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Australia has a strong tradition of children's books. A growing number of writers and illustrators are adding to the rich reserve of high quality stories that accompany babies, toddlers, children and teenagers through their growing years. Reading adventures can also be shared with friends, sisters, brothers, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers and librarians.
Australian children's literature rests on the enthusiasm and talents of many individuals, including a great many more Australian writers, illustrators and books than can be listed in this article. A selected few are mentioned as a starting point to this rich and vibrant subject.
To help commemorate its 100th anniversary, the FBI has produced its first coffee-table history, The FBI: A Centennial History, 1908-2008. The 132-page book traces the FBI's journey from fledgling startup to one of the most respected names in national security, taking you on a walk through the seven key chapters in Bureau history. It features overviews of more than 40 famous cases and an extensive collection of photographs. You can purchase hardcover or paperback copies of the book from the Government Printing Office and from various online booksellers. It is also available here free of charge, either as a printable pdf or in a text-only format.
Halim Barakat, professor emeritus at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, delivered a lecture titled "Exploration Into Exile and Creativity: The Case of Arab-American Writers" in a program sponsored by the African and Middle Eastern Division.
Halim Barakat is an Arab novelist and sociologist. He has written some 20 books and about 50 essays on society and culture in respected books and journals such as the British Journal of Sociology, the Middle East Journal, Mawakif and al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi. His publications are primarily concerned with difficulties facing modern Arab societies, such as alienation, crisis of civil society, and a need for identity, freedom and justice. He has also published six novels and a collection of short stories.
This book, "The Mystery of Economic Growth," which was recently published in Hebrew, provides an excellent non-technical description of the developments of growth economics over the last half century. The story of the ideas and research of the theory and empirics of economic growth is organized around four themes. First, the importance of the accumulation of physical and human capital for the explanation of income levels and growth rates across countries. Second, the importance of knowledge creation and total factor productivity for economic growth. The discussion evolves around the impact of research and development, learning-by-doing, external effects (externalities) and increasing returns. To understand the determinants of knowledge accumulation one needs to investigate also the incentives for knowledge creation and diffusion. Third, the importance of various globalization trends and developments and the international transmission of technological innovation and knowledge for expansion of new techniques of production. Fourth, the role played by economic institutions on economic growth, and the growth effects of economic policy that these institutions help implement. Based on a large body of empirical research, the principal conclusion that emerges from the book "The Mystery of Economic Growth" is that long-term economic growth stems largely from economic institutions that facilitate technological innovation and adoption of new technologies. The solution to the puzzle of economic growth, according to Elhanan Helpman, could be found only if we understand the role played by the relevant economic and political institutions. I begin by describing the book's chapters in detail.
April 17, 2009 -- A one-day conference, Digitizing for Preservation and Access: Past is Prologue, was held at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. on March 26, 2009. In addition to staff from NARA, the Library of Congress and other federal government agencies, there were participants from university libraries, state archives and a representative from the National Archives of the UK.
According to the conference website, the focus was "on institutional approaches, case studies, standards and management techniques for projects and programs that are either underway or already completed. Thus, the discussion has moved from the experimental and theoretical to examining and learning from what has already been done."
A major theme that emerged throughout the day was the importance of considering digitally reformatted content as a valuable resource on its own, rather than just as a copy. Overall, the presentations included overviews of governmental programs such as NARA's preservation program and Electronic Records Archives, information about private sector partnerships with government agencies and sessions on usability, social tagging and conservation as they relate to digitization.
There were also presentations given by two Library of Congress staff members, Carl Fleischhauer (Program Officer, NDIIPP) and Michael Stelmach (Manager, Digital Conversion Services.) In a talk titled Looking Back, Fleischhauer described more than 25 years of digitization, including several Library of Congress projects: the Optical Disk Pilot Project (1981-87), the American Memory pilot (1990-1994) and the National Digital Library Program (1995 and continuing). Stelmach's presentation, titled Cultural Heritage Quality Today, provided a look at current digital imaging challenges, citing the recent efforts underway by the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative.
Advances in search-engine technology, the popularity of the Internet and the influx of electronic information resources have greatly changed the way libraries do their work. To address those changes, the Library of Congress has convened a Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control to examine the future of bibliographic description in the 21st century.
The Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control is chaired by Dr. Jose-Marie Griffiths, Dean of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is joined on the group by information professionals representing the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the Special Libraries Association, Google, Microsoft Corporation and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging. At-large members are from the Coalition for Networked Information and OCLC.
The group was convened by and will report its findings to Associate Librarian for Library Services Deanna Marcum in November 2007.
The National Library of Australia has been involved in archiving Australian online publications since 1996. Since that time it has gained an international reputation for the archive it has established, as well as for its contribution to the development of principles and practice in the areas of selecting, harvesting, cataloguing, storing, persistently identifying, preserving and providing access to online publications.The ongoing focus of the National Library's digital archiving activities is to understand the complex and evolving technical issues involved in preserving Australian digital information and to develop both internal and national strategies to ensure future access to this information. The Library is working closely with other national libraries and key cultural institutions to further these developments.
This year the Friends of Battye Library celebrates its 28th anniversary and currently has approximately 180 members. Inaugurated on 6 July 1981, the Friends support not only the Battye Library, which is part of the State Library of Western Australia, but also the State Records Office which was established in 1989. The Friends’ aims are to assist and promote the interests of the J S Battye Library of West Australian History and the State Records Office with particular concern for the acquisition, preservation and use of archival and documentary materials.Sir Paul Hasluck was the Friends’ first President and since then many distinguished historians, researchers and philanthropists have accepted the roles of President and Patron of the organisation. The current patron is Mrs Ruth Reid.
To mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, the American Folklife Center, in collaboration with the Scottish government as part of its Homecoming Scotland 2009 celebration, presented a free public symposium on Burns' life and work, as well as his impact on America and American culture.The symposium began with a keynote address by Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, and a talk on "America's Bard" by Robert Crawford, professor of literature at the University of St. Andrews. Crawford's address was followed by readings of Burns' poetry and performances of his songs by renowned Scottish scholars and performers Margaret Bennett and Ed Miller, and award-winning Scottish journalist and broadcaster Billy Kay.
In response to concerns about RDA raised by the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, the three U.S. national libraries--the Library of Congress (LC), the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Agricultural Library (NAL)--made a commitment to the further development and completion of RDA. The three libraries agreed to make a joint decision on whether or not to implement RDA, based on the results of a test of both RDA and the Web product. The goal of the test is to assure the operational, technical, and economic feasibility of RDA. Testers will include the three national libraries and the broader U.S. library community.
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