It's no secret that a healthy portion of books in the home leads to more good things happening to the kids that live and grow up there. In his 2010 piece, Home Libraries Provide Huge Educational Advantage, Tom Jacobs of Pacific Standard alerted us to a comprehensive study that made clear that "the presence of book-lined shelves in the home — and the intellectual environment those volumes reflect — gives children an enormous advantage in school." Now, eight years later, Jacobs is back at it with the results of a new study that confirms that not only do books furnish...
The Maine Event: Local pastors lose it when when they spot LGBTQ books in banned books display
Those of us living in the Northwest corner of the US have always had a quiet affinity with our brethren living in the Northeast corner. I think those days might be over. The unconscionable vote by Maine senator Susan Collins to help put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court is a gamechanger. Then this story out of Rumford, Maine doesn't help either. It appears that local pastors got all bent out of shape by the LGBTQ books that were part of this display of banned books at the Rumford Public Library. So what do they want to do? They want to to ban...
A Tale of Two Cities: Amazon opens a bookstore while Indiebound adds a ‘Buy Now’ button
Photo: Sam Machkovech Here comes the next tremor in the book universe. Amazon.com, the world's largest online bookseller, has opened it's first physical bookshop! Amazon Books has opened in Seattle's University District just a few miles from Amazon headquarters. It's 5,000 square feet with a majority of the space dedicated to the almighty book. By combining new display tactics (all books are face out!), a largely crowdsourced inventory, and a seamless ebook purchase option Amazon Books is open for business. After all the years Amazon was paving the way to sell books online, completely upending the bookselling and publishing fields in...
The Science Cafe & Library by Anna Wigandt
Here's a great way to attract people to the wonders of science - build a beautiful cafe and library designed to foster the study and exploration of the sciences. Unfortunately, the odds are most of us will never get a chance to experience this amazing interior designed by Anna Wigandt. You see, the Science Cafe & Library is located in Chişinău, Moldova! The intent was to appeal less to the chaotic and emotional experience of a typical cafe, and more to the rational and refined vibe of a library, while maintaining the accessibility and interactiveness of a public space One...
The latest from Google: An interactive art installation that turns your words into poetry
Talk about enhancing a construction project. Google has unveiled Poetrics, an interactive art installation at the future site of their new offices in the Kings Cross neighborhood of London. Poetrics is the result of a competition run in partnership with University of the Arts London’s Central Saint Martins to create an “interactive experience for the Kings Cross community”. The installation utilizes Google's voice search technology and the Google Speech platform and features 17 LED panels that display the words spoken into various microphones placed around the building site as randomly created poetry. “We saw Poetrics as an opportunity for people to have a collective and meaningful...