons, Pins und Kappen. (Source: netbib weblog) Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:12:31 +0100 818973 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/uZdAq7_dzTA/rene-descartes-poisoned-catholic-priest French philosopher was killed by arsenic-laced holy communion wafer after airing 'heretic' views, says academicFor more than three and a half centuries, the death of René Descartes one winter's day in Stockholm has been attributed to the ravages of pneumonia on a body unused to the Scandinavian chill. But in a book released after years spent combing the archives of Paris and the Swedish capital, one Cartesian expert has a more sinister theory about how the French philosopher came to his end.According to Theodor Ebert, an academic at the University of Erlangen, Descartes died not through natural causes but from an arsenic-laced communion wafer given to him by a Catholic priest.Ebert believes that Jacques Viogué, a missionary working in Stockholm, administered the poison because he feared Descartes's radical theological ideas would derail an expected conversion to Catholicism by the monarch of protestant Sweden. "Viogué knew of Queen Christina's Catholic tendencies. It is very likely that he saw in Descartes an obstacle to the Queen's conversion to the Catholic faith," Ebert told Le Nouvel Observateur newspaper.Though raised as a Catholic, Descartes, who had been summoned in 1649 to tutor Queen Christina, was regarded with suspicion by many of his theological coreligionists. His theories were viewed as incompatible with the belief of transubstantiation, in which the bread and wine served during the Eucharist become the flesh and blood of Christ. "Viogué was convinced that … his metaphysics were more in line with Calvinist 'heresy'," said Ebert. The theory of foul play has been greeted with caution by scholars. Since Descartes's death on 11 February 1650, pneumonia has been blamed for robbing the world of the so-called father of modern philosophy.Ebert rejects this as incompatible with the facts. ... Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:54:03 +0100 818190 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/14/ifla-international-newspaper-conference-will-take-place-at-the-end-of-february/ From the Article: The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), in collaboration with the IFLA Newspaper Section, is organising the IFLA International Newspaper Conference 2010 here from February 25 to 28. The theme will be ‘Digital Preservation and Access to News and Views.’ Newspaper librarians and archivists from India, Finland, Australia, the U.S., the U.K., France, Sweden, Germany, South Africa, Singapore, Bangladesh and elsewhere will participate. Ramesh C. Gaur, Librarian and Head of the Kala Nidhi Division at the IGNCA, has said the conference provides an excellent opportunity for Indians to interact and exchange ideas with foreign participants and experts. The participants will present and discuss the latest research, technical innovations, and business developments in the preservation and dissemination of historical and contemporary news and newspapers. Of particular interest will be the latest developments in digitisation of historical newspapers and in the preservation of today’s born digital news and newspapers. Source: The Hindu See Also: Official Conference Web Site Note: ResourceShelf will regularly check the conference programme for papers/presentations that will presented at the conference. (Source: ResourceShelf) Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:45:06 +0100 818274 http://www.docuticker.com/?p=32174 Europeans broadly satisfied with their lives, but survey highlights concerns over the future of the economic and social situation Source: Europa From press release: Europeans are on average broadly satisfied with their personal situation, but less satisfied when it comes to the economy, public services and social policies in their country, according to an opinion survey released today. The Eurobarometer on the social climate in the EU also found large differences between countries, with people in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands generally most satisfied with their personal situation. The survey forms part of the European Commission’s Social Situation Report, also released today, which examines social trends in Europe, this year focusing on housing…. According to the Eurobarometer survey, a majority of Europeans are satisfied with life in general, giving an average score of +3.2 points (on a scale of -10 to +10). But there are big differences between Member States: the highest level of satisfaction was reported in Denmark, (+8.0), with Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland also having high levels. The lowest levels of satisfaction were reported in Bulgaria (-1.9), followed by Hungary, Greece and Romania. When it comes to public services, Europeans are on average quite dissatisfied with the way their public administrations are run (-1.2 points). In every country, apart from Luxembourg and Estonia, Europeans feel that this has worsened over the last five years and expect it to continue to get worse (in all countries except Luxembourg). When asked about specific public policies, Europeans are broadly satisfied with healthcare provision (+1.3 points), with people in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg most satisfied (over +5 points) and those in Bulgaria, Greece and Romania least satisfied (-3 points or less). Europeans were most dissatisfied with the way inequalities and poverty are addressed in their country (-2 points). ... Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:55:40 +0100 818232 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/AxVfqNKWL30/first-sight-noomi-rapace A 30-year-old Swedish ­actress who has assumed the mantle of fiction's brainiest evil-fighting heroineWho is she?A 30-year-old Swedish ­actress who has assumed the mantle of fiction's brainiest evil-fighting heroine.Hermione Granger? I thought Emma Watson had that ­covered.No, Lisbeth Salander, from the late Stieg Larsson's mega-selling Millennium trilogy: kick-ass feminist avenger and total dark heart. Rapace plays Lisbeth in the film of the first book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.I haven't read it. What's Lisbeth's MO?Punk computer hacker with a ­photographic memory. She's pierced, tattooed, anorexically thin and half of an odd-couple detective duo, with a leftie journalist. The pair ­investigate the ­disappearance 30 years earlier of a wealthy ­industrialist's niece, ­dredging up Nazi ­sympathisers, corruption and ­stomach-churning sexual ­violence.She looks pretty tough.Larsson described Lisbeth as looking like "she had emerged from a week-long orgy with a gang of hard ­rockers". Rapace learned kickboxing, how to ride a motorbike, got the piercings and dyed her hair black to pull it off. ­Director Niels Arden Oplev ­described her transformation is ­"chillingly perfect".What next?Two further Millennium instalments. You could see her, like Franka Potente, adding a dash of European cool to ­Hollywood. Kristen Stewart, Ellen Page and Natalie Portman have all been ­suggested for the inevitable US remake.Stieg LarssonCath Clarkeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:00:03 +0100 817439 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/walkingpaper/full/~3/XDhqQJ6_ZPM/2565 This library awareness campaign from Sweden uses attractive graphic design. The design allows more people to connect with the clearly noble but probably not catchy to most “Sweden needs a national library policy” movement. Read more about the campaign at Library Lovers. (Source: walking paper) Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:32:37 +0100 817740 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/11/lists-rankings-new-full-text-access-to-2010-connectivity-scorecard-sweden-tops-in-telecom-tech/ Via Reuters: Sweden took the number one spot from the United States to top the annual rankings on the usage of telecommunications technologies such as networks, cellphones and computers, a report released on Thursday shows. The Connectivity Scorecard, created by London Business School professor Leonard Waverman in 2008, measured 50 countries on dozens of indicators, including technological skills and usage of communications technology. “Sweden not only has the best current mix of attributes, but it also shows few signs of losing its lead,” said Waverman. “By contrast, there is the beginning of a gap in what was once the essence of U.S. leadership in most industrial and service sectors – education and skills.” Sweden was second in the last survey behind the United States. Norway placed third, up from fifth spot last year. Researchers say the new indicator—commissioned by telecom gear maker Nokia Siemens Networks—is already used by several countries in developing innovation strategies. See Also: Access the Complete Report, Rankings/Country Reports, Methodology, Videos Highlighting Each Chapter See Also: Complete Report as PDF File (61 pages). and FAQ (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:00:55 +0100 817373 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LawLibrarianBlog/~3/2HWi5OcvKQc/doityourself-guide-to-open-access-journals-publishing.html Developed by Co-Action Publishing and Lund University Libraries Head Office with support from the National Library of Sweden and Nordbib, The Online Guide to Open Access Journals Publishing "provides practical information and tools to support the efforts of scholars and... (Source: Law Librarian Blog) Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 817578 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/fQiy40CG2bk/ Yassine Gargouri, Chawki Hajjem, Vincent Lariviere, Yves Gingras, Tim Brody, Les Carr, Stevan Harnad have self-archived "Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research" in the ECS EPrints Repository Here's an excerpt: Articles whose authors make them Open Access (OA) by self-archiving them online are cited significantly more than articles accessible only to subscribers. Some have suggested that this "OA Advantage" may not be causal but just a self-selection bias, because authors preferentially make higher-quality articles OA. To test this we compared self-selective self-archiving with mandatory self-archiving for a sample of 27,197 articles published 2002-2006 in 1,984 journals. The OA Advantage proved just as high for both. Logistic regression showed that the advantage is independent of other correlates of citations (article age; journal impact factor; number of co-authors, references or pages; field; article type; country or institution) and greatest for the most highly cited articles. The OA Advantage is real, independent and causal, but skewed. Its size is indeed correlated with quality, just as citations themselves are (the top 20% of articles receive about 80% of all citations). The advantage is greater for the more citeable articles, not because of a quality bias from authors self-selecting what to make OA, but because of a quality advantage, from users self-selecting what to use and cite, freed by OA from the constraints of selective accessibility to subscribers only. [See accompanying RTF file for responses to feedback. Four PDF files provide Supplementary Analysis. ... Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:05:39 +0100 817355 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/10/lists-rankings-international-patent-filings-dip-in-2009/ From the Announcement: International patent filings under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) fell by 4.5% in 2009 with sharper than average declines experienced by some industrialized countries and growth in a number of East Asian countries. Provisional data indicates that 155,900 international patent applications were filed in 2009 as compared to the nearly 164,000 applications filed in 2008. [Snip] International patent filings experienced a sharper than average decline in a number of industrialized countries. For example, the filing rate dropped by 11.4% in the USA and by 11.2% in Germany in 2009. Declines were also experienced in the United Kingdom (-3.5%), Switzerland (-1.6%), Sweden (-11.3%), Italy (-5.8%), Canada (-11.7%), Finland (-2.2%), Australia (-7.5%) and Israel (-17.2%). The United States of America (USA) maintained its top ranking (annex 2), filing just under a third of all international applications in 2009 (45,790), followed by Japan (+3.6%, 29,827 applications), Germany (-11.2% or 16,736 applications), ROK (+2.1%, 8,066 applications), China (29.7%, 7,946 applications), France (+1.6%, 7166 applications), United Kingdom (-3.5% or 5,320 applications), the Netherlands (+3.0% or 4,471 applications), Switzerland (-1.6% or 3,688 applications) and Sweden (-11.3% or 3,667 applications). From the Top Applicants Section: Panasonic Corporation (Japan) returned to the top spot in the list of PCT applicants, nudging Huawei Technologies, Co., Ltd. (China) into second place. Panasonic Corporation had 1,891 PCT applications published in 2009, China’s Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. had 1,847, followed by Robert Bosch GMBH (Germany, 1586 applications), Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Netherlands, 1,295 applications) and Qualcomm Incorporated (USA, 1280 applications). ... Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:31:11 +0100 817137 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/XfWUt8aMWQs/ Adlibris is the Nordic countries’ largest online book retailer. They are launching an ereader, called Letto, along with an online bookstore for ebooks. The store will serve other readers as well and the books will be in the Epub format. The Letto has an e-ink screen and menus in Swedish and there are 500 Swedish titles available at launch. In 2010 all new Swedish books from Bonnierförlagen will come out as ebooks. The Letto will have an introductory price of SEK 1,495 and a regular price of SEK 3,170. Pär Svärdson, CEO of Adlibris said: “Over the past decade there’s been a lot of talk about e-books in Sweden, but since there were no e-readers, publishers started to lose interest,” says Svärdson. “And since there wasn’t a big market for e-books in Sweden, e-readers from outside Sweden weren’t launched here either. So it seemed the time was ripe to finally push hard to get a market for e-books going in Sweden.” More information, and links, here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:46:01 +0100 816986 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/yDxXvVWJTUg/simon-beckett-bestseller-no-one-knows Crime author Simon Beckett is huge in Scandinavia and Germany but totally unknown in his native BritainUntil the end of last week, I had no idea I was one of the bestselling authors in Europe in 2009, let alone the bestselling UK author. It came as a real, pleasant shock. After years in the career doldrums, I'm still getting used to the ­novelty of seeing the word ­"bestseller" next to my name.I had known that my crime series about Dr David Hunter, an emotionally damaged forensic anthropologist, was doing well. The books have been translated into 27 languages, and appeared on bestseller charts in several of those countries. In the last 12 months, I've done interviews and readings in the Netherlands and Sweden, and been forced to turn down almost as many invitations again.But the biggest surprise has been with Germany. Over there, the books have sold in their millions. I had no idea of the scale of things until I went over last year to give readings. These are normally sedate affairs where empty chairs outnumber the audience. So I was unprepared to find myself – a British author who doesn't speak German – selling out several-hundred-seat venues in Hamburg, Munich and Dusseldorf.In Cologne, I was casually told on the way to the hall (yes, an actual hall) that 900 tickets had been sold. Afterwards, as I sat for almost an hour signing books, ticket stubs and photographs, it took me a while to ­realise that the man standing beside me was a security guard. My own security guard. How did that happen?German journalists often ask if I'm recognised in my home city of Sheffield. Well, no: not that I'd want to be. A few days before I heard the news about the European ranking I was at a funeral, along with people I'd not seen for a few years. "Still writing?" one of them asked. "Managing to keep your head above water?"I said I was. Which is as it should be. I didn't exactly become a writer to be a celebrity. ... Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:05:21 +0100 816368 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/wgFCLhIU-W4/online-guide-to-open-access-journals.html "The Online Guide to Open Access Journals Publishing provides practical information and tools to support the efforts of scholars and other small teams producing independent Open Access journals. The guide has been developed by Co-Action Publishing and Lund University Libraries Head Office with support from the National Library of Sweden and Nordbib" (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:19:24 +0100 816226 http://southlakelibrary.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html#2433667565262015646 1400 Main Street, Suite 130Southlake, Texas 76092Phone: (817) 748-8243http://www.southlakelibrary.org/The world is hugged by the faithful arms of volunteers." ~Everett MamourThe Southlake Public Library appreciates all of the wonderful volunteers who give their time to help us offer better service. Next time you are in, feel free to thank one of our volunteers!FICTION HARDCOVERTHE BURNING LAND, by Bernard Cornwell. (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.99.) In the fifth of the Saxon Tales, the ninth-century Saxon warrior Uhtred breaks with King Alfred, but eventually returns to help fight the Danes. Call #: F CORTHE WOLF AT THE DOOR, by Jack Higgins. (Putnam, $26.95.) Someone is targeting the members of an elite British intelligence team, and Sean Dillon believes it is an old nemesis. Call #: F HIGBLOOD TIES, by Kay Hooper. (Bantam, $26.) The F.B.I. agent Noah Bishop and his special crimes unit pursue a brutal enemy. Call #: F HOOKISSER, by Stuart Woods. (Putnam, $25.95.) Stone Barrington, the New York cop turned lawyer, pursues a case of financial fraud on the Upper East Side. Call #: F WOONOAH’S COMPASS, by Anne Tyler. (Knopf, $25.95.) A retired teacher with a head injury struggles to regain his memory and his engagement in life.Call #: F TYLIMPACT, by Douglas Preston. (Forge, $25.99.) Scientists race to defuse a doomsday weapon pointed at Earth from one of the moons of Mars.Call #: F PRETHE SWAN THIEVES, by Elizabeth Kostova. (Little, Brown, $26.99.) A psychiatrist who treats a man who slashed a canvas in the National Gallery is drawn into the world of French Impressionism; from the author of “The Historian.” Call #: F KOSTHE FIRST RULE, by Robert Crais. (Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, $26.95.) Elvis Cole and his partner, Joe Pike, set out to clear the reputation of a former military contractor who has been murdered. Call #: F CRAI, SNIPER, by Stephen Hunter, (Simon & Schuster, $26. ... Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 817394 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pandia/vfbc/~3/fp8JZFdJT_s/2477-google-celebrates-sami-national-day.html In Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland Google is celebrating the Sami national day with a special logo today. The Sami people, one of the largest indigenous groups in Europe, lives in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Their traditional languages are the Sami languages, which are members of the Finno-Lappic group of the Uralic language family. February 6 was the date the first Sami congress was held in 1917 in Trondheim, Norway. This congress was the first time that Norwegian and Swedish Sami came together to find solutions for common problems. Since 1993 Norway, Sweden and Finland (and now apparently Google) have recognized the date as the Sami National Day. The Wikipedia on the Sami. Photo:Sami bride, photo credit: samisknettverk SEO Services100% Money Back Guarantee (Source: Pandia Search Engine News) Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:27:40 +0100 816563 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/05/new-online-guide-to-open-access-journals-publishing/ From the Introduction: This guide focuses on Open Access scholarly journals publishing. By “Open Access journals” we refer to the publication of peer reviewed scientific manuscripts under the umbrella of a specific journal title. The Online Guide to Open Access Journals Publishing is a web-based, living document that allows users to navigate quickly to specific areas of interest. Each chapter contains links to additional resources on the same topic in the form of: other documents and websites, tools and templates that can be adapted for your own use, and examples and best practices from other editorial teams to illustrate how the information can be implemented. Wherever possible, tables, charts, figures and checklists have been used in place of lengthy text. This is a living document. Users are asked to please submit their own best practices and experiences by using the “Share your best practices” function available at the bottom of each page. Your experiences can bring insight to others! We also request that users bring inoperable links to the attention of the developers by clicking on “Contact” in the menu to the left and filling in the form. Sources: Co-Action Publishing, Lund University Libraries Head Office, National Library of Sweden, Nordbib (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:51:40 +0100 815556 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/vTqCICdMw8E/karen-blixen-nobel-prize The Danish author had committee's majority support in 1959, but lost out amid anxiety that too many Scandinanvians had already wonOut of Africa author Karen Blixen missed out on a Nobel prize for literature because judges were concerned about showing favouritism to Scandinavian writers, according to Danish reports.Danish author Blixen was favourite to win the 1959 Nobel prize against candidates including Graham Greene and John Steinbeck, but recently declassified documents shown to Politiken newspaper show that despite having the committee's majority support her nationality was counted against her. The documents were classified by the Nobel archive in Stockholm until the end of 2009.Committee member Anders Österling nominated Blixen as his first choice in 1959, writing that "if the prize should go to the now 74-year-old author, it should happen without delay", according to the documents. Two other committee members agreed with his choice, but the final member, Swedish author Eyvind Johnson, said that Italian poet Salvatore Quasimodo should win, pointing out that Scandinavian authors had won the prize four times more than other nationalities. Quasimodo was eventually named winner, for "his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times".Blixen never won a Nobel, and died aged 77 in 1962. Johnson himself later won the prize jointly, in 1974, for "a narrative art, far-seeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom"."The [Nobel] academy was probably afraid to appear provincial," Johannes Riis, literary director at Gyldendals publishing house told Politiken. "And so a mistake was made, because obviously Karen Blixen ought to have received the Nobel prize. Instead, it was a kind of reverse provincialism. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:18:58 +0100 814110 http://lib1point5.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/ipad-and-libraries-some-thoughts/ OK, congratulations to all fellow Apple fanboys and girls The iPad looks good and I would love to get my hands on one. In fact on thursday I  got word from the ICT-department at work that they pre-ordered one for me. (I might have mentioned the upcoming device once or twice in the previous months and had a fairly long discussion with the head of ICT services that morning) Have I told you how great these guys are? Even if I look forward to getting my hands on the iPad, or “padda” (toad) as it is rapidly becoming known in Norway and Sweden, one of my first reactions to Steve Jobs presentation of the iPad was  that this is Apple´s gift to Google. It will take very little effort to top this. Just add a camera and flash support to a touch screen with the Android operating system and you have a iPad killer. On the purely technical/OS side of the device that is. What probably will sell the iPad is the ease of use for non-techies.  A lot of blogposts and twitter comments have called this the first true “everybody computer.”  They might have a point. My iPod touch is equally popular with my three-year-old, my ten-year-old and myself,  who all use it in many different ways. A larger device appeals to all of us. But like so many people I am more fascinated with the services embedded in the iPad than the hardware. iBooks and the iTunes-like book buying opportunities are what makes the iPad a  must have for me, more that the weight, screen, OS or other apps. It will certainly be interesting to see what new iPad apps that will come in the coming months. One thing I am sure of is that we will all be surprised by the diversity of apps and the uses to which the iPad will be put to. And another thing to watch out for is the plethora of iPad-like devices that will hit us like a tsunami in the coming year. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:26:19 +0100 815856 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/02/01/blawg-review-249/ ROOTS The Legality of an American Slavery Introduction February 1 is known as National Freedom Day in the U.S.  It’s also the start of Black History Month, the annual celebration and triumph of the descendants of African-Americans.  This year, President Obama has also indicated that National Freedom Day will also be the first ever National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.  For this reason, Blawg Review #249 will follow the theme of African slavery in America, using the model of Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Haley’s novel traces his family roots back six generations to one of his African ancestors, in the process telling a compelling story of survival and resilience.  This post will focus on various topics within this narrative, starting from his earliest ancestor in Africa, down to Alex Haley himself. It’s also in part my story, as a Canadian of (more recent) African descent whose family friends as a child included (among others) former Nation of Islam members that evaded the draft during Vietnam by moving to Toronto.  Their oral traditions, often told sitting around a campfire in the Canadian north, became part of my own Roots. Left: My copy of Roots today, which I discovered over two decades ago on my parents' bookshelf. Right: How the book would look if it still had a cover. Canada has an complicated relationship with American slavery, being one of the final destinations of the Underground Railroad.  Although the Song of the Free refers to Canada as a place of safety, it is also “a cold and dreary land” where many faced rampant discrimination encoded in legislation. Frustrated by the lack of opportunities in Canada, thousands even sought “repatriation” back to West Africa by the British during the late 18th century.  Canada remained part of the British Empire until 1867, and even then held on tightly to its British roots. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:04:06 +0100 816160 http://southlakelibrary.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html#8759397193708171078 1400 Main Street, Suite 130Southlake, Texas 76092Phone: (817) 748-8243http://www.southlakelibrary.org/Love - a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the lips to pucker." ~Author UnknownWhen was the last time you enjoyed a good romance? Love isn't hard to find, we have pages and pages of it in the Library, come check it out.FICTION HARDCOVERDEEPER THAN THE DEAD, by Tami Hoag. (Dutton, $26.95.) An F.B.I. investigator and a teacher track a series of murders in California in 1985.Call #: F HOANOAH’S COMPASS, by Anne Tyler. (Knopf, $25.95.) A retired teacher with a head injury struggles to regain his memory and his engagement in life.Call #: F TYLIMPACT, by Douglas Preston. (Forge, $25.99.) Scientists race to defuse a doomsday weapon pointed at Earth from one of the moons of Mars.Call #: F PRETHE SWAN THIEVES, by Elizabeth Kostova. (Little, Brown, $26.99.) A psychiatrist who treats a man who slashed a canvas in the National Gallery is drawn into the world of French Impressionism; from the author of “The Historian.” Call #: F KOSTHE FIRST RULE, by Robert Crais. (Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, $26.95.) Elvis Cole and his partner, Joe Pike, set out to clear the reputation of a former military contractor who has been murdered. Call #: F CRAI, SNIPER, by Stephen Hunter, (Simon & Schuster, $26.) Bob Lee Swagger discovers that the murder of four ’60s radicals is more complicated than it seems. Call #: F HUNTHE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, by Stieg Larsson. (Knopf, $25.95.) A Swedish hacker becomes a murder suspect. Call #: F LARTHE LAST SONG, by Nicholas Sparks. (Grand Central, $24.99.) A 17-year-old girl spends the summer with her divorced father in North Carolina and finds many kinds of love. Call #: F SPADEEPER THAN THE DEAD, by Tami Hoag. (Dutton, $26.95.) An F.B.I. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 815172 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/ou8M7r90qs4/william-blake-human-image-divine-image This week, the Guardian and the Observer are running a series of seven pamphlets on the Romantic poets. To coincide with it, I'm blogging daily on one of each day's selected works"Without Contraries is no progression," said William Blake – and without contraries there would certainly have been no William Blake. His imagination was shaped by the diversity of London itself, and by the contrasting, semi-rural landscape that began a couple of miles north of Soho's teeming Broad Street, where his father was a hosier. When, at the age of 14, he wrote the Song that begins, "How sweet I roamed from field to field," it was an imaginative and impassioned response to his father's decision to send him to drawing school. And so the stage was set for another career of reconciled contraries: the tactile, smelly, thoroughly physical process of copper-engraving and the more elusive mental activity of making poems.As a thinker, Blake was influenced by Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish scientist, inventor, philosopher and theologian who was, perhaps, the supreme genius of contraries. Coincidentally (no doubt) 1757, the poet's birth-year, was the very year predicted by Swedenborg for Christ's Second Coming. He was another visionary, who claimed to have visited Heaven where he had met the souls of Jews, Muslims and pagans as well as Christians. Fundamental to his religious teaching was the belief that the love of God and one's neighbour mattered more than creed. He also claimed that everything in the natural world had a spiritual counterpart.Ultimately, Blake rejected Swedenborg's teaching, and moved on to a philosophy of cycles, embodied in the alternating rule of the Prolific and the Devourer. These opposing titans he considered to be the essential elements of existence, and were never to be reconciled. So Blake's idealism is no simple, reformist matter: it encompasses moral paradox, or, as we might call it these days, relativism. ... Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:10:56 +0100 813106 http://lib.wmrc.uiuc.edu/enb/2010/01/28/2010-environmental-performance-index-epi/ Via Docuticker. 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) Source: Yale University and Columbia University From press release (Word): Iceland leads the world in addressing pollution control and natural resource management challenges, according to the 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) produced by a team of environmental experts at Yale University and Columbia University. This is the third edition of the EPI, which has been revisited biannually since 2006. Released today at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010, the EPI ranks 163 countries on their performance across 25 metrics aggregated into ten categories including: environmental health, air quality, water resource management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and climate change. Iceland’s top-notch performance derives from its high scores on environmental public health, controlling greenhouse gas emissions, and reforestation. Other top performers include Switzerland, Costa Rica, Sweden, and Norway – all of which have made substantial investments in environmental infrastructure, pollution control, and policies designed to move toward long-term sustainability. Occupying the bottom five positions are Togo, Angola, Mauritania, the Central African Republic, and Sierra Leone –impoverished countries that lack basic environmental amenities and policy capacity. The United States places 61st in the 2010 EPI, with strong results on some issues, such as provision of safe drinking water and forest sustainability, and weak performance on other issues including greenhouse gas emissions and several aspects of local air pollution. This ranking puts the United States significantly behind other industrialized nations like the United Kingdom (14th), Germany (17th), and Japan (20th). Over 20 members of the European Union outrank the United States. ... Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:41:01 +0100 812918 http://www.docuticker.com/?p=31573 Spain: a country profile Source: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound). Introduction: Spain took over the European Union’s six-month Presidency from Sweden on 1 January 2010. This report aims to present an overview of the Spanish labour market and industrial relations system, mainly using research findings from the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound). The first chapter outlines the main features of the Spanish economic model, highlighting basic facts and data needed to understand the main issues affecting the economy at present. Chapter 2 depicts the Spanish industrial relations system. It presents the main social partner organisations, features of the Spanish collective bargaining and social dialogue processes, as well as the agreements reached regarding pay and working time. Special attention will be paid to recent trends in social dialogue in the workplace based on data from the second European Company Survey (ECS), which was carried out by Eurofound in 2009. Chapter 3 reviews the labour market developments covering the period between 1995 and 2009. It looks at the main patterns of employment expansion in terms of quantity and quality during the last prosperity cycle and highlights current developments as a result of the global economic crisis. Chapter 4 then explores the steps taken by the government and the social partners to tackle the consequences of the current crisis. The last chapter examines the quality of working and living conditions in Spain, using data from the fourth European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) carried out by Eurofound in 2005 and the second European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) conducted by Eurofound in 2007. + Direct link to document (PDF; 656 KB) (Source: Docuticker) Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:51:18 +0100 812581 http://www.docuticker.com/?p=31800 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) Source: Yale University and Columbia University From press release (Word): Iceland leads the world in addressing pollution control and natural resource management challenges, according to the 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) produced by a team of environmental experts at Yale University and Columbia University. This is the third edition of the EPI, which has been revisited biannually since 2006. Released today at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010, the EPI ranks 163 countries on their performance across 25 metrics aggregated into ten categories including: environmental health, air quality, water resource management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and climate change. Iceland’s top-notch performance derives from its high scores on environmental public health, controlling greenhouse gas emissions, and reforestation. Other top performers include Switzerland, Costa Rica, Sweden, and Norway – all of which have made substantial investments in environmental infrastructure, pollution control, and policies designed to move toward long-term sustainability. Occupying the bottom five positions are Togo, Angola, Mauritania, the Central African Republic, and Sierra Leone –impoverished countries that lack basic environmental amenities and policy capacity. The United States places 61st in the 2010 EPI, with strong results on some issues, such as provision of safe drinking water and forest sustainability, and weak performance on other issues including greenhouse gas emissions and several aspects of local air pollution. This ranking puts the United States significantly behind other industrialized nations like the United Kingdom (14th), Germany (17th), and Japan (20th). Over 20 members of the European Union outrank the United States. ... Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:31:39 +0100 812584 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/22/whats-new-with-the-directory-of-open-access-journals/ Tom Hill, Publisher and CEO of Libertas Academica, recently posted an interview with a few of the people who compile and maintain the Directory of Open Access Journals (an essential reference tool). The directory hosted/maintained/and partially funded by the Lund University Library in Sweden. My how the DOAJ has grown. There are now 4611 journals in the directory. Currently 1792 journals are searchable at article level. As of today 344222 articles are included in the DOAJ service. (1/23/2009). It’s a Q&A style interview. Here’s one exchange of many. Tom: Thank you all for being willing to be interviewed again. I appreciate this particularly because I know how busy you’ve all been since our last interview. Perhaps you could start by giving us a broad overview of what’s happened since August 2008? DOAJ: 2009 was a very eventful year: * Launch of the long-term preservation project * DOAJ receives the SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications 2009 * Implementation of an RSS Feed function * Continued cooperation with China (ISTIC) * Arranged 1st Conference for Open Access Scholarly Publishers together with OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association) * New function to see how many journals have a Creative Commons license and how many have the SPARC Seal for open access journals. Access the Complete Interview Source: Libertas Academica (via OATP Project) (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:22:23 +0100 811023 http://www.readersclub.org/reviews/tresults.asp?id=6701 by Austin, LynnIn 1897, three orphaned sisters decide to emigrate from Sweden to America in hopes of a new beginning. As the oldest, Elin feels responsible for her younger sisters so she writes to her uncle in America for help. Believing their uncle and his family will take them in, the girls make the trip to Chicago. After learning the money for their tickets did not come from their uncle as they expected, but from three men expecting the girls to become their wives, the sisters decide to strike out on their own. Faced with difficult circumstances, Elin, Kirsten, and Sofia wonder if they made the right decision. With courage and determination the sisters work to make their dreams come true.- reviewed by Erin, Cornelius Branch, PLCMC (Source: Reader's Club's Latest) Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:40:01 +0100 810540 http://southlakelibrary.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html#509055015324530625 1400 Main Street, Suite 130Southlake, Texas 76092Phone: (817) 748-8243http://www.southlakelibrary.org/Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever." ~GhandiWhat complex creatures we are. Our thoughts, our dreams, our hopes, they are the essence of what it means to be human. Books are the key to exploring that world, a different journey for each person who has walked this earth.FICTION HARDCOVERTHE HONOR OF SPIES, by W. E. B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV. (Putnam, $26.95.) An O.S.S. agent seeks information from a German prisoner of war; the fifth book in the Honor Bound series. Call #: F GRIDEEPER THAN THE DEAD, by Tami Hoag. (Dutton, $26.95.) An F.B.I. investigator and a teacher track a series of murders in California in 1985.Call #: F HOANOAH’S COMPASS, by Anne Tyler. (Knopf, $25.95.) A retired teacher with a head injury struggles to regain his memory and his engagement in life.Call #: F TYLTREASURE HUNT, by John Lescroart. (Dutton, $26.95.) A young San Francisco private investigator discovers some unpleasant facts when a well-known fund-raiser is murdered.Call #: F LESIMPACT, by Douglas Preston. (Forge, $25.99.) Scientists race to defuse a doomsday weapon pointed at Earth from one of the moons of Mars.Call #: F PRETHE SWAN THIEVES, by Elizabeth Kostova. (Little, Brown, $26.99.) A psychiatrist who treats a man who slashed a canvas in the National Gallery is drawn into the world of French Impressionism; from the author of “The Historian.” Call #: F KOSTHE FIRST RULE, by Robert Crais. (Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, $26.95.) Elvis Cole and his partner, Joe Pike, set out to clear the reputation of a former military contractor who has been murdered. Call #: F CRAI, SNIPER, by Stephen Hunter, (Simon & Schuster, $26.) Bob Lee Swagger discovers that the murder of four ’60s radicals is more complicated than it seems. Call #: F HUNTHE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, by Stieg Larsson. (Knopf, $25.95. ... Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 812837 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/ENkD8bTpYLo/melgibson-sweden If Mel Gibson wants to make a film with real Vikings in it, here are some tipsMel Gibson is to make a film set in the Dark Ages, in which Vikings invade Anglo-Saxon England, talking fluent Old Norse. Given his political and theological views, we can expect the the Christianised Anglo-Saxons to be the good guys, while the pagan Vikings bring fire, sword, slavery and socialised medicine.Of course this isn't the only possible treatment. Nothing but subtitles could diminish a Mel Gibson film recorded entirely in Old Norse. But still, if it were in a modern Scandinavian language, the possibilities might widen. One could get far beyond the old Kirk Douglas cliches about Vikings. We'd have to run it past the historians, but I can see a squad of Vikings, all with their own personalities:The serrated coastline stretched like a rusty knife in front of him. A little smoke wavered up from the ruins of the village, beaten back down by the sleety rain. The chief climbed down from his longship and splashed through the icy water to the shore. It never got warmer. Perhaps he had been raiding too long. Last night's mead was heavy on his stomach. The village, as usual, was heaped with corpses. He studied one or two of the younger ones. They reminded him of his daughter. He didn't know what she was up to. She never sent slaves these days. He walked to the centre of the village. Thorleif the war chief was there. 'Hey, Wallander,' he said. 'Hey,' said Wallander. 'So who killed these guys?'Or maybe something a little less downbeat?Blomqvist the bard came north on a freezing cold day in the dragonship with a girly tattoo. It was snowing. The bard had no feeling for snow. He had promised the crazed old war chief that he would investigate the death of his grand-daughter. He greeted the old man's elder daughter. 'We are a twisted family,' she said: 'You had better have sex with me.' When the witch learned she grew angry. To appease her anger she killed a monster. ... Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:31:07 +0100 810169 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/18/multilingual-translation-system-receives-over-2-million-euro-in-eu-funding/ From the Announcement: All citizens, regardless of native tongue, shall have the same access to knowledge on the Internet. The MOLTO project, coordinated by University of Gothenburg, Sweden, receives more than 2 million Euro in project support from the EU to create a reliable translation tool that covers a majority of the EU languages. ‘It has so far been impossible to produce a translation tool that covers entire languages,’ says Aarne Ranta, professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Google Translator is a widely spread translation programme that gradually improves the quality of translations through machine learning – the system learns from its own mistakes via system feedback, but tries to do without explicit grammatical rules. In contrast, MOLTO is being developed in the opposite direction, meaning it begins with precision and grammar, while wide coverage comes later. We wanted to work with a translation technique that is so accurate that people who produce texts can use our translations directly. We have now started to move from precision to increased coverage, meaning that we have started to add more languages to the tool and database. [Snip] The project aims at developing the system to suit different areas of applications. One area is translation of patent descriptions. Ultimately, people around the world should be able to take advantage of new technology immediately without having to master the language in which the patent description is written. A large number of translators have long had to be engaged in connection with new patents. ... Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:59:20 +0100 809631 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/yoLcRwIYhSU/moomins-recipe-book Tove Jansson's much-loved characters are set to reappear in a book introducing Finnish cuisineFrom the unflappable Moominmamma's syrup to fight autumn coughs and colds to Moominpappa's spiced mulled wine for a frosty night, the culinary skills of Tove Jansson's much-loved Moomins are set to be revealed in a cookbook later this year.Drawing inspiration from Jansson's descriptions of life in Moominvalley, a place where "very often unexpected and disturbing things used to happen, but nobody ever had time to be bored, and that is always a good thing", Finnish writer Sami Malila has created a series of 150 "forest" recipes which will be published in The Moomins Cookbook this July, complete with original illustrations by Jansson.Jansson, who died in 2001, wrote and illustrated nine Moomin books in total. Her gently eccentric characters and their friends have captured children's hearts since they first appeared in the 1940s – and despite having no mouths in her drawings, the Moomins generally manage to eat well. "Moominpappa was busy on the veranda, making punch in a barrel," she writes in Finn Family Moomintroll. "He put in almonds and raisins, lotus juice, ginger, sugar and nutmeg flowers, one or two lemons, and a couple of pints of strawberry liqueur to make it specially good. Now and again he had a taste ... It was very good."Later, the inhabitants of Moominvalley gather for a feast. "There were big piles of gleaming fruit and huge plates of sandwiches on the bigger tables, and on tiny little tables under the bushes there were ears of corn and berries threaded on straws and clusters of nuts nestling in their own leaves," she writes. "Moominmamma put the fat for frying the pancakes in the bathtub because there weren't enough basins, and then she carried up eleven enormous jars of raspberry juice from the cellar. (The twelfth had been cracked, I'm sorry to say, when the Hemulen let off his squib. ... Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:41:53 +0100 809557 http://www.docuticker.com/?p=31189 Swedish Sea Level Series – A Climate Indicator Source: Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) Introduction: Global ocean levels have always fluctuated with changes in our climate. During the last ice age, about 10 000 years ago, some of the ocean’s water was frozen in ice sheets and the global sea level was more than 100 meters below the present level. As ice melted, sea level rose. Some of the effect still lingers, but over the last century, the global ocean level has started to rise faster. This is due to increasing melting of glaciers and thermal expansion of sea water, brought about by the present global warming. Reports from many stations around the world indicate a rising sea level, which is further confirmed by the more recent satellite measurements. Continuous sea level data are important for the understanding of the effects of global warming. + Direct link to document (PDF; 340 KB) (Source: Docuticker) Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:30:37 +0100 809482 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/so7Sxk5XQ70/tablet-ereader-newspapers Web-linked touchscreen tablet that repurposes print content unveiled by SkiffIt is thinner than a CD case and is made of a flexible sheet of stainless steel foil that won't shatter if you drop it. Yet the Skiff Reader, a touchscreen device unveiled last week, could be the salvation of newspapers and magazines challenged by the slow death of print.The Reader, developed by an offshoot of the Hearst Corporation and drooled over at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is undoubtedly a demonstration of faith, the technological equivalent of the concept cars that get wheeled out at the Frankfurt Motor Show every year. Boasting an 11.5-inch screen that is larger than anything offered by Amazon or Sony and with a better picture quality (1,200 x 1,600 pixels), its main job is to demonstrate how well highly customised text-based content can run on tablets that connect to the web via Wi-Fi and 3G networks.Editorial content It is being eyed by most of the world's biggest newspaper groups, who hope that tablet devices – some 50 to 60 of which could hit the market this year – will help with the transition into the digital world.In recent months, Time Inc and the Swedish publisher Bonnier have produced two demos of mocked-up colour tablets that open up possibilities beyond the lookalike pages of editorial content that clutter the web. Tablet-based content should also represent a big improvement on the boring pdf-style digital editions that most publishers produce.Gil Fuchsberg, the former journalist and new media deal-maker who has overseen Skiff from its origins as an R&D project within Hearst Corporation, argues that the time is right for magazines and newspapers to follow books, which are available on electronic readers such as Kindle. Fuchsberg says he looks forward to travelling on the tube in London surrounded by commuters reading touchscreen tablets. ... Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:05:00 +0100 809448 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/17/success-happy-2nd-anniversary-to-the-library-of-congress-flickr-account-as-lc-adds-new-photo-set/ Yesterday, the LC Flickr site celebrated it’s second anniversary. Here are a few “fast facts” from a blog post by Jennifer Gavin. Jan. 16 is the two-year anniversary of the launch of the Library’s account on Flickr, the photosharing website. We started with approximately 3,100 photos in our account; today 30 additional archives, libraries, and museums from the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, and Sweden now contribute images with no known copyright restrictions to the “Commons” on Flickr. [Snip] As of today, there have been more than 23 million views of the images and more than 27,700 Flickr community members call us a contact. In two years, we have loaded more than 8,000 images in two collections (historic photographs and historic newspapers) in 11 sets on diverse topics—baseball, women’s rights, and Abraham Lincoln, to name a few. Over a thousand records in the Prints and Photographs online catalog have been enhanced with information from the Flickr Commons community. More accurate and detailed information in our catalog, with links to interesting histories, makes the pictures not only easier to find but easier to understand. The interactions with our photos are remarkably varied-ranging from the practical (corrected spellings and dates) to the imaginative. Here’s a link to the new LC/Flickr Photo Set. It’s titled, “Great Comments! THANK YOU!” Access the LC Site on Flickr Home Page Source: Library of Congress (Source: ResourceShelf) Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:24:21 +0100 809383 http://weblog.ib.hu-berlin.de/?p=7792 Vor allem für New Professionals interessant… Satellite Meeting Theme: The Global Librarian New Professionals Special Interest Group & Management of Library Associations Section Boras, Sweden 9 August 2010 This satellite conference will be held immediately prior to the World Library and Information Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden, August 2010. The IFLA New Professionals Special Interest Group and the Management of Library Associations Section invite proposals for presentations. First time presenters and new professionals are encouraged to apply. In order to meet publication deadlines (for inclusion on the IFLA website) proposals must be submitted by February 10, 2010. Conference Themes and Focus New librarians are positioning themselves as library leaders in academia, libraries, and professional associations. This event aims to address key themes and leading trends to provide library services while changing attitudes and expectations on the way. The conference organising committee wishes to showcase examples of best practice in how to develop new leaders, services, and inclusion of new professionals in decision-making processes through both research based scholarly presentations and experiential and practical stories of successes and lessons learned. The organisers are particularly interested in receiving proposals for presentations on any of the following, or related, key themes and issues : How to internationalize careers New librarian paradigm Mobile librarian Real-time librarian Advocating for library associations to include new professionals in their agenda We welcome and encourage proposals from first-time conference presenters, librarians, library school students, and information workers new to the profession. Conference Location and Dates The conference will be held in Boras, Sweden. The conference venue will be the University of Boras which is conveniently located one hour by train from the WLIC venue, Gothenburg. ... Sun, 17 Jan 2010 11:36:29 +0100 809267 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/14/open-access-now-available-two-online-finnish-databases-some-content-in-english/ From the Article: The National Library of Finland (Kansalliskirjasto) has announced that two of its online databases are now freely available to the general public. The resources in question, which are available to all internet users in Finnish, Swedish and English, are LINDA, which is the unified catalogue of Finnish University Libraries, and ARTO, a reference database of articles published in Finland. In addition to the article collections, maps, archives, and other electronic resources of all Finnish university libraries, LINDA also covers the National Repository Library (Varastokirjasto), the Library of Parliament (eduskunnan kirjasto), the Library of Statistics (Tilastokirjasto), and Lahti Science Library (Lahden tiedekirjasto). ARTO contains references to articles in scholarly (i.e., peer-reviewed) journals and some other journals published in Finland. ARTO most comprehensively covers articles that have been published since 1990, but also provides many references to older materials. Articles from around 600 periodicals are registered in ARTO, and some chapters published in monographs are also included in the database. http://linda.linneanet.fi http://arto.linneanet.fi Before 1 January 2010, the two databases were freely available only in third-level educational institutions and in the larger libraries, and access from all other locations required the purchase of a user licence. Open access for all has been made possible through funding provided to the National Library of Finland by the Ministry of Education. Negotiations are underway to secure long-term funding to continue the service after 2010. Source: Helsinki Times (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:05:02 +0100 808476 http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/2010/01/in-search-of-credibility.html Article in the latest issue of Information Research (open access)Sundin, O. & Francke, H. (2009). "In search of credibility: pupils' information practices in learning environments" Information Research, 14 (4) paper 418. http://InformationR.net/ir/14-4/paper418.html"We aim to create an in-depth understanding of how pupils in [a Swedish] upper secondary school negotiate the credibility and authority of information as part of their practices of learning. Particular focus is on the use of user-created resources, such as Wikipedia, where authorship is collective and/or hard to determine. An ethnographic study was conducted ... The pupils make credibility assessments based on methods developed for traditional media where, for instance, origin and authorship are important. They employ some user-created sources, notably Wikipedia, because these are easily available, but they are uncertain about when these sources should be considered credible. "Photo by Sheila Webber: Branches in snow, January 2010. (Source: Information Literacy Weblog) Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 808457 http://southlakelibrary.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html#5097086220037618065 1400 Main Street, Suite 130Southlake, Texas 76092Phone: (817) 748-8243http://www.southlakelibrary.org/Up rose the wild old winter-king; And shook his beard of snow, "I hear the first young hard-bell ring, 'Tis time for me to go! Northward o'er the icy rocks, Northward o'er the sea, My daughter comes with sunny locks: This land's too warm for me!" ~Charles Godfrey Leland, American humoristOld man winter is outside your window, but that's okay. You're snug inside with one of these bestsellers picked up from the Southlake Public Library.FICTION HARDCOVERI, SNIPER, by Stephen Hunter, (Simon & Schuster, $26.) Bob Lee Swagger discovers that the murder of four ’60s radicals is more complicated than it seems. Call #: F HUNTHE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, by Stieg Larsson. (Knopf, $25.95.) A Swedish hacker becomes a murder suspect. Call #: F LARTHE LAST SONG, by Nicholas Sparks. (Grand Central, $24.99.) A 17-year-old girl spends the summer with her divorced father in North Carolina and finds many kinds of love. Call #: F SPAALTAR OF EDEN, by James Rollins. (Morrow/HarperCollins, $27.99.) A Louisiana veterinarian discovers a wrecked fishing trawler filled with genetically altered animals. Call #: F ROLDEEPER THAN THE DEAD, by Tami Hoag. (Dutton, $26.95.) An F.B.I. investigator and a teacher track a series of murders in California in 1985.Call #: F HOAFIRED UP, by Jayne Ann Krentz. (Putnam, $25.95.) A venture capitalist who believes he has inherited an ancestor’s psychic powers searches for an elusive artifact. Call #: F KRESIZZLE, by Julie Garwood. (Ballantine, $26.) A film student who witnessed a crime is aided by a handsome F.B.I. agent. Call #: F GARU IS FOR UNDERTOW, by Sue Grafton. (Putnam, $27.95.) Kinsey Millhone investigates the case of a 4-year-old girl who disappeared 21 years earlier. Call #: F GRA99.) Book 12 of the Wheel of Time fantasy series.Call #: F JORI, ALEX CROSS, by James Patterson. (Little, Brown, $27.99. ... Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 808300 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/zcGn/~3/oI-JFAz4Cag/deadline-for-ifla-international.html Here's an important reminder for marketing-type librarians around the world: The deadline for entering your work for the IFLA International Marketing Award is January 31. IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) has a Management and Marketing Section that, in collaboration with sponsor Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., organizes an international marketing contest. IFLA and Emerald invite proposals for the 8th contest, which recognizes the best marketing project/ campaign in any kind of library throughout the world. "Best" is judged on the basis of true marketing, including demonstrating a strategic approach and sharing results and measurable objectives.The winner will receive airfare, lodging and registration for the World Library and Information Congress: 76th IFLA General Conference and Assembly in Sweden in August 2010, as well as a cash award of $1,000 (US $) which must be used to further the marketing efforts of the recognized organization.You can find complete application material and an entry form (available in IFLA's seven official languages) here. You can read coverage of this award from previous years in IFLA's archive here and in Marketing Library Services newsletter here and also here. This is a very prestigious award, so if you want global recognition for your efforts, enter this month!The M Word Blog teaches your library and non-profit tips, tricks and trends of the marketing trade (Source: The "M" Word - Marketing Libraries) Mon, 11 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 808767 http://librarian.lishost.org/?p=3026 Fiction dominates the seven prizes this year, from Basque to Finnish The seven prizes will be presented by the Editor of the TLS, Sir Peter Stothard, at a ceremony at King’s Place in London on January 11. This will be followed by the 2010 Sebald lecture, to be given by Will Self. [Curated by The British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia and The Society of Authors]. The Premio Valle Inclán – translation from the Spanish The Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize – translation from the Arabic The Schlegel-Tieck Prize – translation from the German The Scott Moncrieff Prize – translation from the French The Vondel Prize – translation from the Dutch and Flemish The Bernard Shaw Prize – translation from the Swedish The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Prize – translation from the Portuguese The Rossica Translation Prize – translation from the Russian (Source: Librarian) Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:38:51 +0100 807987 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/ZfROjbqpC1o/tony-judt-motor-neurone-disease Motor neurone disease has left the historian Tony Judt quadriplegic and, he tells Ed Pilkington, has forced him to think about what it really means to be human. The result is an astonishing series of essays and a determination to get young people thinking collectively againA few weeks ago the English historian Tony Judt delivered a speech at his home in New York University (NYU). More than 1,000 people turned up, and few left disappointed. What they heard was classic Tony Judt: the lecture, a plea for the positive virtues of social democracy, was as erudite as might be expected from the author of Postwar, his epic portrait of Europe since 1945, and as politically pointed as his controversial writings on the Middle East.The Judt they saw that night, however, was anything but expected. He rolled on to the stage in an electric wheelchair, a blanket wrapped around his body so that all could be seen was his neck and head, to which a breathing tube was attached like a bit of facial Tupperware. "The last time anyone had seen me in public I'd been bouncing around the stage full of fitness and energy," Judt says. "Now they saw this quadriplegic with plastic on his face."He was concerned about how his audience would react to the new-look him, and tried hard to make them feel at ease. It worked, and at the end of the speech he received a standing ovation.It was only afterwards that Judt suffered the intense irritation of being accosted by someone who seemed unaware of the difference between physical and mental incapacity. "I'd just delivered this long lecture completely by memory, no notes, for an hour and 15 minutes. Someone comes up to me and says 'TTTTOOOOOONNNNYYYYY. DOOOOOO YOOUUUUUU REMEEEEMMMMBER MEEEE?'" Judt mimics the person in an exaggerated drawl, as though he were talking to a baby in a buggy. "I thought, 'You stupid bitch! Of course I remember you. ... Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:08:41 +0100 806500 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/01/08/invasion-of-the-body-scanners-the-secret-truth/ wherein (because it is a Friday) we peel the layers of the onion (in attempted homage to that Onion) and reveal the secret behind the recent prorugation of the Canadian Parliament.  Is there also some connection to this  and from appearances this?. You’ll have to decide for yourself. Our story begins a number of years ago (not necessarily on Friday the 13th or otherwise). Do we start here? At some point in the far past? We don’t need to. Instead, we’ll start here  sometime in the latter part of the last century of the last millenium where, according to the appropriate caption, “During university, the young Ontario man started to feel like a Westerner and became a conservative”.  One might conclude from that the the writer of the caption equated all Westerners and “conservatives” or perhaps had problems with logic. We should recall Ambrose Bierce’s definition of “Conservative” as a noun, in The Devil’s Dictionary: “A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.” In any event, that change of attribute, whatever it meant, apparently led to visits to places such as the Calgary Zoo (described in the earlier link). In passing, compare the left-hand figure in the  last picture to the left-hand figure in this photo from a documentary (?)  about aliens visiting the planet and settling in Roswell, Nevada. In any event, as of 1988 (backstory here) and later, yet, in 2001, the situation still seemed innocuous enough. That state of affairs  seems to continue through 2003: here (though consider the tie) and here (though the last scene gave some some reason to wonder). But consider this, starting in 2004 By 2007 and here and, remarkably,  this But, most remarkably, this apparently undated picture Which seems to bring us to this. ... Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:02:04 +0100 807036 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/brjTPEB6RCo/tls-awards-translation Anthea Bell and Margaret Jull Costa are among the winners at the Times Literary Supplement's honoursAfter landing an OBE in the New Year honours for "services to literature and to literary translations" Anthea Bell has notched up another award just eight days into 2010, winning the Times Literary Supplement's prize for translation from the German for her work on Stefan Zweig's novella Burning Secret.Set in an off-season Austrian resort, Burning Secret tells the story of the tensions between a 12-year-old boy and "the Baron", who is trying to seduce his mother. "The boy is used as a go-between but then wakes up and tries to thwart him at every turn," said Bell, who has won a succession of awards and honours over the years for her translations from French and German. "It's full of human interest, and you feel something for all three protagonists. It's moving, with a certain wryness – I'm very fond of it."Winning the TLS's Schlegel-Tieck prize for German translation was "a great pleasure, particularly for something by Stefan Zweig who's a very favourite author of mine", she said. She and publisher Pushkin Press have been trying to revive interest in Zweig, an Austrian Jew who committed suicide in 1942, recently releasing a new translation of his memoir The World of Yesterday. Adrian Tahourdin at the TLS called Burning Secret "a small masterpiece, beautifully rendered in Anthea Bell's translation".Fiction dominates the TLS's translation prizes this year, with Tove Jansson's translator Thomas Teal taking the Bernard Shaw prize for Swedish translation for Jansson's Fair Play, a portrait of two women praised by Tahourdin for its "Nordic lyricism". ... Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:40:37 +0100 806493 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TameTheWeb/~3/zsSILrKOrhk/ Working in a university library, as with any type of library, means a dedicated service focus which supports the goals and directions of the parent company or institution.  While each individual university will have their own priorities and strategic directions, there are some themes that seem to resonate across the board.  One such area is the recognition of the need for universities to internationalise.  Internationalisation benefits a university’s staff, students, research, and institutional profile and competitiveness, to just skim the surface of its influences. I work at Flinders University in South Australia, which has established a number of ways to incorporate internationalisation.  One strategy is through strategic partnerships, including being a member of the International Network of Universities (INU).  Within this network, a Special Interest Group for University Libraries has been established, and stemming from this affiliation the University Librarians (otherwise titled Head Librarians) discovered that they had much in common with regard to their services and how they were attempting to deliver them.  The directions they were heading and their plans regarding negotiating future directions, looking at future concerns, issues, etc. also displayed close similarities.  From this beginning came the idea of establishing a staff exchange program.  Since that time, the library at Flinders has been involved with a number of staff exchanges, in particular with Hiroshima University Library, Japan.  Hiroshima staff member Tomoko Sammi has just finished a 2 month staff exchange to Flinders, and in the next 6 months there will be visitors from Malmo University Library in Sweden, as well as another staff member from Hiroshima. For my part, I went for a 3 month visit to Hiroshima in August to October, 2008.  It was an amazing experience. ... Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:39:57 +0100 805472 http://www.docuticker.com/?p=30329 Cardiovascular fitness is associated with cognition in young adulthood Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences During early adulthood, a phase in which the central nervous system displays considerable plasticity and in which important cognitive traits are shaped, the effects of exercise on cognition remain poorly understood. We performed a cohort study of all Swedish men born in 1950 through 1976 who were enlisted for military service at age 18 (N = 1,221,727). Of these, 268,496 were full-sibling pairs, 3,147 twin pairs, and 1,432 monozygotic twin pairs. Physical fitness and intelligence performance data were collected during conscription examinations and linked with other national databases for information on school achievement, socioeconomic status, and sibship. Relationships between cardiovascular fitness and intelligence at age 18 were evaluated by linear models in the total cohort and in subgroups of full-sibling pairs and twin pairs. Cardiovascular fitness, as measured by ergometer cycling, positively associated with intelligence after adjusting for relevant confounders (regression coefficient b = 0.172; 95% CI, 0.168–0.176). Similar results were obtained within monozygotic twin pairs. In contrast, muscle strength was not associated with cognitive performance. Cross-twin cross-trait analyses showed that the associations were primarily explained by individual specific, non-shared environmental influences (?80%), whereas heritability explained (Source: Docuticker) Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:31:57 +0100 805306 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/SlBAowtEpj4/robin-wood-obituary Influential teacher, critic and pioneer in the field of film studies'Why should we take Hitchcock seriously? It is a pity the question has to be raised. If the cinema were truly regarded as an autonomous art, not as a mere adjunct of the novel or the drama – if we were able yet to see films instead of mentally reducing them to literature – it would be unnecessary." The opening lines of the first book by the film critic and teacher Robin Wood, who has died at the age of 78, had a remarkable and lasting impact on the field of film studies both in and beyond academia.Before he published Hitchcock's Films in 1965, there were – in English, as opposed to French – virtually no books on film directors, and few books of any kind that brought either rigour or sympathy to the analysis of popular cinema. The teaching of so-called "film appreciation" in Britain was confined mainly to a few pockets within adult education and teacher training. This was already starting to change, but Wood's work was a key influence in validating and shaping a new discipline.His Alfred Hitchcock book brilliantly set out the case for treating even Hollywood cinema with the same analytical seriousness as classic literature, and he quickly followed it with books on directors as diverse as Howard Hawks (1968), Arthur Penn (1969) and Ingmar Bergman (1969), as well as jointly authored books on Michelangelo Antonioni (1968) and Claude Chabrol (1970). By the end of the decade, he was able to leave his post teaching English at a secondary school, which he had somehow managed to combine with all that writing, for the university sector, and he remained a prolific and influential film scholar. ... Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:37:50 +0100 805267 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/zQpKV87P_pg/review-the-road A stark adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel brings out all its harrowing yet ultimately life-enhancing qualities, writes Philip FrenchIn the past, some of it not too distant, people the world over have thought during times of plague and famine that they were living in the last days of our planet. For most of us today, such visions are of a future where a nuclear holocaust, global warming or some other man-created calamity threaten the imminent end of life on earth. In his masterpiece, The Seventh Seal, Ingmar Bergman brought together both experiences by projecting the nuclear angst of the 1950s (a major cinematic subject at the time) on to a Sweden of the Middle Ages visited by the black death. Earlier, the 1936 film based on HG Wells's Things To Come foresaw a world war in 1940 that would return Britain to a dark age of tribes battling for depleted resources.Such movies are now highly fashionable and the heavyweight film version of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, first published in 2006 (and his third to be filmed after All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men) comes in the wake of three relatively lightweight movies covering similar territory released over the past 10 weeks. In the Canadian movie, Pontypool, an apocalyptic outbreak of cannibalism, seemingly carried by language itself, is reported from a small-town radio station in the basement of a deconsecrated church. The premise of Zombieland, an exercise in pitiless black humour, is that most of the population of America has been wiped out by a form of mad cow disease. Co-directed in the States by two Spanish film-makers, Carriers is a low-budget horror flick in which four young Americans drive towards the Gulf of Mexico across a country ravaged by a deadly virus that has no known cure. ... Sun, 03 Jan 2010 00:05:56 +0100 804813 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/MbJf-hiES1o/noughties-writers-obituaries-review A celebration of the great writers who died in the past decadeJG Ballard (1930-2009) by Michael MoorcockMy friendship with JG Ballard lasted about 50 years and was not always the easiest to maintain. In the early days at least we were naturally confrontational. Happily, we were united in what we wished to confront, if not always agreed on how best to go about it. We were both in those days "family men" and we shared a love for our children. Jimmy's love was almost mystical. When fathers were discouraged from attending births, he had insisted at being present at his children's. We had some fine times – Jimmy and Mary, Hilary and me – arguing into the night until it was time to go home. They'd climb into his battered but romantic Armstrong-Siddeley and head for Shepperton, or Jimmy would drive us back to Notting Hill.Mary died in Spain. His eyes filling with tears, Jimmy had to make frequent stops as he drove his children home to England. Afterwards, he focused almost obsessively on them. His relationships with women became horrible. There were fights, bad acid trips, wild drives through the London night, arguments between us which stemmed, Hilary and I believed, from his largely unadmitted grief, his wish to protect his children at all costs. His stoicism blocked almost all attempts to reach out to him. Finally, I introduced him to Claire Walsh, who seemed better able to help him emotionally, though he treated her pretty badly on occasions.He complained, in turn, that I bullied him, "making my eyes bleed", forcing him to write the first of a group of stories which had their origins in dummy pages he hung all around his living room wall for years. Bits of them had appeared as titles or subtitles for stories and eventually began to see print in New Worlds with "The Atrocity Exhibition" in April 1966, and with later stories appearing in Science Fantasy and Ambit. ... Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:08:38 +0100 804722 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/960QOy2odRs/photography-books-2009 From reissues of classic editions to an eye-opening collection of mobile-phone snaps, photography books in 2009 captured a medium in flux. Sean O'Hagan picks his favouritesIn 2009, photography grappled more than ever with the notion that the mobile phone, rather than the cheap digital camera, may yet make photographers of us all. It seemed apposite, then, that it was also a year in which old masters reasserted their importance with books that reminded us that the truly visionary are few and far between.In many ways, the year belonged to Robert Frank. Now 85, the Swiss-born photographer was garlanded with a major American touring show to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of his classic work The Americans. The catalogue, Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans (Steidl, £49.90), is, hands down, my photography book of the year. Complete with absorbing essays, personal letters – to the likes of Jack Kerouac and Walker Evans – and contact sheets that show off Frank's extraordinary eye for the telling vignette, it is a must for anyone with an interest in photography's past and present.The other big American photography book of the year has just been published. Irving Penn's Small Trades (Getty, £34.99) is a valediction of sorts for the great man, who died in October. Though better known for his fashion photography, Penn started the Small Trades project in 1950, photographing everyday subjects – plumbers, cleaners, shop assistants – in their work clothes between style shoots for French Vogue in his rented Parisian studio. Shot in austere blacks, whites and greys, the portraits possess a cumulative power that is full of quiet dignity, and subtler than Richard Avedon's similar images of American workers. (Intriguingly, one of the scouts who went out on the streets of Paris to select and then persuade the workers to pose was a young Robert Doisneau. ... Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:13:51 +0100 803810 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/yRR-tRHdh7E/ Attention, Amazon shoppers—and BN.com fans, too, as well as those at other Internet stores selling e-books and more! Randall Stross, the New York Times columnist, wants you to pay sales taxes on Net purchases no matter where you live, at least if you’re in the U.S., where he says Amazon collects for just five states. I respectfully disagree with Stross despite the grotesque botch that Amazon has made of my novel’s listings. Here’s a pro-Amazon post—at least if just sales taxes are the issue. Let CEO Jeff Bezos lavish money on lobbyists to rid us of the scourge. Amazon’s customers anywhere—inside or outside the United States—shouldn’t have to pay a penny in sales taxes on e-books, paper ones, stereos, baseball bats or washing machines. Sales taxes are legalized pickpocketry, no matter how noble or official the uses of the money are. But read on, Jeff. You might not like all I have to say. No, I’m not anti-tax, just anti-sales tax. They are inherently regressive and  beset the planet’s retailers with gig after gig of paperwork. But should we starve government? Emphatically not, just so the money is well spent. At all levels—local, state and federal—I want the super-rich to pay a larger share of income taxes than they do now. Care for some numbers arguing for an end to sales taxes and the expansion and better targeting of income taxes? Here they are. 1. Here in the United States, the odds are already stacked against the nonrich. Take a look at the Gini index used by the Central Intelligence Agency to measure “the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country.” We Yanks are in Mexico’s class or getting there. Our index reading was 40.8 in 1997, 45 in 2007—the wrong direction. By contrast, Mexico’s was 53.1 in 1998, 47.9 in 2006. We’re become more Banana Republic-like, Mexico less. The number for Germany was 30 in 1994 and 27 in 2006. ... Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:26:00 +0100 803852 http://www.teleread.org/2009/12/28/why-amazon-customers-shouldnt-have-to-pay-a-cent-of-sale-taxes-on-e-books/ Attention, Amazon shoppers—and BN.com fans, too, as well as those at other Internet stores selling e-books and more! Randall Stross, the New York Times columnist, wants you to pay sales taxes on Net purchases no matter where you live, at least if you’re in the U.S., where he says Amazon collects for just five states. I respectfully disagree with Stross despite the grotesque botch that Amazon has made of my novel’s listings. Here’s a pro-Amazon post—at least if just sales taxes are the issue. Let CEO Jeff Bezos lavish money on lobbyists to rid us of the scourge. Amazon’s customers, inside or outside the United States, shouldn’t have to pay a penny in sales taxes on e-books, paper ones, stereos, baseball bats or washing machines. Sales taxes are legalized pickpocketry, no matter how noble or official the uses of the money are. But read on, Jeff. You might not like all I have to say. No, I’m not anti-tax, just anti-sales tax. They are inherently regressive and  beset the planet’s retailers with gig after gig of paperwork. But should we starve government? Emphatically no, just so the money is well spent. At all levels—local, state and federal—I want the super-rich to pay a larger share of income taxes than they do now. Care for some numbers arguing for an end to sales taxes and the expansion and better targeting of income taxes? Here they are. 1. Here in the United States, the odds are already stacked against the nonrich. Take a look at the Gini index used by the Central Intelligence Agency to measure “the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country.” We Yanks are in Mexico’s class or getting there. Our index reading was 40.8 in 1997, 45 in 2007—the wrong direction. By contrast, Mexico’s was 53.1 in 1998, 47.9 in 2006. We’ve become more Banana Republic-like, Mexico less. The number for Germany was 30 in 1994 and 27 in 2006. For France? 32.7 in both 1995 and 2008. ... Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:26:00 +0100 803932 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/EQnWlLhuHYw/wallandar-hemming-mankell-tv-books-detective Grief-stricken author ends award-winning crime series after actress who played Wallander's daughter takes her own lifeAs a dysfunctional, divorced, middle-aged man with personal issues, Swedish detective Kurt Wallander has become a famous figure in crime fiction.His creator, Henning Mankell, is about to introduce a female protagonist, caught up in an equally grim world of bizarre multiple murders, who may prove as popular as the portly figure who has captivated millions of readers worldwide. But Judge Birgitta Roslin might never have been created had a tragic, lonely death close to Mankell not forced him to adapt his award-winning formula.Wallander first appeared in Sweden in 1991 in Faceless Killers, with the English translation arriving in 1997. Nine Wallander mysteries were written, set in bleak, flat farmland inhabited by few around the small town of Ystad in southern Sweden. Having introduced Wallander's daughter, Linda, early on as a supporting character, and later as a policewoman, played by Johanna Sällström in the Swedish TV series, the author decided to "retire" the male detective and embark on a natural progression.In Mankell's imagination, Before the Frost, published in 2002, was to be the first in a projected three-part series where Linda would take centre stage. But in 2007, Sällström committed suicide. The 32-year-old was found alone by police at her Malmö home on 13 February 2007, shortly after being released from a psychiatric unit.Depression, traced to her surviving the 2004 tsunami when she was on holiday in Thailand with her young daughter, Tallulah, was believed to be the cause, though no suicide note was found. Sällström had clung on to life that day by holding on to a tree with one hand and her three-year-old daughter with the other. The experience had a devastating effect.After her death, Mankell was unable to write another novel with Linda, saying his grief and guilt were too great. ... Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:05:21 +0100 803676 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/6N-x8CbUTTk/culture-review-of-the-noughties Twitter, Daniel Barenboim, XBox, WG Sebald, Nicholas Hytner's National, Big Brother and The Wire... just some of the cultural highs of the noughties. From the rise of Dizzee Rascal to the emergence – at the age of 89 – of the dazzling Cuban painter Carmen Herrera, our critics pick the defining people and trends of the past 10 yearsTECHNOLOGY GOOGLELarry Page and Sergey Brin began thinking about a new kind of internet search engine in early 1996 and their company was incorporated as Google Inc in 1998. But it was in 2000 that they started selling advertising against search results and this allowed them to move into their Mountain View headquarters in California (aka the Googleplex), begin acquiring other companies (including YouTube) and drastically expand their other ambitions throughout the noughties.The verb "to google" entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006 and Google dominates the search engine market despite ferocious competition from Yahoo! and Microsoft. The company has also given us innovations such as Google Earth and Street View, services such as Gmail and its new Chrome browser, and if you've been given an Android phone for Christmas – well, it's Larry and Sergey you have to thank for that, too.Their motto remains "don't be evil" and the company has pledged 1% of its annual profits to Google.org, its charitable arm; revenues last year totalled $21.8bn (£13.5bn). Strange to say, but Google's original mission statement – "to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" – now sounds rather modest.AND THE RESTSocial networkingRemember when you'd just meet your friends down the pub? Friends Reunited had a tough time of it, but where would we be today without MySpace, Facebook or Twitter?iPlayerWith the growth of competing forms of entertainment, who'd have thought we'd be gawping at more and more television in 2009 (up 3.2 % to 3. ... Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:05:01 +0100 803677 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/eJ-N_3ukAXM/ Bookeen’s long-delayed upgrade for the Cybook Opus and the Gen3 is out, with two flavors available—one for the aging Mobipocket format and another for ePub, including the Adobe-DRMed variety. In addition, Bookeen is claiming greater-than-expected sales and says it will have a CES booth (12245) in Los Vegas. Now back to the fun stuff. Both versions of the upgrade can display the HTML and TXT formats. Plus, the second flavor includes the FictionBook 2 format. Go to this password-protected support area for the downloads. The readme PDF is here, without a PW needed. Via a memory card I effortlessly installed the Adobe upgrade on a 64MB, 200Mhz Cybook Gen3, a long-term loaner from Bookeen (ultimately destined for return to Bookeen or as a library or university gift). On the whole the news was good despite some problems that might be more related to my older unit than to the upgrade. Page turning may have been a bit faster than with the earlier software, although this was still E Ink territory. Occasionally when I pressed for a page turn, the Gen3 didn’t register, but that’s probably a hardware glitch with the old Gen3s and may have been fixed (anyone care to weigh in with the latest?). Certain  large e-book files took perhaps 20 seconds or so to pop up, far, far longer than with my Kindle 2. Some users doing the Cybook upgrade have reported lockups, just as earlier. I’ll welcome reports from TeleRead community members. Titles from Feedbooks displayed gloriously in ePub and PDF, although the latter from other sources may be a challenge if they’re not customized for the Gen3’s small screen. I tried Google books. Because of Google’s ePub coding, apparently, I could not vary the type style, although I could change size. ... Fri, 25 Dec 2009 16:36:16 +0100 803442 http://rabid-librarian.blogspot.com/2009/12/its-not-every-day-you-see-flaming-straw.html Swedish Christmas straw goat burnt A giant straw goat - the traditional Scandinavian yuletide symbol - erected each Christmas in a Swedish town has been burned to the ground yet again. The 13-metre (43-ft) high billy goat has been torched 24 times since it was first erected in Gavle in 1966. The goat was set alight in the early hours of Wednesday morning in the city north of Stockholm. City spokeswoman Anna Ostman said the incident, which is being treated as serious vandalism, was "sad". "We had really hoped that he would survive Christmas and New Year's," she said. The goat has survived the Christmas season just 10 times since 1966. I think the town should embrace the tradition--it has shades of a pagan sacrifice à la the Wicker Man. (And before you say, but it's Christmas, and Christian, let me just remind you that Yuletide greenery, Christmas trees, and Jolly Old Elves have nothing to do with Christianity, but are pagan remnants, as is the date of Christmas and the tradition of giving gifts. Without paganism, there would be no Christmas, or at least any Christmas fun.) (Source: The Rabid Librarian's Ravings in the Wind) Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 804000 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/gMgxiIuE7z8/dan-brown-celebs-christmas-books-number-one The Lost Symbol gives author second Christmas number one in five years, as celebrity memoirs sinkDan Brown and his debonair professor of "symbology" Robert Langdon have broken the stranglehold that celebrity autobiographies have held over December book sales in recent years to take the Christmas number one slot.A last minute sales rush propelled Brown's long-awaited novel The Lost Symbol – in which Langdon takes on the Freemasons – to the top of the charts, giving the author his second UK Christmas number one in five years after The Da Vinci Code was the Christmas bestseller in 2004.Brown just pipped the second-placed Guinness World Records – a perennial Christmas bestseller – to the post with such gems as "'Actually, Katherine, it's not gibberish.' His eyes brightened again with the thrill of discovery. 'It's ... Latin''', and "Is there life after death? Do humans have souls? Incredibly, Katherine had answered all of these questions and more" helping propel him to pole position in the busiest week for book sales.In recent years celebrity memoirs by the likes of Peter Kay, Russell Brand and Dawn French have dominated the Christmas book charts, which are compiled by book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan. But this year only two celebrity autobiographies – a joint memoir by Ant and Dec, and Frankie Boyle's My Shit Life So Far – scraped into the top 10, in ninth and 10th place respectively.The public appetite this Christmas was, instead, for fiction, with two titles from Stephenie Meyer's teen vampire series, a new novel from Jodi Picoult and the first title in late Swedish author Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, all making the top 10 ahead of a host of celebrity autobiographies.Kay's second volume of memoir, Saturday Night Peter, missed out on the top 10 despite high expectations, as did Jo Brand's autobiography. ... Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:39:47 +0100 802732 http://outofthejungle.blogspot.com/2009/12/mexico-city-votes-to-legalize-gay.html The BBC reports here on the vote by Mexico City's leftist city legislature to legalize gay marriage. The mayor is widely expected to sign the bill. The language changes the definition of marriage from a relationship between a man and woman to "the free uniting of two people". The bill passed 39 to 20 with five abstentions. Gay rights has been an increasingly popular issue in Mexico's capitol recently, with gay pride parades drawing thousands, according to the Associated Press report in the Boston Globe on the vote. The bill was urged in order to provide same-sex couples equal rights with heterosexual couples in such matters as benefits, adoption, bank loans and inheritance, which civil unions, already allowed in Mexico City, failed to provide. According to the Globe version of the AP report: Only seven countries allow gay marriages: Canada, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. In the United States, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Iowa permit same-sex marriage.Argentina’s capital became the first Latin American city to legalize same-sex civil unions in 2002. Four other Argentine cities later did the same, as did Mexico City in 2007 and some Mexican and Brazilian states. Uruguay alone has legalized civil unions nationwide. Both articles report plans from the opposition party, which is the majority nationally to challenge the vote, and opposition from conservative groups and Catholic church spokesmen. But the BBC report notes that: A handful of cities in Argentina, Ecuador and Colombia permit gay unions.Uruguay alone has legalised civil unions nationwide and allowed same-sex couples to adopt children.Last month, an Argentinean court narrowly blocked what would been the continent's first gay marriage.In a last-minute challenge, a court referred the case to the country's Supreme Court, which is due to rule on the issue. This is worth watching. ... Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 802708 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/12/17/sweden-concept-for-swedens-digital-library/ Note: This article was translated mechanically using Google Translate. From the Article: On 15 December, signed a unique document in the Royal Library in Stockholm. There were representatives of the Swedish Writers ‘Union (SFF), the Swedish Publishers’ Association (SVF) and KB, which agreed on a concept sketch for the digitization of the Swedish literary heritage. [Snip] It is a great project that will take time to realize. The idea is to begin to digitize older works and make them available on the Library’s website. Books that can not be bought in printed form or as e-book is provided free to readers. It is an ambitious project,” said Kjell Bohlund on SvF. I am very pleased that this cooperation and the high goal. Access the Full Text Translation See Also: The Concept (Translated) Source: National Library of Sweden (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:41:02 +0100 801303 http://ddc.typepad.com/025431/2009/12/translations-translations-translations.html Over the last three weeks, we’ve had that “If it’s Tuesday, it must be Arabic” feeling (with apologies to the movie title). We’ve had visits from members of the Arabic and Swedish translation teams, plus discussions with the Norwegian and Spanish translation teams (by e-mail and teleconference, respectively). Ann Tobin, a member of the translation team at the National Library of Sweden, paid a working visit to the Dewey Editorial Office at the Library of Congress November 30-December 4. The Swedish translation will employ a mixed approach. The Introduction, Glossary, and Tables 1-6 will be translated into Swedish. The top levels of the schedules plus the full hierarchy of classes down to and including classes with a defined level of literary warrant will be translated into Swedish; the rest of the classes will be ingested directly into the translation as English-language records. Manual records will be translated if associated with classes in Swedish; otherwise, they will be included in English. The translation will be accompanied by separate indexes in Swedish and English. (For more information on the mixed translation model, see here; for more information about the adoption of the DDC in Sweden, see here.) During Ann’s visit, we reviewed the Swedish versions of the Introduction; Glossary; and Table 1, 4, and 6. We also discussed proposals and issues related to geographic areas, education, animal husbandry (yes, a new provision for reindeer farming will be coming to the DDC soon!), sports, literature, and historical periods. Additional topics of discussion included training, translation workflows, and WebDewey 2.0. Lest you think it was all work and no play, we managed to have many interesting meals together (and helped Ann execute her plan of trying a variety of hamburgers across the city) and even caught a world premiere of a new piano concerto by U.S. ... Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 802025 http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/2009/12/making-it-count-social-science-data.html The Social Science Libraries Section and the Information Literacy Section are seeking proposals for a program to be held at the IFLA conference in Gothenburg, Sweden in August 2010. "Statistical and information literacy provide the basis for comparison, understanding, and forecasting conditions for economic and social development. Access to this type of data exists in a variety of venues from governments to multi-national corporations to small non-governmental organizations. Through formal presentations, this program will explore the availability of this type of information and the skills needed to access, understand and use statistical information for development." Papers should focus on the relationship between statistical literacy and how this skill can be applied to access to knowledge for development. Case studies, theoretical applications, and translational research will all be considered for inclusion in this program.Papers should be in one of the IFLA official languages. Proposals for papers must be submitted by December 31, 2009. Please include a title, and abstract of no more than 300 words as well as a brief biography for the speaker or speakers. Abstracts should only be submitted with the understanding that the expenses of attending the Gothenburg conference are the responsibility of the author(s)/presenter(s). Send your proposals via email to Lynne Rudasill, rudasill@Illinois.eduPhoto by Sheila Webber: Misty autumn, Nov 2009. (Source: Information Literacy Weblog) Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 800591 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2009/12/13/springer-sciencebusiness-media-sold-to-eqt-and-gic/ Springer Science+Business Media has been sold to EQT and GIC. Here's an excerpt from the press release: The Board of Directors of Springer Science+Business Media (Springer Group), composed of Springer executives and representatives of Cinven and Candover, have agreed to accept an offer from and have signed a sales agreement with a partnership of EQT, a private equity investor based in Sweden, and GIC, a Singapore-based co-investor, for all shares of the Springer Group. The Springer Group is the world’s second largest scientific, technical and medical (STM) publisher and a leader in the digitalization of scientific information. Furthermore, EQT and GIC have agreed to inject new equity into the Springer Group, to strengthen its balance sheet and decrease the overall cost of funding. A refinancing agreement with a syndicate of banks will give the Springer Group medium-term stability by removing imminent potential refinancing issues. The acquisition is subject to examination and approval by European, US and national competition authorities. This process is expected to be finished by mid to late January or early February 2010. Derk Haank, Springer’s CEO, said, “The Springer Executive Management Team has had constructive and collegial discussions with EQT. I am confident that this marks the beginning of a new exciting and successful chapter for us and for our new partners at EQT and GIC. The sale will allow us to move our ambitious and ongoing 'e' strategy forward, and to invest more heavily for our stakeholder’s benefit – this is the best solution for the company, our employees and shareholders.” Read more about it at "Springer Group, Second-Leading STM Publisher, Sold by/to Private Equity Firms" and "Springer Publishing Group Sold for €100m. ... Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 800598 http://librarywriting.blogspot.com/2009/12/ifla-2010-gothenburg-sweden.html IFLA 2010 (Gothenburg, Sweden) URL: http://www.ifla.org/en/ifla76CFP for main meeting: http://www.ifla.org/en/calls-for-papers/216(check back as they will be adding calls often)Calls for Papers for Satellite Meetingshttp://www.ifla.org/en/calls-for-papers-satellite/216 (Source: A Library Writer's Blog) Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 801690 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/EweSq8ctdbs/ Springer Science+Business Media has been sold to EQT and GIC. Here's an excerpt from the press release: The Board of Directors of Springer Science+Business Media (Springer Group), composed of Springer executives and representatives of Cinven and Candover, have agreed to accept an offer from and have signed a sales agreement with a partnership of EQT, a private equity investor based in Sweden, and GIC, a Singapore-based co-investor, for all shares of the Springer Group. The Springer Group is the world’s second largest scientific, technical and medical (STM) publisher and a leader in the digitalization of scientific information. Furthermore, EQT and GIC have agreed to inject new equity into the Springer Group, to strengthen its balance sheet and decrease the overall cost of funding. A refinancing agreement with a syndicate of banks will give the Springer Group medium-term stability by removing imminent potential refinancing issues. The acquisition is subject to examination and approval by European, US and national competition authorities. This process is expected to be finished by mid to late January or early February 2010. Derk Haank, Springer’s CEO, said, “The Springer Executive Management Team has had constructive and collegial discussions with EQT. I am confident that this marks the beginning of a new exciting and successful chapter for us and for our new partners at EQT and GIC. The sale will allow us to move our ambitious and ongoing 'e' strategy forward, and to invest more heavily for our stakeholder’s benefit – this is the best solution for the company, our employees and shareholders.” Read more about it at "Springer Group, Second-Leading STM Publisher, Sold by/to Private Equity Firms" and "Springer Publishing Group Sold for €100m . ... Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:02:58 +0100 800337 http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/librarianship/SIG=12skrjl4n/*http%3A//www.apo.org.au/research/delphi-investigation-research-needs-swedish-librarianship This article reports on the conduct of a national survey in Sweden to establish the desired research priorities for libraries. Creative Economy (Source: Yahoo! News Search Results for librarianship) Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:19:59 +0100 801920 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/4GKYEHhY4yo/true-deceiver-tove-jansson-review This Swedish gem has the translation it deserves, says Ursula K Le GuinAfter the enduring international success of her Moomintroll fantasies, the Swedish author-artist Tove Jansson, in her 60s, began to write adult fiction. It has taken a while for these books to get much attention outside Sweden. On the patronising assumption that books for children are nice, ie morally bland and stylistically infantile, critics, reviewers and prize juries often dismiss those who write them as incapable of writing seriously for adults – a prejudice which, transferred to painting, plays a part in the plot of The True Deceiver.Anyone familiar with Jansson knows it would be unwise to dismiss her or patronise her work on any grounds. Her books for children are complex, subtle, psychologically tricky, funny and unnerving; their morality, though never compromised, is never simple. Thus her transition to adult fiction involved no great change. Her everyday Swedes are quite as strange as trolls, and her Swedish village in winter is as beautiful and dangerous as any forest of fantasy.If a transformation has taken place, it is in the nature of her writing. The language is more than ever spare, lean, taut, minimalist. These adjectives describe a good deal of modern narrative prose – the modishly anorectic style, well suited to thrillers, police procedurals and the existential noir, but very limited in range. Jansson's range, though effortlessly controlled, is great. Her spare exactness can express not only tension and stress but deeply felt emotion, expansion, relaxation and peace. Her description is unhurried, accurate and vivid, an artist's vision. Her style is not at all "poetic" – quite the contrary. It is prose of the very highest order; it is pure prose. Through its quiet clarity we see unreachable depths, threatening darkness, promised treasures. The sentences are beautiful in structure, movement and cadence. They have inevitable rightness. ... Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:08:55 +0100 799761 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/12/11/springer-sciencebusiness-media-sold-to-private-equity-firms/ From the Article: German academic publisher and online data group Springer Science + Business Media is to be sold to Swedish PE group EQT and the Government of Singapore Investment Group (GIC), ending a lengthy sales effort by Springer’s PE owners Cinven and Candover. The buyers plans to invest in the debt-laden business and agree a new refinancing package, removing pressing concerns over its profit-to-debt ratio. EQT will take a 82 percent stake with GIC taking the rest. [Snip] Springer CEO Derk Haank says the new owners will invest in “our ambitious and on-going ‘e’ strategy”. Springer has 2,000 journals, publishes 6,500 new books and more than 30,000 e-books a year. Source: PaidContent UK See Also: Official News Release See Also: EQT, GIC Agree to Buy Springer Science+Business (via Bloomberg) (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:06:34 +0100 799654 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ConversationalReading/~3/pjgURA6UCYY/best-european-fiction-review.html Well, "review" is perhaps too strong a word, but The Wall Street Journal has a short article about Dalkey Archive's inaugural volume of Best European Fiction. Not a whole lot in the piece that will be new to readers of this blog, although this sounds most excellent: Dalkey, a nonprofit based at the University of Illinois, is printing 25,000 copies, and plans to expand the project to other continents, starting with Asia. There's also the obligatory: Mr. Riker hopes the anthologies will spur interest in foreign fiction. Newly translated works accounted for about 3% of all books for sale in the U.S. in 2004, according to Bowker, a company that tracks the publishing industry. Last year, the secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in literature, caused a stir when he chastised the American literary community for being "too insular." To which I say: Translate This Book! I've read Best Euro and I'd say I was favorable to about 2/3 of the material in it. I'd love to see a translation of the Toussaint in there (from Zidane's Melancholy, a sort of narrative/philosophical inquiry into the titular soccer player who briefly became a worldwide celebrity when he head-butted an opponent on the field), and I'm sure Dalkey is on top of that one. The piece by Christine Montalbetti ("Hotel Komba Eminence (with Haruki Murakami)") was wild and good fun. The piece by Pelevin is remarkably good, although he's fairly well known now. And Cosmin Manolache's "Three Hundred Cups" was decidedly Sebaldian (and it concludes--quite courageously--with an actual list of the three hundred cups--marvelous!). (Source: Conversational Reading) Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 800073 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/8KgVxmLOKLU/nobel-prize-other-winners-obama Barack Obama picked up his Nobel peace prize in Oslo today, but less high-profile recipients have also been rewardedBarack Obama was the centre of attention when he picked up the Nobel peace prize in Oslo, Norway, today. But there were also prizes for physics, literature, medicine and chemistry, in a parallel event in Stockholm, Sweden.In Charles Kuen Kao, Woolwich Polytechnic in east London – now part of Greenwich University – has its first Nobel laureate. A Chinese-born Briton, Kao studied at Woolwich before joining a phone company in Essex. He shares half of the prize for physics with two Americans, Willard Boyle and George Smith.Kao made a discovery that led to a breakthrough in fibre optics in 1966, when he calculated how to transmit light over long distances via optical glass fibres.Optical fibres are the basis for high-speed communications – without fibre optics, there would be no broadband for example. The transfer of enormous amounts of data – text, music, images and video – around the globe in a split second is possible thanks to fibre optics.Boyle and Smith share the award because of their work in digital imagery. They invented the first successful imaging technology using a digital sensor, a CCD (charge-coupled device). The CCD revolutionised photography, as light could now be captured electronically instead of on film. CCD technology is also used in many medical applications – imaging the inside of the human body, both for diagnostics and for microsurgery – and in barcode readers in supermarkets.Herta Müller, the German novelist, is only the 12th woman in 108 years to win the Nobel prize for literature.Born in Romania in 1953, Müller refused to co-operate with Nicolae Ceausescu's secret police, lost her job as a teacher and was the subject of repeated threats until she emigrated in 1987. She now lives in Berlin, where she has won several literary awards, including Germany's most prestigious, the Kleist prize. ... Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:35:43 +0100 799395 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/12/10/formula-to-detect-an-author%e2%80%99s-literary-%e2%80%98fingerprint%e2%80%99/ From the Announcement/Summary: Using literature written by Thomas Hardy, DH Lawrence and Herman Melville, physicists in Sweden have developed a formula to detect different authors’ literary ‘fingerprints’. New research published today, Thursday 10 December, in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society), describes a new concept from a group of Swedish physicists from the Department of Physics at Umeå University called the meta book which uses the frequency with which authors use new words in their literature to find distinct patterns in authors’ written styles. For more than 75 years George Kingsley Zipf’s maxim, based on a carefully selected compilation of American English called Brown Corpus, suggested a universal pattern for the frequency of new words used by authors. Zipf’s law suggests that the frequency ranking of a word is inversely proportional to its occurrence. New research suggests however that the truth behind word frequency is less universal than Zipf asserted and has more to do with the author’s linguistic ability than any over-arching linguistic rule. The researchers first found that the occurrence of new words in the texts by Hardy, Lawrence and Melville did begin to drop off in their texts as their book gets longer, despite new settings and plot-twists. Source: Institute of Physics (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:01:14 +0100 799075 http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/12/massachusetts-primary-guest-blog.html Yesterday the primary took place in Massachusetts to replace Senator Ted Kennedy. Link. AG Martha Coakley won the Democratic nomination with 304,056 votes or 47% of the Democratic vote and 37.5% of the total vote. Scott Brown won the Republican nomination with 141,810 votes or 89% of the Republican vote and 17.5% of the total vote. You can cross parties in the primary so it is difficult to say whether a Republican voted Republican or did they cross over and vote Democratic. But a big factor is that only 11% of all registered voters in Massachusetts are registered Republicans. The last time there was a Republican Senator was Edward Brooke who lost his seat in 1979. But how come Massachusetts gets a Republican governor every second or third election? Because they need one to clean up the financial mess the Democrats create. Well, the Democratic train wreck is here now and the nation, along with Massachusetts needs to put a Republican in this seat. Is it impossible? It is next to impossible, but the time has never been better. Republicans don't vote much in Massachusetts elections as they think it is no use. Well, with these very small turn outs the Republicans have a better chance than normal. I have addressed this communication to those of you who live in Massachusetts. You must vote! Also, please send this to all the people you know in Massachusetts and work to get a better turn out. I believe the election date to fill this seat is January 18th or close to this date. Democratic candidates for governor in NJ and Virginia were voted down. That made big news and sent an unsettling message to the 111th congress. A Republican Senator from Massachusetts would be like setting of the A bomb in Congress.Again, please vote and pass the word onto your fellow Massachusetts residents and friends. It is not impossible. ... Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 799635 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/12/09/libraries-as-important-meeting-places-at-universities/ From the Summary: Library buildings play a vital role at universities and university colleges. Their architectural design is of particular importance for librarians, as this affects their interaction with visitors, among other things.These are the findings of a new thesis for University of Gothenburg, Sweden, which examined the planning of one Swedish university library. Planning university library buildings has become increasingly complex since the late 1900s. Changes within teaching and learning, informatics, and higher education and research mean that there is a wealth of information that needs to be considered by library operators and other players when planning a new building. The planning process encourages interaction between interested parties and representatives of various professions, in particular librarians and architects. Access the Complete Report Source: University of Gothenburg (via AlphaGalileo) (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:54:22 +0100 799083 http://librarywriting.blogspot.com/2009/12/cfp-ifla-2010-libraries-promoting.html CFP: IFLA 2010: “Libraries Promoting Reading in a Multicultural, Multilingual Society”The Section on Literacy and Reading and the Section on Library Services to Multicultural Populations plan to hold a three-hour joint program at the 2010 Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, on the topic, “Libraries Promoting Reading in a Multicultural, Multilingual Society.” We expect to select four to six high quality papers for presentation and discussion.Papers selected for presentation will reflect a variety of geographic settings. They should clearly document research and/or library practices that have been effective promoting reading that celebrates cultural diversity or that were designed as multicultural reading promotions. The role of the library in the reading promotion should be clearly stated.Paper proposals should be no more than one page in length and should include an abstract of the final paper.Please, provide as follows:a) Title of proposed presentationb) Abstract of the presentation (no more than one page)c) Name(s) of presenter(s)d) Position or title of presenter(s)e) Presenter(s) employer or affiliated institutionf) Address & E-mail addressg) Short biographical statement regarding the presenter/s.Proposals can be written in any of the official IFLA languages, but please, provide abstract in English too!Proposals should be sent electronically no later than January 10, 2010: to Elena Corradini at elenacorradini@freemail.it or ecorradini67@gmail.comPapers will be refereed by members of both sections. Decisions will be made by February 20, 2010.Please note: All expenses incurred for attending the Gothenburg conference are the responsibility of the authors whose papers are accepted.Authors/presenters are expected to attend the World Library and Information Congress and present their papers in person.Accepted papers: Full papers must be from 3 to 20 single spaced pages and delivered by April 15, 2010. ... Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 799698 http://librarywriting.blogspot.com/2009/12/cfp-ifla-cataloguing-section.html CFP: IFLA Cataloguing SectionSession Theme: Multilingual Bibliographic Access: Promoting Universal AccessThe IFLA Cataloguing Section invites cataloguers and others involved in the following to express their interest in making presentations at the section's programme during the World Library and Information Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden, August 10-15, 2010.2010 will be yet another exciting year in the area of cataloguing and bibliographic control. The new Statement of International Cataloguing Principles will by then have been adopted by many countries and as a consequence universal bibliographic control should be working even moresmoothly; the new cataloguing code, RDA: Resource Description and Access, replacing the AACR 2, will be published during the year and implemented by four participating countries (U.S., Canada, U.K., and Australia) and maybe more countries will follow soon after that; theconsolidated ISBD will be complete with full examples and a new preliminary area 0 for content form and media type.The theme of next year's World Library and Information Congress is Open Access to Knowledge - Promoting Sustainable Progress. Connecting to this theme the IFLA Cataloguing Section has therefore chosen the session theme mentioned above: Multilingual Bibliographic Access: Promoting Universal Access. Presentations on this topic are now requested. Three successful proposals on the topic will be identified.Send a detailed abstract (1 page or at least 300 words) of the proposed paper (must not have been published elsewhere) in English and relevant biographical information of author(s)/presenter(s) by 15 January 2010 via email to:Anders CatoChair, Cataloguing Sectione-mail: anders.cato@kb.seThe abstracts will be reviewed by members of the Cataloguing Section's Standing Committee. Successful proposals will be identified by 15 February 2010. ... Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 799700 http://bhplnjbookgroup.blogspot.com/2009/12/girl-with-dragon-tattoo-by-stieg.html What can I say about this mystery except that I felt deliciously guilty keeping it out of other readers' hands? Or ears, since I listened to the audiobook. (Thankfully the narrator used British accents, even though the characters were Swedish.)Journalist Mikael Blomkvst is hired to re-investigate the disappearance of a wealthy industrialist's niece, under the guise of writing his biography. (This happens in the aftermath of Blomkvst being convicted of libel when he prints a story that seems true but whose sources wish to remain anonymous. Subplot A.) The case of Harriet Vanger is especially cold, because she disappeared 40 years ago, and it's also a vexing one. A traffic accident on the bridge of the island she and 30 or 40 other people lived on cut the island off from the mainland the day that she vanished.Blomkvst eventually teams up with Lisbeth Salander, a hacker who works for a security firm as a researcher, but who has a strange past that has somehow led the state to declare her mentally incompetent and in need of a state-appointed guardian (subplot B).I'm looking forward to reading the next two in this trilogy given how fast-paced, original and yet plausible The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was. If you'd like to read a similar book that's actually in the library right now, you could try one of Arnaldur Indridadson's mysteries. (Source: Berkeley Heights Public Library Book Blog and Buzz) Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 801013 http://www.docuticker.com/?p=30302 Global Survey: Concern for Climate Change Cools Off Source: Nielsen and the Oxford University Institute of Climate Change Concern for climate change has declined in the past two years with many countries recording a double digit fall, according to new research released today by The Nielsen Company and the Oxford University Institute of Climate Change. In the latest round of the survey, conducted in October 2009, 37 percent of global consumers said they were very concerned about climate change (compared to 41 percent in 2007), with the highest levels of concern expressed in Latin America (57%) and Asia Pacific (42%). However, North America lagged global regions with 25 percent of respondents saying they were “very concerned” about climate change. Thirty five out of the fifty four countries surveyed recorded a decline in climate change concern, led by Poland (23%) and Canada (22%). Climate Change concern also fell by 18 percent in Portugal and 17 percent in Taiwan, Spain and Sweden. + Full Document (PDF; 387 KB) (Source: Docuticker) Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:40:33 +0100 798556 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ConversationalReading/~3/23BKZDpEuSE/foolish-pride.html Rarely do we see such a lambasted piece of book journalism as Liesl Schillinger's post-Nobel piece from the Oct 18 edition of the NY Times. To say nothing of the bashing that's gone on in other quarters, I already dismantled it here, the editors and I just took it apart again in our editorial, and now noted translator Russell Valentino wants to take a few more slaps in celebration of our Translate This Book! extravaganza of literature that has still never been translated into English. Literary Parochialism, and Proud of It The problem is not merely that so little of world literature, especially the most recent, gets translated into English. It is also the enormous cultural blind spot that follows from that absence, the assumption of centrality that US readers make about their own way of reading and seeing the world when the foundation of such an assumption is so flimsy. The Bushisms of recent memory were embarrassing: how could he be so certain in his views of the rest world when he knew so little about it? An American president should know better, at the very least should know what he does not know. We should not expect any less of prominent literary institutions in the US. The New York Times Book Review piece by Liesl Schillinger from October 18, “American Literature: Words Without Borders”, which, as its sub-title suggests, implicitly makes claims on the territory staked out by another publication, deploys an embarrassing riches of cultural Bushisms. I didn’t find the piece nearly so hilarious as Michael Orthofer did in his post in the Complete Review (even if his laughter there was clearly facetious); but I agree with his reading that the review appears to take up a stand in defense against the criticism of American literature as parochial made by Horace Engdahl of the Swedish Academy last fall, and that the stand is shaky. The first mistake that Schillinger makes is to confuse American multiculturalism with the international. ... Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0100 800085 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/12/06/nobelprize-org-provides-live-hd-quality-webcasts-of-2009-nobel-prize-award-ceremonies-and-nobel-lectures/ From the Announcement: Nobelprize.org, the official web site of the Nobel Foundation, will provide live webcasts in HD quality of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony from Oslo, Norway, and the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony from Stockholm, Sweden, on 10 December 2009. Nobel Lectures on 7, 8 and 10 December will also be webcast live. Nobelprize.org brings you closer to the 2009 Nobel Laureates as they receive their Nobel Prizes, by providing live webcasts of the 2009 Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies and Nobel Lectures as they happen. Access a Complete List of Times and Lectures Source: Nobelprize.org (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:04:19 +0100 798126 http://www.docuticker.com/?p=30248 Norwegian Consumers Most Confident in Europe, Rest of Scandinavia Mixed Source: Nielsen Nordic consumers have more confidence in the economy and their personal finances than the rest of Europe and are increasingly ready to spend, according to the latest edition of the Nielsen Global Consumer Confidence Survey. But within Scandinavia, there are some variations. Norway and Sweden posted double digit increase in confidence (up 10 and 11 points, respectively) while Finland’s score was up two. Meanwhile, confidence in Denmark declined two points in the third quarter, although it still recorded the second highest score in Europe. Norwegians posted the highest levels of confidence on the continent. Almost two-thirds (64%) said that they thought their country was not in a recession, compared to 85 percent of European who thought their country was in recession (globally, the average was 64% thinking they were in recession). The same percentage of Norwegians also believed that their job prospects were “good” or “excellent” in the coming year, compared to just 30 percent saying the same in April 2009. More than half (51%) of Nordic consumers said that it is a “good” or “excellent” time to buy the things they want and need, compared to just 31 percent of Europeans and 37 percent globally. Swedes and Danes have a fairly poor outlook on job prospects, while Finns are quite negative: 83 percent believe prospects for the next 12 months were “not so good” or “bad.” + Full Report (PDF; 388 KB) (Source: Docuticker) Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:22:26 +0100 797541 http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/2009/11/dont-wait-to-be-asked-towards-next.html There is a call for papers for the two hour session at the IFLA (World Library and Information) Conference which will take place in Gothenburg, Sweden, next August. This session is organised by the IFLA Reference and Information Services Section and the Information Literacy Section. Subjects of interest include: How do we transform and integrate reference and information literacy into new models of instruction and service? How can we identify and understand the future needs of our users? How will the relationship and collaboration between librarians and users change? What information skills will be needed in 2010 and beyond in all sectors of society? How do we transform our users' computer savvy into the ability to use and evaluate information efficiently, effectively, and ethically? What is the role of the library website? How can we move from passive pages to interactive learning tools and valued information assets? How can we deliver innovative and effective information literacy support, guidance and programmes to the right people at the right time? How will we define and develop the reference and instruction librarians of tomorrow?Proposals should include: abstract of paper (max. 500 words); author details (name, institution, position) and brief biographical statement of no more than 50 words. The deadline for submitting proposals is January 22, 2010 and they should be sent via email to Amanda Duffy (burntoak@dsl.pipex.com) with "IFLA proposal" in the subject line. (Source: Information Literacy Weblog) Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0100 796253 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/SAdKXSM3f5c/ Mobile Read is reporting that the Hanlin V3 has received a minor firmware update which includes support for Swedish and Thai and imporved PDF zooming. You can find the update here. The Havlin v5 was updated a couple of week ago and you can find that here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:31:40 +0100 795447 http://librarytwopointzero.blogspot.com/2009/11/utrecht-ruling-causing-mininova-to-go.html Seems that bit torrent site Mininova has had to go legitimate after Dutch Court of Utrecht ruled that BitTorrent platform Mininova acts unlawful. Seems that Bittorrent is taking a bit of a battering with Peter Mandelson hoping to amend the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and Piratebays case in Sweden. (Source: librarytwopointzero) Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0100 796236 http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6708430.html?rssid=190 Authors Sara Kadefors and Annika Thor may not be household names in the United States. But representatives in their native Sweden are hoping to change that. (Source: School Library Journal Breaking News) Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:17:16 +0100 794978 http://www.docuticker.com/?p=29331 Outrunning the Gender Gap – Boys and Girls Compete Equally (PDF; 389 KB) Source: SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance Recent studies find that women are less competitive than men. This gender difference in competitiveness has been suggested as a possible explanation for why men occupy the majority of top positions in many sectors. In this study we explore competitiveness in children. A related field experiment on Israeli children shows that only boys react to competition by running faster when competing in a race, and that only girls react to the gender of their opponent. Here we test if these results carry over to 8-10 year old Swedish children. Sweden is typically ranked among the most gender equal countries in the world, thus culture could explain a potential difference in our results to those on Israeli children. We also introduce two more “female” sports: skipping rope and dancing, in order to study if reaction to competition is task dependent. Our results contradict previous findings in two ways. First, we find no gender difference in reaction to competition in running. In our study, both boys and girls compete. We also find no gender differences in reaction to competition in skipping rope and dancing. Second, we find no clear effect on competitiveness of the opponent’s gender, neither on girls or boys, in any of the tasks. Our findings suggest that the existence of a gender gap in competitiveness among children may be partly cultural, and that the gap found in previous studies on adults may be caused by factors that emerge later in life. It remains to be explored whether these later factors are biological or cultural. (Source: Docuticker) Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:00:38 +0100 794522 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2009/11/22/oberlin-college-adopts-open-access-policy/ Oberlin College has adopted an open access policy. Here's an excerpt from the press release: The Oberlin College General Faculty unanimously endorsed on November 18 a resolution to make their scholarly articles openly accessible on the Internet. As a result of the measure, the rich scholarly output of the Oberlin faculty will become available to a much broader national and international audience. The Oberlin resolution is similar to policies passed at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Kansas, and Trinity University. "Through this resolution the Oberlin College faculty has expressed a principled commitment to disseminating their scholarship as widely as possible,” said Sebastiaan Faber, Professor of Hispanic Studies and Chair of the General Faculty Library Committee. “The current system of journal publishing, which largely relies on subscriptions and licenses, limits access to research information in significant ways, particularly for students and faculty at smaller and less wealthy institutions, as well as for the general public. Access is also seriously limited around the world in countries with fewer resources." Under the new policy, Oberlin faculty and professional staff will make their peer-reviewed, scholarly articles openly accessible in a digital archive managed by the Oberlin College Library as part of the OhioLINK Digital Resource Commons. Oberlin authors may opt out of the policy for a specific article if they are not in a position to sign journal publishing agreements that are compatible with the policy, or for other reasons. The resolution also creates an institutional license that gives Oberlin College the legal right to make the articles accessible on the Internet through the digital archive. The resolution further encourages, but does not require, authors to submit publications other than peer-reviewed articles in the same manner. . . . ... Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:01:35 +0100 795347 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/DGGJXUwEWiA/crime-thriller-maj-sjowall-sweden When Maj Sjöwall and her partner Per Wahlöö started writing the Martin Beck detective series in Sweden in the 60s, they little realised that it would change the way we think about policemen for everIt might count as one of the most remarkable writing collaborations in the history of publishing. A man and a woman, a couple, sit down every evening to write. Dinner is over, their children are in bed. She's never written a book before. He's a published author, but not with anything like this. They write in long hand, through the night if necessary. One chapter each. The following evening they swap chapters and type them up, editing each other as they go along. They don't argue, at least not about the words. These seem to flow naturally.Ten years, 10 books. Each book 30 chapters, 300 chapters in all. Every one centred on the same group of middle-aged, mostly unprepossessing policemen in Stockholm's National Homicide Department. Often, very little happens. Sometimes for pages on end. What is more, each book is a Marxist critique of society. Their mission – or "the project" as the authors call it – is to hold up a mirror to social problems in 1960s Sweden.Unlikely as it may sound, the books have become international bestsellers, over 10m copies sold and counting. Classics of the thriller genre, they've been made into films and adapted for television. Subsequent generations of crime writers are fans. There's no doubt that the latest left-leaning Swedish author to hit the bestseller lists, Stieg Larsson, would have read them. Some say the couple wrote the finest crime series ever; that without them we would not have Ian Rankin's John Rebus or Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander.Yet if Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö had not met, the books would not have existed; and if they hadn't fallen in love, the books would be nowhere near as good as they are.More than 40 years have passed since they wrote together every night, filling in each other's sentences. ... Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:10:12 +0100 793875 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/19/government-2-0-new-book-details-challenges-of-web-2-0-usage-across-the-globe/ An Audio Report is Also Available at the Top of the Web Page. From the Article Starting Wednesday in Sweden, the European Union is holding a conference of ministers of technology from across Europe that will be looking at lessons learned throughout the EU. In conjunction with that, a new book is out: State of the eUnion: Government 2.0 and Onwards. It’s available online for free, and will eventually come to a store near you. It pulls from some of the Web 2.0 thought leaders, many of whom you have heard here on Federal News Radio, including Tim O’Reilly, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, and Mark Drapeau from George Washington University. Source: Federal News Radio Hat Tip: Pete W. Access the Full Text Book: State of the eUnion: Government 2.0 and Onwards (321 pages; PDF) (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:38:11 +0100 793012 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AginfoBlogFromIaald/~3/mbXwQItKlXc/ifla-2010-aglibraries-group-current.html The IFLA Agricultural Libraries Special Interest Group in association with IAALD (International Association of Agricultural information Specialists) invites papers to be presented at a two-hour session to be held at the World Library and Information Congress: 76th IFLA General Conference at Gothenburg, Sweden, 10-15 August 2010. Information needs of farmers center around the problems such as seeds, soil fertility, soil erosion, climatic conditions, fertilizers, pest hazards, weed control, water management, farm credit, post-harvesting, transportation, marketing and so forth. Timely provision of information is essential in solving these problems. However, the impact of agricultural research and innovations on farmers is not much either because they have no access to such vital information or it is poorly disseminated. Information provided is mainly focused on policy makers and researchers with little attention paid to the information needs of farmers. It is more so in developing countries and particularly small-scale farmers.This session is aimed at discussing current trends in providing farmer-oriented information services in developed and developing countries. ... Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0100 793513 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2009/11/17/netherlands-organisation-for-scientific-research-will-commit-5-million-euros-to-open-access-publication/ According to a news article by the SURFfoundation, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, which "funds thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes and steers the course of Dutch science by means of subsidies and research programmes," will commit five million Euros to support the open access publication of its funded research results. Related Posts Canadian Association of Research Libraries and JISC Join Confederation of Open Access Repositories Two Open Access Policies Adopted: NCAR and University of Salford UK's National Institute for Health Research Funds 15% Discount in BioMed Central Publication Fees for Its Researchers Swedish Research Council Adopts Open Access Mandate Greater Western Library Alliance Members Send Letter Supporting Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009 to Senators (Source: DigitalKoans) Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:02:11 +0100 793243 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/trH9EJ0JrTo/my-media-christopher-meyer The former PCC chair Sir Christopher Meyer shares his media choicesOnlineAfter the morning papers, I use the BBC website to access the rest of the papers online. I get the Financial Times and the New York Times by email. The FT is obviously good on business, and I like its comment page. because It often has a different take on national political news, supplemented by its FT Westminster blog. The NYT, for all its recent travails, is still the best American paper, though it's being pushed by the Wall Street Journal. And I read the News of the World online. When I was chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, I got hooked on it for professional reasons: so often we would receive complaints on a Monday, so I liked to get ahead of the curve by reading it on the Sunday. The blogosphere is essential. I love the Spectator Coffee House, for its own value and as an entry point for a whole bunch of other political blogs – Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale, Ben Brogan, FT Westminster, Clive Crook from the FT because he talks so well about America, Nick Robinson, Adam Boulton and many others including Red Box at the Times. The blogosphere has made me go to bed an hour later! Realclearpolitics.com brings together a digest of all the best articles on politics to be found in the United States and occasionally has British articles too. It's indispensable.NewspapersComing through the letterbox each morning are the Times and the Daily Mail. On Sundays it's the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday. The Times is a good all-round newspaper, they are going through a good patch, with an excellent website. And I always want to know what the Mail is campaigning for, because the politicians pick up on it. I especially like the Mail's football coverage too.MagazinesThe Spectator has still got the edge – just as good under Fraser Nelson, its new editor. I've been reading Private Eye from its very first edition in the 60s. I read the New Yorker for the features and film reviews. ... Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:05:26 +0100 791819 http://northmetrotechlibraryatacworth.blogspot.com/2009/11/triskaidekaphobia.html Today is Friday the 13th. Except in Australia, which by the time I write this it is Saturday the 14th I should think. Triskaidekaphobia is the term given to the fear of the number 13. This is a fear common in North America and Europe. This fear has morphed into a fear of the date Friday the 13th. Fear of Friday the 13th has given rise to a slasher film franchise, which subsequently created higher sales of ice hockey goalie masks (but that's another story). A search for triskaidekaphobia in Galileo yields 4 results in Academic Search Complete and 4 results in Research Library. The results span all the way back to 1980, and most of the articles deal with the psychological aspects associated with the number 13 and its perceived lack of luck.And in unrelated news, the people of Sweden voted to join the European Union on this day in 1994. JWFView from the Library maintained by The Librarian at North Metro Technical College c2006 (Source: View from the library) Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0100 791222 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/ZL7QchFUD0s/free-culture-charter-calls-for-oa.html Participants in the Free Culture Forum (Barcelona, October 29-November 1, 2009) developed this Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge: We are in the midst of a revolution in the way that knowledge and culture are created, accessed and transformed. ... In spite of these transformations, the entertainment industry, most communications service providers governments and international bodies still base the sources of their advantages and profits on control of content and tools and on managing scarcity. This leads to restrictions on citizens’ rights to education, access to information, culture, science and technology; freedom of expression; inviolability of communications and privacy. They put the protection of private interests above the public interest, holding back the development of society in general. Today’s institutions, industries, structures or conventions will not survive into the future unless they adapt to these changes. ... We have identified gaps that exist in national regulations and international treaties concerning the dissemination of culture and knowledge, both in private, contractual relations and in international public policy. We propose reforms which we believe are necessary to overcome these flaws. These weaknesses of existing regulations and treaties are detrimental to the public interest and to a modern, democratic cultural industry. In this context, the public interest is best served by supporting and ensuring continued creation of intellectual works of significant societal value, and to ensure all citizens have unfettered access to such works for a wide variety of uses. ... Publicly funded research, and intellectual and cultural work should be made available freely to the general public. ... ... Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0100 790598 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/qLYwXvRWX3E/new-oa-journals_10.html OA journal announcements, conversions, and launches spotted in the past week: The Journal of Aesthetics & Culture is a new peer-reviewed OA journal, now accepting submissions. See the announcement and launch editorial. The journal is published by Co-Action Publishing with financial support from the Swedish Research Council and Stockholm University. AoB PLANTS is a new peer-reviewed OA journal, now accepting submissions. See the launch editorial. The journal is published by Oxford University Press for the Annals of Botany Company. The International Journal of Studies in Mathematics Education is a new peer-reviewed OA journal. The inaugural issue is now available. The journal is published by UNIBAN Brasil and publishes articles in Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French. Trace (Travaux et recherches dans les amériques du centre), a humanities journal focused on Mexico and Central America, converted to OA. The journal has been published under that title since 1985 by the Centre d'Études Mexicaines et Centraméricaines. The journal publishes in Spanish. The new OA site is hosted by Revues.org. Back issues to 2007 are currently available. Humanitaire, a journal on humanitarian issues, converted to delayed OA with a three-month delay. The journal has been published since 2000 by Médecins du Monde. The journal publishes in French. The new site is hosted by Revues.org. Back issues to 2008 are currently available on Revues.org; previous issues are available OA from the publisher. New Prairie Press will republish as OA the original run of the GDR Bulletin, a journal on East German literature and culture published by the Washington University Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures from 1975 to 1999. The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, published by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, will be managed by Taylor & Francis. As a result, the journal will offer an OA option as part of T&F's iOpenAccess hybrid program. ... Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0100 790268