Moss is awesome! And simple to keep alive even if you travel.
Moss had its heyday back at the turn of the last century when both the US and the UK had their own bryological societies and people built mosseries into their homes where they could enjoy the greenery year round. It's simple to build a mini-mossery, or mossarium, in your own home.
The Federal Depository library Program (FDLP) is a geographically dispersed network of 1250 libraries around the US who for over 150 years have worked with the Government Printing Office (GPO) to insure that government information is deposited in local libraries and freely available to everyone. FDLP libraries have also assured the authenticity of government information through this distributed system. Documents librarians have long been advocates for government transparency, freedom of information, privacy and civil liberties (freedom to read etc). (more…)
Library database vendor EBSCO now has exclusive deals with content providers — Time, Inc., and Forbes. Libraries who had been getting access to this same content through other vendors will have to pay up or lose electronic access to popular titles such as Sports Illustrated, Time and People. Gale, a competing vendor, has responded with their Fair Access campaign including the Librarians for Fair Access facebook group.
tl;dr version: If your library doesn't have EBSCO and wants to continue to offer electronic access to some magazines, they will have to get EBSCO. Previously, most magazines were aggregated and sold by many companies, more about the specifics here.
According to Gale: "If you currently receive Time Inc. or Forbes periodical content electronically from Gale or any provider other than EBSCO, you and your patrons will lose access to that content over [2010]."
What changed? EBSCO responds, in Library Journal "In many cases, an exclusive relationship is the only way you can have the content in your databases." They were the top bidder in an RFP put out by Major Magazines who felt that they were losing revenue because too many people read their magazines in the library for free. That said, EBSCO is no stranger to the idea of exclusive contracts.
Serious Eats is curious if you've ever experienced Pine Mouth, a long-lasting metallic taste in your mouth after eating pine nuts.
Roger Hyam's blog post outlines the issue and links to a medical article which confirms the syndrome but offers no obvious cause. Are Chinese pine nuts to blame?
Tips for avoiding Pine Mouth. Reports from Chowhound & Yelp. Official position from the International Nut and Dried Fruit Foundation.
[Image: Nuno Tavares via Wikimedia Commons, cc licensed]
Robots + Monsters will be reopening on Monday January 25th, with the donations going to Doctors Without Borders and their Haiti efforts. From their press release:
The destruction and human suffering wrought by the earthquake in Haiti has touched us all, whether we have a personal connection to the country or not. Robots + Monsters is committed to help alleviate the suffering of the Haitian people by partnering with the humanitarian group, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders.)… More than 1,000 injured people have been treated by Doctors Without Borders medical teams in the first 24 hours following the earthquake and we are currently transporting additional staff and emergency supplies into Haiti…. Robots + Monsters has been fortunate enough to secure the very limited drawing time of many amazing contributors from the illustration and visual arts world, like Adam Koford, John Martz, Matt Rebholz, and Molly Crabapple, as well as many others, who will all be helping out for this great cause. Visit www.robotsandmonsters.org for more info.
"The story of any community is mostly about its people, not its streets and buildings. The P.S. 99 class photographs taken over the years are one of the best records we have of the people who have grown up here over the past decades. There are links below to 310 class photos."
Kew Gardens was an immigrant neighborhood in Queens, New York which rapidly flled with European war refugees during the early 1940's. PS 99 was the one public school. Building construction had been halted due to the war efforts, so morning classes were given in the auditorium. Children wore ID tags like the one below "in case of a bombing."
Kew Gardens is now one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the US. The Kew Gardens History site is collecting class photos that show the evolution of this New York neighborhood.
The Morgan Library in New York is currenty exhibiting one of the great masterworks of medieval illumination, the Hours of Catherine of Cleves. All 157 miniatures have also been digitized. (more…)
"The Superman serial was a 1948 15-part black-and-white movie serial starring an unaccredited Kirk Alyn (but billed only by his character name, Superman) and Noel Neill as Lois Lane. It is notable as the first live-action appearance of Superman on film and for the longevity of its distribution." All 15 chapters are available at the Internet Archive's open source movies archive. Meanwhile, Superman is still on the list of banned Twitter passwords.
French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has created "a walk-through aviary for a flock of zebra finches, and furnished them with electric guitars and other instruments" at the Barbican Gallery. Same project, different location. [via MeFi]
