WASHINGTON (AP) — The tattered Torah scroll fragments, Bibles and other religious texts found in a flooded Baghdad basement 10 years ago testify to a once-thriving Jewish population that's all but disappeared from Iraq. Read more...
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — The tattered Torah scroll fragments, Bibles and other religious texts found in a flooded Baghdad basement 10 years ago testify to a once-thriving Jewish population that's all but disappeared from Iraq. Read more...
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
The Book Thief (2013) - Movie Trailers - Fandango.com
Books of the Times | 'The Book Thief'
Stealing to Settle a Score With Life
Markus Zusak has not really written "Harry Potter and the Holocaust." It just feels that way. "The Book Thief" is perched on the cusp between grown-up and young-adult fiction, and it is loaded with librarian appeal. It deplores human misery. It celebrates the power of language. It may encourage adolescents to read. It has an element of the fanciful. And it's a book that bestows a self-congratulatory glow upon anyone willing to grapple with it.
Read more...
Sales Are Colossal, Shares Are Soaring. All Amazon Is Missing Is a Profit - NYTimes.com
Matt Cardy/Getty Images
An Amazon warehouse in Swansea, Wales. The company is expected to have around $75 billion in revenue this year.
By DAVID STREITFELD
Published: October 21, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO — Nearly every day, Amazon announces a new venture.
It just bought an online education company and introduced a payment mechanism for Internet retailers that competes with PayPal. It started selling wine for the first time in New York, updated its line of tablets, gave the go-ahead to three new comedy pilots and began a design competition for its fashion division. It is setting up mini-warehouses inside suppliers like Procter & Gamble to ship goods faster.
But one thing it will not be announcing this month: a significant profit. Read more...
Monday, October 21, 2013
Librarians in the 21st Century: Designing a Career Strategy for Evolving Roles and Opportunities by Lisa Chow
Librarians in the 21st Century: Designing a Career Strategy for Evolving Roles and Opportunities
by Lisa Chow, People-Centered Design Advocate and Librarian at People Interact Consultancy on Oct 17, 2013
Librarians in the 21st Century: Designing a Career Strategy for Evolving Roles and Opportunities from Lisa Chow
Friday, October 18, 2013
Return Of ‘Stolen’ Jewish Trove From Iraq Fueling Anger | The Jewish Week
On eve of D.C. exhibit, community wants ‘illegally expropriated’ material to remain in Jewish hands in U.S.
The treasure trove of materials tells the story of the rich history of Iraqi Jews, stretching back 2,500 years to Babylonia. There are Torah parchments, a Hebrew Bible with commentaries from 1568, a Babylonian Talmud from 1793 and a Passover Haggadah from 1902.
The material, believed to have been seized by former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, was found in the flooded basement of Iraq’s intelligence agency in Baghdad two months after the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Eventually rescued by U.S. troops, it was preserved and restored at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, with help from philanthropists and foundations as well as $2.9 million in federal funds.
Now, as the trove is about to go on view at the National Archives, the prospect that the material will be returned to Iraq after the show — under an agreement between the U.S. and Iraqi governments — has sparked anger in the Jewish community.
Harold Rhode, who discovered the trove while working as a Defense Department policy analyst assigned to Iraq’s transitional government, said he is “horrified” to think the material would be returned when it had been “stolen by the government of Iraq from the Jewish community.”
“It would be comparable to the U.S. returning to the German government Jewish property that had been looted by the Nazis,” he told The Jewish Week.
Read article...
10/16/13
Staff Writer
Jewish trove found in an Iraqi government building. Photos courtesy of Harold Rhode
The material, believed to have been seized by former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, was found in the flooded basement of Iraq’s intelligence agency in Baghdad two months after the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Eventually rescued by U.S. troops, it was preserved and restored at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, with help from philanthropists and foundations as well as $2.9 million in federal funds.
Now, as the trove is about to go on view at the National Archives, the prospect that the material will be returned to Iraq after the show — under an agreement between the U.S. and Iraqi governments — has sparked anger in the Jewish community.
Harold Rhode, who discovered the trove while working as a Defense Department policy analyst assigned to Iraq’s transitional government, said he is “horrified” to think the material would be returned when it had been “stolen by the government of Iraq from the Jewish community.”
“It would be comparable to the U.S. returning to the German government Jewish property that had been looted by the Nazis,” he told The Jewish Week.
Read article...
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
A Day to Remember the First Computer Programmer Was a Woman - NYTimes.com
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Hulton Archive, via Getty Images Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, is known as the first programmer, because she designed a program for the unbuilt machine.Fast-forward 171 years to today (which happens to be Ada Lovelace Day, for highlighting women in science, technology, engineering and math), and computer programming is dominated by men.
Women software developers earn 80 percent of what men with the same jobs earn. Just 18 percent of computer science degrees are awarded to women, down from 37 percent in 1985. Fewer than 5 percent of venture-backed tech start-ups are founded by women.
Those statistics, released by Symantec, the security company, and the Anita Borg Institute, which works to recruit and promote women in tech, provide context for recent debates in Silicon Valley, like why Twitter has no women on its board. Read article....
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
New breed of teen-services librarians emerges - Lifestyle - The Boston Globe
Juliette Lynch for The Boston Globe
Escobar, a teen-services librarian sporting a lock of dyed pink hair, headed for the stacks. But the young woman was out of luck: “Gossip Girl” had been checked out. Escobar chatted with her a bit longer, and the teen left with several recommendations for books — and an application for a library card.
Escobar is one of a mushrooming corps of librarians in Greater Boston working to put books in the hands of young readers. She is part of an increasingly visible group that has almost doubled in size in the past 13 years. At 5,200 members, the Young Adult Library Services Association is the fastest-growing professional organization in the field.
“Teen services have exploded in the last decade,” says YALSA president Shannon Peterson. She attributes the increase in part to the relatively large size of the current teen population in the United States. Read article...
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