The next war will be an information war, and we’re not ready for it written by David Stupples

In the 21st century the familiar form of warfare in which physical damage is meted out against the opponent’s military forces and infrastructure has become only one form of attack. Instead, states are increasingly launching non-lethal attacks against an enemy’s information systems – this is the rise of information warfare.

Dan Kuehl of the National Defence University defined information warfare as the “conflict or struggle between two or more groups in the information environment”. You might say that just sounds like a fancier way of describing hacking. In fact it’s a lot more sinister and a lot more dangerous than its somewhat tame name implies.

Western leaders are investing billions to develop capabilities matching those of China and Russia, establishing military commands for attacking, defending and exploiting the vulnerabilities of electronic communications networks. Information warfare combines electronic warfare, cyberwarfare and psy-ops (psychological operations) into a single fighting organisation, and this will be central to all warfare in the future.

The anatomy of information warfare

The free flow of information within and between nation states is essential to business, international relations and social cohesion, as much as information is essential to a military force’s ability to fight. Communications today lean heavily on the internet, or via communications using various parts of the electromagnetic spectrum (such as radio or microwaves) through terrestrial communications networks or satellite networks in space. We live in a highly connected world, but it doesn’t take much to tip over into instability or even chaos. Read more...

Refugees Supported by Public Libraries in Europe by Julia Pyatetsky on November 24, 2015

Due to the civil war in Syria, its people are leaving in droves and many are now refugees seeking asylum. Despite how difficult it has been for refugees to even be allowed into some countries, public libraries in Europe are on the forefront of making them feel as welcome and safe as possible. From the UK to Norway to Germany, public libraries are ensuring that refugees not only have access to information but also an environment where they can feel supported and empowered.

The European Bureau of Library, Information, and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA) is an independent umbrella association of library, information, documentation, and archive associations and institutions in Europe. They’ve issued a press release on the topic “Public Libraries in Europe Welcome Refugees”. The release includes this important statement: “EBLIDA understands the concerns of some countries in dealing with the refugee crisis and acknowledges that careful consideration requiring governmental measures at European and local level are necessary to facilitate the mass migration. At the same time, EBLIDA believes that libraries all over Europe should act as a platform for democratic and open-minded values, and be a safe place where social inclusiveness for all is a priority.”  Many European countries have taken this to heart accordingly and appropriately. Read more...

In Iceland, a Literary Tour Explores Rich History By DEAN NELSONNOV. 17, 2015

Statues of Hannes Hafstein, foreground, and King Christian IX in Reykjavik. CreditBara Kristinsdottir for The New York Times

Standing in the dark outside the Reykjavik public library in the relentless damp chill that comes with a light rain at 40 degrees, I kept trying to zip up my jacket. The charcoal sky was a shade lighter than the inky ocean a few blocks away, but it was noon, not twilight. I had a few minutes to bundle up before an outdoor walking tour on literary Iceland began. As if on cue, the zipper snapped off in my hand.

I could write here, I thought. There is a constant struggle in this place, often larger than a failed zipper, a theme that inspired the 1,000-year-old Icelandic sagas that touch on the nation’s Norwegian and Irish roots and the mythic tales of elves and trolls.

These days, the country is best known as the backdrop for the myths of our day: films like “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” “Interstellar,” “Noah” and “Prometheus.” (Not to mention the TV series “Game of Thrones.”)

But as I talked to people in Reykjavik, the culture of storytelling seemed to be the source of their greatest national pride. The country has a nearly 100 percent literacy rate. Halldor Laxness won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1955, and Unesco declared Reykjavik a City of Literature in 2011, only the fifth in the world. Researchers show that at least 90 percent of Icelanders age 16 or older read at least one book a year just for pleasure, and that the gift most requested by children at Christmas time is a book.

Photo

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Beneath New York Public Library, Shelving Its Past for High-Tech Research Stacks By TOM MASHBERGNOV. 15, 2015

he New York Public Library is creating a vast underground space for its research collection, after abandoning plans to move much of it to New Jersey. CreditJames Estrin/The New York Times

As they skate or snack in Bryant Park, visitors might dismiss the statelyNew York Public Library next door as a dog-eared relic in an age of digital information.

But unbeknown to most of them, 17 feet below ground, in a concrete bunker worthy of the White House, the library is expanding and updating one of the most sophisticated book storage systems in the world.

Since March, after abandoning a much-criticized plan to move the bulk of its research collection to New Jersey, the library has been working instead to create a high-tech space underground for the 2.5 million research works long held in its original stacks.

Read more....

Libraries are changing international development By Jacob Brogan

Mmankgodi Community Library in Botswana, where the Gates Foundation has helped create library services designed to encourage small business development.

Photo by Fiona Bradley/Flickr Creative Commons

This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. On Thursday, Nov. 12, Future Tense will host an event in Washington, D.C., on the future of the library. For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.

Discussions of the future of libraries are often surprisingly nostalgic endeavors, producing laments for vanished card catalogs or shrinking book stacks rather than visions of what might be. Even at their most hopeful, such conversations sometimes lose track of the pragmatic functions that libraries serve. Imagined as unchanging archives, libraries become mere monuments to our analog past. But envisioning them as purely digital spaces also misses the mark, capturing neither what they can be nor the way their patrons use them.

According to a recent report by the Pew Research Center, low-income and minority Americans are far more likely than others to assert that they would be negatively affected if their local library closed. The survey suggests that this has much, or more, to do with access to computers and the Internet—which is critical for job searchers and entrepreneurs—as it does with the opportunity to check out books. Public libraries aren’t just educational destinations; they also provide access to economic opportunities available through few other venues.  Read more...

VHP at 15: Collections over the Years (Experiences War: Stories from the Veterans History Project(Library of Congress: loc.gov)

The Library of Congress' Veterans History Project is a great project and a wonderful way to honor those who have served. This Veterans Day, take some time to read their stories or consider helping to record the story of the veteran in your life.

The Library of Congress	Veterans History Project Home
In 2015, the Veterans History Project celebrates fifteen years of collecting the stories of America's war veterans. To commemorate the occasion, here we highlight 15 different collections, donated to us during the first five, ten, and fifteen years of VHP's existence. While these collections vary widely in scope, each fulfills VHP's mission of capturing the stories of veterans in their own words. Whether they were submitted to us in the early days of the project, or later on, these fifteen collections represent a mere fraction of the over 99,000 collections in the Veterans History Project archive--all of which communicate the experience of war. Five Years 2000-2005 Robert E. Cassidy  ARMY Korean War Audio Interview Thomas J. Hudner, Jr. NAVY Korean War Vietnam War  Video and Audio Interviews, Photos Herman F. Monoschein AIR FORCE World War II Korean War  Video Interview Martha Settle Putney WAAC World War II Video Interview Gary L. Villereal ARMY Vietnam War Video Interview Ten Years 2005-2010 Felmers O. Chaney ARMY World War II Video Interviews James E. Frolking ARMY AIR CORPS World War II Audio Interview, Memoir, Photos, Personal Correspondence James Noboru Miho ARMY Korean War Video Interviews Bernadette P. Miller ARMY Vietnam War Video Interview, Photos Lucius Byron Nash NAVY World War I Photos, Official Documents, Personal Correspondence Fifteen Years 2010-2015 Rollins Edwards ARMY World War II Audio Interview Adam Jordan Holt  ARMY Iraq War Audio Interview Kurt Chew-Een Lee  MARINE CORPS World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War Video Interview, Official Documents Elisa Raney NAVY Iraq War Video Interview, Photos Edwin Trawczynski ARMY Vietnam War Memoir, Photos, Personal Corredspondence
Other Collections of Interest: Robert Andraski Jason Brown Francis Galligan Henry Heimlich Jack Jones Laura J. Brautigam June Elizabeth McIntosh Logan Mehl-Laituri	Search the Veterans Database: Search by Keyword Browse by Last Name Browse by War/Military Branch Browse by State of Residence Browse by Race/Ethnicity   View ALL Stories: View ALL Stories in an Alphabetical List View ALL Stories by Theme
Playing the audio and video files - Building the digital collection - Copyright and restrictions - Credits
The Library of Congress            Legal | External Link Disclaimer   October 28, 2015	Veterans History Project Home Contact Us

http://www.loc.gov/vets/stories/ex-war-15years.html?loclr=twloc

Improving Health Literacy, One Public Library at a Time Public resources and training programs for librarians

Marilynn Lance-Robb, branch manager at the Carvers Bay Branch Library in Georgetown, South Carolina, assists a patron with health information.Photo: Marilynn Lance-Robb

The first thing that Jennifer Davis tells patrons who come to her seeking medical information is not to Google their symptoms. “It’s the worst thing you could possibly do,” says Davis, director of Hall Memorial Library, which serves the communities of Northfield and Tilton, New Hampshire.

Instead, Davis assists patrons with their health care questions by helping them find information on Medline-Plus, an authoritative, free website where the public can find health information in more than 40 languages.

Although Davis, a former medical librarian, is familiar with health care topics, most public librarians do not necessarily have a medical background. Still they may be faced with an assortment of health-related questions from the public every day.

Read more...

A Peek Inside the Boxes

Time Inc. has donated its company archive to the New-York Historical Society. Among the 7,500 linear feet of files are these intriguing objects. NOV. 5, 2015

CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times

A CEREMONIAL TROWEL

Building Time & Life

A ceremonial trowel used in 1959 as the symbolic cornerstone was laid at the Time & Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, an event attended by Henry R. Luce, the co-founder of Time Inc., and other dignitaries. In the cornerstone is a time capsule that Bill Hooper, the company archivist, hopes can be extracted and opened on the magazine’s 100th anniversary in 2023.

Read more http://nyti.ms/1MM0cOz
See also:

Time Inc.’s Record of the 20th Century, in Thousands of Boxes, Is Moving

By DAVID W. DUNLAPNOV. 5, 2015

Family Literacy at a Food Pantry

Family Literacy at a Food Pantry: In this webinar, learn how Cazenovia Public Library operates learning-focused programs for the whole family at a local food pantry.

The Cazenovia Public Library
is connecting the dots between early literacy, the local food pantry
and family well-being, and they’re doing it all on a small budget.
Starting with an Early Literacy project at the CazCares food pantry,
library outreach coordinators began to build more in-depth relationships
with the food pantry’s clients. Their interactions led to unexpected
positive outcomes:

• adults obtaining their high school equivalency through the library tutoring program;
• school age children participating in an interactive summer learning program and book club;
• and the food pantry becoming the site for ESL classes, Dolly
  Parton Imagination Library sign ups and health literacy initiatives.

Find out how this innovative library team supplemented their small
budget with donations and volunteers to make Family Literacy work for
the community.


Presented by: Betsy Kennedy, Director, Cazenovia Public Library

Amazon is opening a physical bookstore that has one key difference from traditional shops by Max Slater-Robins

Amazon

Amazon on Tuesday is opening a physical store in Seattle called "Amazon Books," the first real-world bookstore for the company, which has operated online since 1994.

The store will include both books and Amazon products, such as the Kindle, Echo, and Fire TV, the company said on its website.

The company will use information it has gathered from its online store, such as customer ratings, to help select titles in its physical store.

"We're taking the data we have and we're creating physical places with it," Jennifer Cast, vice president of Amazon Books, told The Seattle Times.

Each book will also include a placard showing its Amazon.com rating and customer reviews,according to The Verge.

Here's how those reviews will be displayed alongside the physical book:

Amazon

Read more....

EXCLUSIVE: Municipal Archives offer rare glimpse into NYC’s nearly 400-year history most people will never know BY GINGER ADAMS OTIS

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Australian historian Shane White at the New York County Clerk Records office, which he said has "the best set of records I have ever seen."

Some of the city’s best-kept secrets are all hidden in one place — but you have to know what you’re looking for to find them.

Inside the Municipal Archives, there’s a remarkable set of records full of forgotten history: the District Attorney’s Indictment Papers.

They’re part of an incredible 221,000 cubic feet of documents kept by the city’s team of archivists and conservationists. Almost anything related to New York City life can be found there, from 1645 all the way through the Bloomberg years.

This includes things like the very earliest etchings of the green space that became Central Park, tales of a black millionaire who got his start running brothels in the city and Robert Moses’ vision to create a huge expressway in lower Manhattan.

Moses’ plan to turn Tribeca into a highway will be re-created for a city Department of Records’ exhibit opening Wednesday. It will feature a large-scale model of what the expressway would have looked like.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

White has found records on libel cases, drunken brawls, murders and even some old evidence from long-ago cases within the archives.

Read more: http://nydn.us/1RuqJ0x

CULTURE Finish That Book! You suffer when you quit a story midway through—and so does literature.

• JULIET LAPIDOS
 
•  NOV 5, 2014

Porsche Brosseau/Flickr

I finish every single novel I start. If I happen upon the first line of a 1,000-page novel, I of course don’t feel compelled to read to the end. But as a matter of personal policy, when I decide I’m going to read a novel, I read the whole thing.
I’ve gathered over the years that my persistence—or stubbornness, depending on your point of view—is unusual. Most people I encounter think nothing of dropping a novel halfway because they find it boring or because they can see where it’s going or because they forgot it on the subway and moved on to the next thing.

This behavior, common though it may be, seems lazy to me. Wrong, even. Once you start a book, you should finish it.

I realize that cultural judgments like this are no longer broadly acceptable.  When Ruth Graham wrote in Slate that adults should feel embarrassed if they read literature written for children, she was attacked as a condescending snob. Didn’t she understand, critics argued, that fun-seeking was the only reason anyone did anything anymore? And if a 45-year-old enjoyed reading Harry Potter, then who was Ruth Graham to say he should feel ashamed? How dare she even use the word “should”? (I’m caricaturing, but only a little.) Read more...

Long Line at the Library? It’s Story Time Again By WINNIE HU NOV. 1, 2015

Forty strollers were double- and triple-parked on the main floor of the Fort Washington Library in Upper Manhattan. As another one came through the door, Velda Asbury waved toward a spot beside a book stack.

Officially, Ms. Asbury is a library clerk, checking books in and out. But every Wednesday she doubles as a parking attendant during one of theNew York P ublic Library’s most popular programs: story time.

 A library tradition is being refashioned to emphasize early literacy and better prepare young children for school, and drawing many new fans in the process.

 By WINNIE HU on Publish DateNovember 1, 2015. Photo by Sam Hodgson for The New York Times.Watch in Times Video »

“Good morning, little people,” she called out, as the library’s youngest patrons climbed, or were carried, up an old wooden staircase to the second floor for a 45-minute romp through books and music.
Among parents of the under-5 set, spots for story time have become as coveted as seats for a hot Broadway show like “Hamilton.” Lines stretch down the block at some branches, with tickets given out on a first-come-first-served basis because there is not enough room to accommodate all of the children who show up.  Read more...

Children settled into spots on the floor during story time at the Fort Washington Library last month. CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times