Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

The Edge Annual Question - 2006

To the Edge Community,

Last year’s 2005 Edge Question - “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?” - generated many eye-opening responses from a “who’s who” of third culture scientists and science-minded thinkers. The 120 contributions comprised a document of 60,000 words. The New York Times (”Science Times”) and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (”Feuilliton”) published excepts in their print and online editions simultaneously with Edge publication….

A book based on the 2005 Question — What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today’s Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty, with an introduction by the novelist Ian McEwan — was just published by the Free Press (UK). The US edition follows from HarperCollins in February, 2006….

This year, the third culture thinkers in the Edge community have written 117 original essays (a document of 72,500 words) in response to the 2006 Edge Question — “What is your dangerous idea?”. Here you will find indications of a new natural philosophy, founded on the realization of the import of complexity, of evolution. Very complex systems — whether organisms, brains, the biosphere, or the universe itself — were not constructed by design; all have evolved. There is a new set of metaphors to describe ourselves, our minds, the universe, and all of the things we know in it.

Yahoo! Search - Instant Search.
“Instant Search gives you answers as you type — no more waiting!”

This beta application from
Yahoo next uses
Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) programming to deliver immediately, as you type, a best match
for your search. This is certainly an interesting and flashy application
that may be useful in some search situations.

It is also interesting to look at the technology behind the application and how such technology might be of use to libraries. Ajax applications “look almost as if they reside on the user’s machine, rather than across the Internet on a server. The reason: pages get updated, not entirely refreshed.” (Ajax wikipedia article).

But this technology also has privacy implications:
Using the XMLHttpRequest Object and AJAX to Spy On You by Earle Castledine, devX.com, August 9, 2005.

Without comment, here are several articles of interest from
the last week or so. Have a good weekend!

• Academic Libraries Join in Marking September 11 With Discussions of
  What Freedom Means
• Roberts Errs on Side of Secrecy as White House Counsel
• Public Being Shut Out of Environmental Right-to-Know Hearings
• At long last, it’s Lockheed for electronic archives
• Audio overboard College students bypass new podcasting craze
• 
  Chaos to rule Internet in 2010
• 
  Clarke: Europe must trade civil liberties for security
• Wikipedia eclipses CIA

Welcome to GreyNet, Your Grey Literature Network Service

What’s grey literature? It’s “Information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commerical publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity.”

THE GREY JOURNAL ~ FLAGSHIP FOR THE GREY LITERATURE COMMUNITY

The first issue of The Grey Journal, an international journal on grey literature, will be launched in the spring of 2005. This flagship journal crosses continents, disciplines, and sectors both public and private. The Grey Journal not only deals with the topic of grey literature but also is itself a document type that is classified as grey literature. It is akin to other grey serial publications, such as conference proceedings, reports, working papers, etc. The Grey Journal is geared to Colleges and Schools of Library and Information Studies, as well as, information professionals, who produce, publish, process, manage, disseminate, and use grey literature e.g. researchers, editors, librarians, documentalists, archivists, etcetera.

Spring 2005, Volume 1, Number 1 - ÔPublish Grey or PerishÕ

Project Censored 2005 - Top 25 Censored Stories

#1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy

#2: Ashcroft vs. the Human Rights Law that Holds Corporations Accountable

#3: Bush Administration Censors Science

#4: High Levels of Uranium Found in Troops and Civilians

#5: The Wholesale Giveaway of Our Natural Resources

#6: The Sale of Electoral Politics

#7: Conservative Organization Drives Judicial Appointments

#8: Cheney’s Energy Task Force and The Energy Policy

#9: Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. government for 9/11

#10: New Nuke Plants: Taxpayers Support, Industry Profits

#11: The Media Can Legally Lie

#12: The Destabilization of Haiti

#13: Schwarzenegger Met with Enron’s Ken Lay Years Before the California Recall

#14: New Bill Threatens Intellectual Freedom in Area Studies

#15: U.S. Develops Lethal New Viruses

#16: Law Enforcement Agencies Spy on Innocent Citizens

#17: U.S. Government Represses Labor Unions in Iraq in Quest for Business Privatization

#18: Media and Government Ignore Dwindling Oil Supplies

#19: Global Food Cartel Fast Becoming the World’s Supermarket

#20: Extreme Weather Prompts New Warning from UN

#21: Forcing a World Market for GMOs

#22: Censoring Iraq

#23: Brazil Holds Back in FTAA Talks, But Provides Little Comfort for the Poor of South America

#24: Reinstating the Draft

#25: Wal-Mart Brings Inequality and Low Prices to the World

Iraq’s library struggles to rise from the ashes
by Rory McCarthy. Tuesday December 21, 2004.
Guardian Unlimited.

The daylight burning of the library, which the invading US military did not protect, was one of the first costly failures in the post-war chaos of occupation last year. Now it is slowly being restored. But in a country where recent history remains bitterly disputed, resurrecting the library and national archive has turned into a remarkably sensitive and political operation.

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Season’s readings

We don’t usually post general items like this one here, but I’ll make an exception with this one. From The Guardian a list of good books: “writers and guest critics recommend their favourites, from bestsellers to the undeservedly obscure.”
The contributors:

JG Ballard | Iain Banks |Julian Barnes |Sidney Blumenthal |William Boyd |Gordon Burn |AS Byatt |Richard Eyre |James Fenton |Giles Foden |Jonathan Freedland |Linda Grant |John Gray |Mark Haddon |Sarah Hall |James Hamilton-Paterson |David Hare |Seymour Hersh |Alan Hollinghurst |Nick Hornby |Ian Jack |AL Kennedy |Helena Kennedy |Martin Kettle |Hanif Kureishi | Andrea Levy | Nicholas Lezard | Ian McEwan | Neil Macgregor | Katie Mitchell | Blake Morrison | John Mullan | Meg Rosoff | Simon Schama | Helen Simpson | Zadie Smith | Jon Snow | Claire Tomalin | Colm T—ib’n | Polly Toynbee | William Trevor

Declaration from Buenos Aires - Social Forum of Information 2004

The attendees at the First Social Forum on Information, Documentation and Libraries: alternative action programs from Latin America for the information society, held in Buenos Aires from August 26-28, 2004, was called by the Social Studies Group on Library Science and Documentation (Argentina) and the Study Circle on Political and Social Librarianship (Mexico).

We recognize that:

Information, knowledge, documentation, archives, and libraries are communal cultural goods and resources. They are based upon and promoted by democratic values, such as: freedom, equality, and social justice, as well as tolerance, respect, equity, solidarity, communities, society, and the dignity of individuals.

Week in Review > How Americans Voted: A Political Portrait” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/weekinreview/07conn.html?ex=1257483600&en=d7d3c29173baef8b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland”>The New York Times: How Americans Voted: A Political Portrait

Here’s an interesting article for you data wonks out there. See the historic portrait of the electoral from 1976 - 2004.

This portrait of the 2004 electorate emerges from interviews with 13,600 voters conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool, a consortium of ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News. The large number of respondents makes it possible to measure the preferences of some groups, like Jews and Asians, whose share of the population is too small to be examined in typical telephone surveys.

To the Editor of the New York Times History News Network.

The History News Network web site invites historians
“If you write to the NYT and your letter isn’t published, please send it to us.”
Many do, and the results are here.