Page through old magazines on Google Book Search

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: December 09, 2008 - 07:09PM CT

Google's book search is no longer limited to just books—now, users can turn up magazine results when hunting through the electronic versions of dead trees. The company announced Tuesday that it had begun an initiative to add magazine archives (in addition to current issues) to its online collection, with full articles now showing up alongside search results for various keywords.

As of today, Google has partnered with a number of publishers to digitize their offerings and link them in the book search. This includes selections from New York magazine, which now has hundreds of issues online from as far back as 1965, and Popular Science. The magazine selection isn't just limited to those, however—just do a keyword search for almost anything and you'll see magazine results turn up alongside the book results. If you want to limit your search to just magazines, you can do so through the advanced book search preferences.

Unlike some of the book results, magazines found through Google's book search are offered as full articles—helpful for performing that last tidbit of research online without hiking to a library in the dead of night. Google says that it eventually plans to start mixing magazine results into regular old search results, "so you may begin finding magazines you didn't even know you were looking for."

Google first began digitizing books in 2004 through partnerships with various libraries, but it quickly ran into legal trouble as publishers' associations began to raise questions about Google's respect of copyright. In 2005, The Authors Guild sued Google for "massive copyright infringement"—a legal battle that lasted until very recently when Google settled with the publishing industry and incorporated limits on how copyrighted works could be accessed online. There was also a surprising agreement as part of the settlement that turned Google into a bookseller of out-of-print, but still-in-copyright works.

With the book publisher lawsuit out of the way, Google is free to continue moving forward with its digitizing efforts. And now, with the help of a massive archive of magazines to digitize, that effort is greatly expanded. "We think that bringing more magazines online is one more important step toward our long-standing goal of providing access to all the world's information," wrote Google.

Visual Bookmarking Websites

Have you ever wanted to bookmark images you find online in the same way that you would favorite an article or website in delicious or other social bookmarking website? The New York Times has hand-picked some top photo-oriented bookmarking sites which will let you do just that in their recent article Tag That Image: Visual Bookmarking Sites Worth Browsing.

IWF backs down on Wiki censorship

The online watchdog, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), has withdrawn its objection to a Wikipedia page that contained an image of a naked girl.

The page of the online encyclopaedia shows an album cover of German heavy metal band Scorpions, released in 1976.

A number of internet providers blocked the page after IWF said it could be "potential illegal child sexual abuse."

The IWF now says that given the age and availability of the image, it was no longer on its list of proscribed sites.

IWF's overriding objective is to minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect Internet Watch Foundation

Volunteers who run Wikipedia said it was not for the foundation to censor the site, which is one of the web's most popular.

They also argued that the image was available in a number of books and had never been ruled illegal.

In a statement on its website, the IWF said that the image could still potentially breach the Protection of Children Act 1978, but "in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list."

Wikipedia volunteer David Gerard said he and fellow users were angry that as well as the photo, the text on the page had been blocked.

"Blocking text is a whole new thing - it's the first time they've done this on such a visible site," he said.

The IWF admitted that its attempts to prevent people seeing the image had been counter productive.

"IWF's overriding objective is to minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect. We regret the unintended consequences for Wikipedia and its users."

Brewster Kahle: A digital library, free to the world

Brewster Kahle is building a truly huge digital library -- every book ever published, every movie ever released, all the strata of web history ... It's all free to the public -- unless someone else gets to it first.

Internet security is broken, and no one knows how to fix it

By John Markoff
Sunday, December 7, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO: Internet security is broken, and nobody seems to know quite how to fix it. Despite the efforts of the computer security industry and a half-decade struggle by Microsoft to improve the security of its Windows operating system software, malicious software is spreading faster than ever.

The so-called malware surreptitiously takes over a PC and then uses that computer to spread the software to other machines exponentially. Computer scientists and security researchers acknowledge that they cannot get ahead of the onslaught.

As more business, commerce and social life has moved onto the Web, gangs of elusive criminals thrive on an underground economy of credit-card thefts, bank fraud and other scams that rob computer users of an estimated $100 billion a year, according to a conservative estimate by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. A single Russian company that sells fake antivirus software, which actually takes over a computer, pays its distributors as much as $5 million a year.

With vast resources from stolen credit card and other financial information, the cyberattackers are handily winning a technology arms race. "Right now the bad guys are improving more quickly than the good guys," said Pat Lincoln, director of SRI International's Computer Science Laboratory.

A well-financed computer underground has built a major advantage by working in countries that have global Internet connections but ineffectual law enforcement agencies that have little appetite for prosecuting offenders who are bringing in significant amounts of foreign currency.

That was driven home late last month when RSA Fraud Action Research Lab, a security consulting group, reported that it had discovered a cache of a half-million credit-card numbers and bank-account log-ins, all of which had been clandestinely harvested by a large network of zombie computers remotely controlled by an underground online gang.

In October an independent group of researchers at the Georgia Tech Information Security Center in Atlanta reported that the percentage of online computers infected by such robot networks, or botnets, was likely to increase to 15 percent by the end of this year from 10 percent in 2007. That suggests a staggering number of infected computers. About 10 million robot computers are being used to distribute spam and malware over the Internet each day, according to research compiled by Panda Labs.

Security researchers acknowledge that their efforts are largely an exercise in the game of whack-a-mole, to large extent because botnets that distribute spam, trojans and viruses are still relatively invisible to commercial anti virus software. A research report by Stuart Staniford, chief scientist of FireEye, a Silicon Valley computer security firm, indicated that in recent tests of 36 commercial antivirus products, less than half of the most recent malicious software was identified.

There have been some recent successes, but they are short-lived. On Nov. 11, the volume of spam, which transports the malware, dropped by half around the globe after Mycolo, an American company with Russian ties, was disconnected from the Internet. But spam levels rose again as a new connection was established through Hong Kong.

The malware has consistently evolved and now programs can be targeted to hunt for a specific type of information - including any kind of personal information stored on a personal computer - or for certain documents.

For example, some malware uses the operating system to hunt for recent documents created by a user, on the assumption that they will be more valuable. It is designed to routinely watch for and then steal log-in and password information, specifically targeting consumer financial information.

The sophistication of the programs has begun in the past two years to give them almost lifelike capabilities. For example, malware programs now infect computers and then routinely use their own antivirus capabilities to not only disable antivirus software but remove competing malware programs.

Recently, Microsoft anti-malware researchers disassembled an infecting program and were stunned to discover that it was programmed to turn on the Windows Update feature after it took over the user's computer. The infection was insuring that it was protected from other criminal attackers.

And there is more of it. Microsoft has monitored a 43 percent jump in malware removed from Windows computers just in the past half year.

The severity of the situation was driven home not long ago for Ed Amaroso, security chief at AT&T. "I was at home with my mother's computer recently and I showed her it was attacking China," he said. "'Can you just make it run a little faster?' she asked, and I told her, 'Ma, we have to re-image your hard disk."'

There have also been reports of successful cyberthefts from both the Obama and McCain election campaigns and from a nonclassified network in the White House.

The U.S. government has begun to recognize the extent of the problem. In January, President George W. Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive 54 establishing a clandestine national cybersecurity initiative. The plan, which may cost as much as $30 billion over seven years, is directed at securing the U.S. government's own computers as well as the systems that run the United States' critical infrastructure, like oil and gas networks and electric power and water systems.

That will do little, however, to help protect businesses and consumers who use the hundreds of millions of Internet-connected personal computers and cellphones, the new target of the criminals.

Beyond the billions of dollars lost in stolen money and data is another, deeper impact. Many Internet executives fear that basic trust in what has become the foundation of 21st-century commerce is rapidly eroding.

"There's an increasing trend to depend on the Internet for a wide range of applications, many of them having to deal with financial institutions," said Vinton Cerf, one of the designers of the network and Google's chief Internet evangelist. "The more we depend on these types of systems, the more vulnerable we become."

It is a vastly different world than 20 years ago when the first worm was inadvertently unleashed by a 24-year-old Cornell University graduate student. It wreaked havoc through the Internet, then located almost exclusively in the United States and composed of just 60,000 computers.

Written by Robert Tappan Morris, now a respected computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the worm contained a small design error that led the program to replicate explosively and ultimately jam many of the computers on the Internet.

"Modern worms are stealthier and they are professionally written," said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom. "The criminals have gone up-market and they're organized and international, because there is real money to be made."

The cybercriminals appear to be at least as technically advanced as the most sophisticated software companies. And they are faster and more flexible. As software companies have tightened the security of the basic operating systems like Windows and Macintosh, attackers moved on to Web browsers and Internet-connected programs like Adobe Flash and Apple Quicktime.

This has led to an era of so-called drive-by infections, where users are induced to click on Web links that are contained in e-mail messages. Cyber-criminals have raised the ability to fool unsuspecting computer users into clicking on intriguing messages to a high art.

Researchers note that the global cycle of distributing security patches inevitably plays to the advantage of the attackers, who can continually hunt for and exploit new back doors and weaknesses in systems.

This year, computer security companies have begun shifting from traditional antivirus program designs, which are regularly updated on subscribers' personal computers, to Web-based services that can be updated even faster.

"This is always an arms race. As long as it gets into your machine faster than the update to detect, the bad guys win," Schneier said.

Security researchers at SRI International are now collecting more than 10,000 unique samples of malware daily from around the globe.

"To me, it feels like job security," said Phillip Porras, an SRI program director and the computer security expert who led the design of the company's Bothunter program, which is available free at www.bothunter.net.

Despite new technologies that are holding some attackers at bay, several computer security experts said they were worried that the economic downturn will make computer security the first casualty of corporate spending cuts. Security gets hit because it is hard to measure its effectiveness, said Eugene Spafford, a computer scientist at Purdue University.

He, too, is not optimistic that his trade is making progress anyway.

"In many respects we are probably worse off than we were 20 years ago," he said. "Because all of the money has been devoted to patching the current problem rather than investing in the redesign of our infrastructure."

Save the Libraries – With Open Source

by Blake

Over on Linux Journal Glyn Moody takes a poke at OCLC:

For some in the world of free software, libraries are things that you call, rather than visit. But the places where books are stored – especially those that make them freely available to the public – are important repositories of the world's knowledge, of relevance to all. So coders too should care about them alongside the other kind, and should be concerned that there is a threat to their ability to provide ready access to knowledge they have created themselves. The good news is that open source can save them.

Ask Here PA is the Fastest Growing Digital Ref Service in the Country

by birdie

With 125,000 users in fewer than two years, an online chat called "Ask Here PA" is the fastest-growing digital reference service in the country, state officials said today.

"In less than two years, the program is on target to compete for that coveted title -- most used virtual reference program in the nation," said Mary Clare Zales, Pennsylvania's state librarian and deputy secretary for libraries.

Long live the library revolution

Librarian alumni include Casanova and Duchamp, but change is needed in the 21st century

Heath Ledger as Casanova - who was also a librarian. Photograph: Reuters

Most of us were saddened to read about the increase in public library closures and the fall in spending on libraries. But hidden in among those facts was one vital clue to the changing nature of librarianship: spending is up on CDs and DVDs. To traditionalists this is another nail in the coffin: the library as they know it is on a road to ruin filled with screaming children and kids playing computer games. However, reinvention might just be the salvation of the library in the 21st century.

Rem Koolhaas's design for the Seattle Public Library showed that good design and new services could make the library an attraction to rival galleries and cinemas. It's a trend that is being replicated over here. The Whitechapel Idea Store - which replaced the old Whitechapel Library where Isaac Rosenberg was first discovered and nurtured his tentative love of literature - boasts a crèche, CD and DVD lending and, most essentially, free internet access. Is calling it an "Idea Store" a piece of New Labour marketing or a genuine attempt to demystify the library and make it open to new users? It's a tough call, but what is indisputable is that free access to the internet is as important to the cultural fluorescence of today's second generation immigrants as access to the books in Whitechapel Library was to Rosenberg and his contemporaries.

The Bodleian Library in Oxford, one of the six copyright libraries
to receive a copy of each new book published in the UK, recently received a grant to preserve a large part of the digital content left to it by writers and intellectuals. Librarians now find themselves having to act as guides not just to information itself, but to the myriad ways of accessing it that are available. In these libraries of the future, gone are the clichés represented by Philip Larkin and his "loaf-haired" secretary. Technology has unleashed the librarian and, in cyberspace, a new breed of librarians is giving a voice to ideas and worries about the changing nature of the profession. Online you can read "rants about the state of librarianship" from the Annoyed Librarian, "meditations about librarianship and any other issue that interests her" from the Free Range Librarian and "The diary of a library fashionista" from the Lipstick Librarian.

However, this revolution in the nature of libraries and librarianship encompasses more than just the services they now provide. It can also be seen in the very fabric of the buildings.

But grand designs and new uses aside, some of the most important changes are taking place on a much smaller scale. Kentish Town Library's parent and toddler area faces out into the high street and seems to be living proof of the power a library can have to make a community coalesce – the toddlers' seemingly unobtrusive presence is surely a sign of good design and sophisticated librarianship. But it also demonstrates an early familiarisation with, and demystification of, the library for children from a very early age.

Librarians are the gatekeepers and guides to a world in which information is now in abundance, and the democratisation of access to it is of ever-increasing importance. These changes aren't universal, and many libraries still struggle by on shrinking levels of funding. However, it should come as no surprise to us that any profession that can name Giacomo Casanova and Marcel Duchamp among its number is well on the way to reinventing itself and that, despite the cuts, this should be some small cause for celebration.

As the Economy Plunges, These Books Soar

In dire times, consumers turn to books -- at least certain kinds of books.

Guides to living simply, do-it-yourself projects such as making clothes, and affordable hobbies such as gardening are flying off the shelves, says Jed Lyons, chief executive of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. In fact, the topics are so popular that he’s also reissuing books that are decades old because they reflect current mood.

One of those old books enjoying new life is The Guide to Good Cheap Hunting, first published in 1978.

Much to his surprise, says Lyons, Americans suddenly want to learn how to hunt and trap rabbit, waterfowl, and squirrel to feed their families. “There will be a revival of this kind of small game hunting to put food on table,” he says.

Other newly popular books include:

• Great Growing at Home: The Essential Guide to Gardening Basics

• Beautiful Bread-Making

• Candlemaking

• Handmade for Profit

• The Derrydale Game Cookbook (originally published in 1937)

“Americans are looking for good, practical information about how to live a more sustainable life, how to save money by doing things like growing their own vegetables… and really returning to a way of living that was common for their grandparents,” says Lyons.

Young people need books to learn these skills, because they are no longer passed down from generation to generation, he adds. Lyons says he’s still on the look out for a book on sewing, since he’s heard buzz from people saying they wished they knew how to make their own clothes. “I’m sure the one I publish could be 50 years old,” he says.

Has the economy affected your reading habits? Personally, I’ve been drawn to Great Depression-era memoirs, such as Beverly Cleary’s My Own Two Feet (a fabulous book), as well as cookbooks, such as Ina Garten’s new Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics. Please share your suggestions and hankerings below.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/alpha-consumer/2008/11/21/as-the-economy-plunges-these-books-soar.html

Meryl Streep Pounces on Dewey, the Library Cat

First the librarian was paid $1.5 million for writing the book about her library's cat, now an Oscar winner will star as the librarian in the movie!

Meryl Streep has agreed to star in Dewey, an adaptation of the fact-based book Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World.

Streep will play the title character, an author who works at the library and observed the impact that a kitten had on the townsfolk once it became the library mascot after wandering in through the after-hours book return slot on a cold night.

Though the project could have experienced a bidding war, New Line took advantage of their first-look deal with Temple Hill Entertainment partners Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey.

Never heard of Temple Hill? Well, you will. The banner is behind upcoming films such as Twilight, Management, Gears of War, Zero G and Parkour; to name a few.

Scribe Pamela Gray is currently working on adapting Dewey with no ETA on the film's production start.

School bans book on Laura Bush's list of 10 best for all ages

December 1, 2008 - 9:15am — Blake

A book that some call profane and anti-Catholic is causing a stir at Orestimba High School in this central valley town southwest of Turlock. Teachers argue the work, "Bless Me, Ultima," is a powerful story that connects with teenagers. Newman-Crows Landing Unified School District Superintendent Rick Fauss decided the book is not suitable for teenagers and banned it for the rest of the school year.

"I think there's room for exposing students to other experiences, but do we have to sacrifice the values of our families and our community to do that?" asked Fauss, a former high school English teacher.

He hasn't read the entire book but said he's "read enough."

When the law is not the law

Submitted by reellis67
November 17, 2008

Libraries are involved with patron's personal information, we all know that. We know who has what book checked out, and in many system there is a record of who has read what, used which computer, etc. Even when there are no physical records, this information can still exist in the form of logs, computer related information that is carried over for a period of time (cookies, etc.), and when books are checked out of a State libraries the records may exist outside the library where the materials were accessed even if that library does not keep records itself once the materials have been returned. It's just a fact of life.

There are laws in place to protect us, the public, from abuse of those in power when it comes to these records. And, while they are certainly not perfect, from from so since 2001, they are still the law, and this is a land of law and order based on those laws - or so we are told. In certain circumstances, people in positions of authority know that if they use their influence to coerce members of the public to abandon their rights, they will often get compliance despite their request being illegal. It happens all the time.

This story explains how this situation came to pass in a library - a situation revolving around the USA PATRIOT act, or so the people in question were told. FBI agents came into the library, asked to see records without a court order (which is required, even under the so called PATRIOT act), and fortunately in this case, the librarian they were questioning knew something of his rights and refused them. According to this article, this sort of illegal action by the FBI has happened over 1000 times.

The article then reviews the court actions that culminated in the Supreme Court ruling that the entire security letter provision of the PATRIOT act was unconstitutional and therefore invalid. The Bush administration has appealed the decision and at the time of this writing there has been no further ruling on this case. The idea that people will forfeit their rights under pressure is something that we should all be concerned about - it affects us all. If enough people forfeit their rights enough times, it will be very easy to adjust the laws to compensate and we will all lose those rights without a fight. We must all be aware and on guard at all times for abuse.

Further reading:

The original article

The White Houses' USA PATRIOT act website

Wikipedia's page on the act, which may give an alternate point, or points, of view

The ACLU's page on the act

Search Engine Optimization and User Behavior

Posted by Blake

Synopsis: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the craft of elevating websites or individual website pages to higher rankings on search engines through programming, marketing, or content acumen. This article covers the origins of SEO, strategies and tactics, history and trends, and the evolution of user behavior in online searching.

What Are Your Librarian Favorite Blogs? Put Them On The Blogs To Read In 2009 List!

Posted by Blake

Walt's Post reminded me it's never too early to start thinking about 10 Blogs To Read in 2009. Well, ok, so maybe there was a time it was too early, but that time has passed. Let's start thinking about our favorite blogs.

What blogs do you read every day? What blogs help you learn? What blogs keep you informed? What blogs make you laugh? Who's the best writer out there?

When building my list, I like to think of it this way: 'I read many others, but these are the LIS blogs that read even when time is short'

Your list doesn't need to be complete or fair. I'm looking for input from as many people as possible so the final list doesn't miss anyone new or overlooked. My goal again this year, 10 blogs that, when followed as a group, paint a complete picture of what's going on in our little world.

Before your nominate, take a look at past winners, they aren't eligible for 2009:

10 Blogs To Read in 2006
http://www.lisnews.org/node/17775

10 Blogs To Read In 2007
http://www.lisnews.org/node/20341

The LISNews 10 Blogs To Read In 2008
http://lisnews.org/node/28830

You can leave a comment below, hit the contact form, or send an email to btcarver at the lisnews.COM domain.

A chance to participate!

Submitted by reellis67 on November 18, 2008 - 12:17pm.

The Office for Intellectual Freedom is beginning to compile it's list of book challenges for his year, 2008. Please follow the link below if you would like to participate. I strongly encourage anyone who has access to these figures to take part in the list. Actions of this sort help sustain the neutrality of our libraries by ensuring that undue pressure to censor library materials does not compromise our free access to information.

Participate here!

Banned books list from 2007

Banned books list from 2006

Banned books list from 2005

Book Causes Parental Stir in Florida

Posted by birdie

TAVARES (FL) -- A book in a middle school library already has upset one parent. David Myers, of Tavares, brought the book "Me, Penelope" to school board members Monday and read a sexually explicit passage involving a 16-year-old girl.

Myers' 12 year old daughter, a student at Tavares Middle School, checked the book out after getting permission from the librarian, he said.

"I'm to the point right now where I'm about ready to pull my daughter out and start signing the check to private school," Myers said. "But 95 percent of the parents of the kids that go to these schools can't do that."

Sun and Google Issue Security Alerts

by StephenK

ZDNet has two posts at its Zero Day blog on software vulnerabilities. Sun Microsystems has noted that an overflow issue related to handling WMF and EMF files is impacting StarOffice. Google issued a release that was also picked up at the Zero Day blog about a possible data theft vulnerability in Chrome.

High School Knitters & Librarian Help Infants in the Developing World

Posted by birdie

Some students at Lower Cape May Regional High School (LCMR) are picking up a new hobby and saving lives. The NJ school’s knitting club kicked off this fall when Art Teacher Susan Wolfe and Librarian Tish Carpinelli invited skilled and novice knitters to the library to learn about and improve their knitting skills while making caps that can help save the lives of babies in the developing world.

Simple health measure are the key to saving many of these children: antibiotics to fight infections, training for skilled birth attendants, immunizations, on education on breastfeeding and basic care such as drying a newborn baby and keeping it warm. (That’s where the hats come in.) The program is Save the Children's Knit One Save One.

The program has attracted knitters from around the world, including high profile knitters like actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Debra Messing and about two dozens LCMR students. Just a few students showed up for the first meeting, but the excitement spread (fueled by Wolfe’s homemade cookies), and more students are participating every week. Story from Cape May County Herald. Sounds like a great activity!

Librarian's Widow Wins Damages

posted by birdie

Lakewood NJ: The Board of Education has agreed to pay $32,500 to settle a lawsuit brought by the widow of a former librarian whom she said died partly because of harassment from his co-workers and superiors.

Cheryl A. Watson, in her complaint filed with the state Superior Court in April 2007, claimed Assistant Superintendent Joseph C. Attardi, Assistant Principal Anne D. Luick, teacher and librarian Roz Renner, and other school officials discriminated against her late husband, George Watson Jr., because of his race and disabilities.

Barney Rosset to be honored by the National Book Foundation

by Bibliofuture

"On the Media" on NPR had this story:

In 1951, Grove Press was a tiny, almost-defunct publisher with just three titles in its catalogue. But then Barney Rosset took over and, with a few choice books, helped push America past its Puritanical roots and into the sexual revolution. Rosset, who will be honored by the National Book Foundation on November 19th, spoke with us at his home in Greenwich Village.

Listen to full story here.