Author: Editors

When I talk to librarians about 3D printing, the most common question I hear—after the question about printing a gun—is “Why provide this service?”

Of the many answers, the most straightforward is “We’ve always done this sort of thing.” The library is, at its core, an engine for the democratization of knowledge and information. Conceptually, the library is a collective resource for the individuals within a community. While we are best known as information providers, that has never been all we are. A library was often the first place where someone could go to touch a computer. A library was one of the places where many Americans first saw the internet.

The familiar laser printer we now take for granted amazed us in the 1990s. A library was often the place to go to print résumés, because most job-seekers did not have a printer at home or wanted a more professional look than a dot-matrix printer could produce. Going further back, a library was where someone would go to use a typewriter.

The point is that the library has a long, long history of providing technology for its patrons. 3D printing is still a novelty, but the basic technology is affordable. The future of additive manufacturing will likely be stranger and more wonderful than I can imagine, but given the uses that people are finding for them already—in health care to print organs, in food prep to make unique foodstuffs, in art to make impossible objects—it’s fair to say that amazing things will come from this technology.

What is possible with 3D-printing technology? You can find hundreds of inspiring stories on the web, including some that are barely believable.

Here are just a few:

3D-printed tissues and structures have been implanted successfully into humans, and the potential for printing entire replacement organs is on the horizon.

People are using 3D printers to provide custom, inexpensive, and comfortable prosthetic devices for amputees, including children, providing them with an improved quality of life.

The same techniques used in fused deposition modeling printing are used to build experimental housing and could revolutionize low-cost dwellings, including replacement structures after a natural disaster.

via The Case for 3D Printing | American Libraries Magazine.

Welcome to the seventh annual best “books to give to kids you don’t know” round-up [links to the previous six years  are available here].

If you don’t recall how we play this game, let me give you a refresher.

Every year librarians and booksellers are challenged with requests such as:

“I need a book for my five-year-old niece who I only see once a year.”

“I always like to give books but now that the kids are voracious readers, I can’t keep up with what they have already read.”

“I want to give a book but this kid isn’t really a reader.”

We accept this challenge, nay we welcome the opportunity to show off our expertise and vast reading insight. Let the games begin.

via EarlyWord: The Publisher | Librarian Connection » Blog Archive The Best Preschool and Family Books To Give Kids You Don't Know Very Well – EarlyWord: The Publisher | Librarian Connection.

Rick Yancey’s young-adult sci-fi novel The 5th Wave set up an expansive apocalyptic alien-invasion scenario. By comparison, his follow-up is an intimate character study.The Infinite Sea impressively improves on the excellent beginning of the trilogy by focusing on the emotional turmoil faced by pitting complex youngsters against a massive and overpowering extra-terrestrial menace. With shifting points of view among its ensemble cast, the sequel makes the most of its themes of evolution and humanity while also highlighting two very tough and determined female protagonists and tapping into Yancey’s ocean of creativity.

via USATODAY.

Millennials may be thought of as the iPhone generation, but it seems plenty of them still enjoy an old-fashioned book.Pew Research surveyed 6,000 Americans ages 16 and over for a report called "Younger Americans and Public Libraries." They found that 88% of adults under 30 read a book in the past year, while only 79% of those 30 and over read one. Adults 65 and over were the age group least likely to have read a book this year, according to Pew.It is worth noting that 37% of adults ages 18-29 reported that they have read an e-book this past year. But 43% of Millennials reported reading a book — in any format — on a daily basis, a rate that Pew called "similar to older adults."

via Research finds Millennials read more than their elders.

It’s been 89 years since F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, was published. Since then it’s been read and revered by millions who’ve been captivated by the glittery, tragic tale of Jay Gatsby and his elusive love, Daisy Buchanan. One of those is Maureen Corrigan, 59, the book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air. Corrigan, who lives in Washington, D.C., and teaches at Georgetown University, spoke with USA TODAY’s Jocelyn McClurg about her new book, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures (Little, Brown).Q: You boldly state that The Great Gatsby isn’t just the great American novel. It’s the "greatest," you say. What’s the No. 1 reason why?A: The language. I think it’s a novel that takes ordinary American language and makes it unearthly. The story that it tells of somebody trying to be better, trying to be greater, trying to be more is certainly a story we identify as an American story. It’s the way Fitzgerald tells it that just takes your breath away.

via Why 'The Great Gatsby' is the 'greatest' of all.

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world,” Philip Seymour Hoffman (as Lester Bangs) says to a young rock journalist in the movie “Almost Famous,” “is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”It’s a cheesy line, and it doesn’t sound like Bangs at all. But it’s one of the great utterances in recent cinema nevertheless, and it’s hard not to hold it in mind while reading Caitlin Moran’s comic first novel, “How to Build a Girl.”Ms. Moran’s novel is about an uncool girl from the hinterlands (she is poor, fat and lives in public housing) who decides to reinvent herself as a rock critic and make her way to London. It’s a British version of “Almost Famous,” delivered from a female perspective and set two decades later, in the early 1990s instead of the early 1970s. It’s got the Manic Street Preachers and Bikini Kill on its internal soundtrack, not the Allman Brothers.

via ‘How to Build a Girl,’ by Caitlin Moran – NYTimes.com.

PARIS — In France, they say they’re puzzled by the humor. In Germany, they say it will be difficult to market. Martin Amis’s latest novel, “The Zone of Interest,” a satire set in a concentration camp during the Second World War, is having trouble gaining traction in Europe, where his longtime French and German publishers have rejected it.The novel was published by Jonathan Cape in Britain in August to strong reviews and will be released in the United States by Knopf on Sept. 30. By turns a love story and a meditation on Nazi horrors written with self-consciously grotesque humor, “The Zone of Interest” takes place in the fictional Kat Zet I, the same fictional branch of Auschwitz where Mr. Amis set his 1991 novel, “Time’s Arrow.” The new book is certainly not the first work of fiction to treat the Holocaust with dark humor. But in Europe, where there has been particular sensitivity recently to a rise in anti-Semitic incidents, publishers this time seem squeamish.

via Martin Amis’s ‘Zone of Interest’ Makes European Publishers Squirm – NYTimes.com.

After R. J. Palacio’s “Wonder” was published in 2012 and became a middle-grades juggernaut, many hoped the author would continue the story of August Pullman, the Manhattan boy born with serious facial deformities, and his friends and family. “Wonder” ends as Auggie is finishing fifth grade at Beecher Prep, his first year in school after being home-schooled for the surgery-filled first decade of his life. He is given a special award recognizing his courage by the school’s principal. But then what? Palacio’s characters were hard to say goodbye to, and in the current series-heavy world of children’s books, it seemed natural that there would be more to come.

via ‘365 Days of Wonder,’ by R. J. Palacio – NYTimes.com.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Making sausages, pates and cured meats at home can be tricky, but American chef Jamie Bissonnette in his debut book, "The New Charcuterie Cookbook," shows their flavors are worth the time and effort. Salumi, chorizos and other cured meats are fixtures at Bissonnette’s three popular restaurants in Boston and New York. In May, he won a James Beard award as best U.S. Northeast chef for his casual Italian restaurant Coppa in Boston. He also co-owns Spanish tapas-inspired Toro in Boston and another Toro in New York. Bissonnette, 37, a former vegetarian who was born in Connecticut, spoke to Reuters about the book, which will be published later this month, and tips for making cured meats at home.

via World Chefs: Jamie Bissonnette shares tips on making cured meats – Yahoo News.

From super-long tongues to leaping cats, a host of weird and wacky landmarks have made the cut for 60th anniversary edition of the Guinness World Records book launched on Wednesday. The new edition reflects on six decades of record-breaking, while also featuring the latest additions to the oddball hall of fame. They include Californian Nick Stoeberl, possessor of the world’s longest tongue at 10.1 centimetres (four inches). British film buff Nick Bennett earned a place in the compendium for having the largest collection of James Bond memorabilia, with 12,463 items from model cars to posters displayed in a shrine in his house. "I’m still collecting… And there’s still stuff arriving today," said Bennett, who started collecting in 1995.

via Long tongues and leaping cats in 60th World Records book – Yahoo News.